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For the past few months, President William Ruto has been explaining his vision to resolutely march his people into a Singapore - a land of untold wealth and comfort. The president swears that we could create millions of nice jobs, flatten our slums, build public housing for everyone and haul 20 million people out of grinding poverty in 20 years flat.

First, a moment of silence for our brothers, police constables Samuel Kaetuai Tompoi, who fell in Haiti, and Benedict Kabiru, who is still missing in action. To be honest, Kenyans expected worse.

This week, Kenyans on social media laughed themselves senseless, amused that the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF) kicked out 1,500 recruits from army training school for walking into a military establishment with traces of marijuana in their veins. The army, they giggled, would quickly run out of recruits to train if they insisted on enlisting only marijuana-free lads because, hey, weed smoking is now more widespread…

Africans rode into independence weighed down by unrealistic promise and expectations. Freedom fighters crawled out of forests bubbling with excitement.

We all know the rage and sense of loss that engulfs those who find their homes sacked by burglars. Even thieves, ironically, have been known to bristle with fury when they, too, fall victim.

If founding President Jomo Kenyatta woke up from the dead and heard that John Harun Mwau single-handedly stopped a police recruitment drive as the government merely coiled tail and watched, he would summon certain people to Gatundu and whip them a good one. How?

If President William Ruto were to posthumously bestow the Order of the Golden Heart of Kenya (CGH) upon Raila Odinga, on December 12, 2025, the 61st celebration of Jamhuri, it would be a befitting honour for Kenya's fallen son and illustrious champion of the second liberation. The CGH, Kenya's highest-ranked civilian honour traditionally preserved for sitting and former heads of state and other luminaries, is…

In decreeing that he be buried within 72 hours of his death, Raila Odinga, the East German-trained mechanical engineer, must have imagined his final journey with the engineer's mindset: systematic, structured, precise. But his plan appears to have ignored the norms and customs of his people, and the raw passions and emotions that he whipped up among the millions who followed his beck and call for over 40 years.

They called the aloof, elitist, intellectual golfing economist and politician a fence sitter. His Agikuyu people nicknamed him General Kaguoya (coward).

Yesterday, I woke up to news that a petrol tanker had exploded in the night, its hellish flames engulfing 13 poor souls and sending 11 to hospital in a critical condition. It wasn’t the first time this is happening, and it won’t be the last.

As you read this, there is a government ghost worker someplace who, like everyone else, is complaining how times are tough and how difficult it has become to make ends meet on the miserly pay their employer scornfully doles out to workers. Not surprisingly, the government has been unable to rout these ghosts from the payroll despite a series of headcounts over the years.

Rumour has it that tens of politicians have been burning the midnight oil to graduate from university by 2022, lest they get kicked out of parliament and county assemblies. As someone who attempted and spectacularly failed to balance school, kids, job and the pub as an adult student, I salute them.