Academic qualification in political leadership has been a challenge facing politics in Kenya. According to the amended electoral act, one is supposed to have a degree to apply for a Member of Parliament seat. This has been a debate both inside and outside parliament.
There has been an argument that a good leader is one with an impeccable academic qualification, while others opine that you don’t need a degree to serve people. History somehow justifies the two-argument differently. Some of the worst corrupt and incompetent leaders in the world had a taste in university education while others didn’t. It’s hard to know how one would perform after being elected either educated or not.
Some of the Kenyan's most failed politicians were occasionally termed as the country’s most educated but failed the country. A university degree losses its redemptive power and restorative potency that civilization and human psychology associate it with it cannot remind the holder that participating in or abating activities like corruption is morally wrong. Most Kenyan leaders hide behind their college titles to get their respect to further their narrow agendas, for which they are always rewarded by the powers given to them. If education cannot help people to interrogate their vulnerabilities, then what’s its essence in the first place? Kenyan education is dishonest, it has the potential to drive a country to the edge of self-destruction. Kenyan Intellectuals have become the bastion of all the troubles the country is facing because they have little or no idea on how to govern it.
They have also facilitated the collapse of the Kenyan dream by joining politicians by changing the ideological position. Society is likely to be violent and has a slow human development if it entertains intellectual dishonesty. The culture of state impunity is perpetrated by experts. Men and women who defend electoral malpractices are self-declared as “learned friends”. Some of those who oversee elections are highly educated. Intellectuals have been corrupted by Kenyan projects into weak, desperate, home guards undeserving their academic titles.
They have become accessories in which they build their fortunes at the expense of the poor instead of speaking the truth about political injustice. Some have involved themselves in good and moral deeds while others have openly involved themselves in retrenching impunity, facilitating economic crimes, and promoting ethnic nationalism. What we always think is that intellectuals are the bedrock to a successful government but that is not the case. If Kenyan political leadership is a fortress of private political power, the academy is the fuel that sustains it.
You must be logged in to post a comment.