In large numbers they trooped to the streets of Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa, Eldoret and other cities and towns. What’s happening in Kenya?
Young Kenyans, enraged at the Kenyan Finance Bill of 2024, a bill that took taxation to a high level, took to the streets to protest the latest means of further impoverishing an already impoverished populace. Parliament and President William Ruto, arguably one of the most enlightened and one of the most articulate leaders on the African continent, had provoked them with new tax laws. That was the proximate origin of what can be called Kenyan EndSARS.
President Ruto, quite unlike many other African Presidents, appeared to have listened. But young Kenyans were not impressed. They instead interpreted this as a Machiavellian move. After all, Machiavellians are adept at always appearing to be what they are not. Ruto rejected the Bill on June 28. However, before June 28, on June 18 to be precise, Parliament had modified or removed some controversial clauses, only to pass the same Bill the following day at a secret parliamentary session.
But if the Kenyan protests have their proximate origin in the Kenyan Finance Bill, the Bill itself points to an ultimate origin. Tracing this ultimate origin passes through the serious debt crisis into which Kenya has been plunged by her past and present leadership that collected loans to pay previous loans. Kenya owes China and owes the IMF’s World Bank, and Kenya has been defaulting. The IMF gave conditions to secure loans, conditions that include removal of subsidy on everything, and increase in taxes. Subsidy was to be removed from and taxes were to be increased on food, imports, power, fuel, cooking oil.
The people of Kenya voted for William Ruto because he promised them that, under his leadership, they can “fi okan bale” (stay calm), as we too were promised in the build up to the 2023 elections. But, with this Bill, Ruto’s promise spoken has become promise broken. Now that Kenya needs to pay previous loans, its parliamentarians and President believe the way out of debt is to get another loan to pay the debt, and the way to get secure the loan is to increase taxes and remove subsidy.
The protests’ ultimate origin is the extravagance and corruption that characterise politics in Kenya, in Nigeria and in virtually every African country. A profligate ruling class is feeding fat and asking the people to pay for its greed. There is debt because loans had been secured to service the extravagant lifestyle of politicians. Politicians are incurring debt so as to service their opulence while the people are being made to pay the debt.
But let us digress. These protests bear some similarities with Nigeria’s 2020 EndSARS protests. As it was in Nigeria, social media was used to mobilise opposition to the Bill. Young people showed their capacity to strategies and organize. Again, as it was in Nigeria, particularly at the Lekki Toll Gate, young Kenyans were able to put ethnic bigotry aside.
But, even in our digression, let us digress. Let’s leave Kenya for now. Let’s look at Nigeria. We only look at Kenya because Kenya enables us to see Nigeria. We can and we ought to learn lessons from the Kenyan #RejectFinanceBill2024 protests.
In Nigeria, young people put ethnic bigotry aside during the EndSARS protest of October 2020. They stood their grounds. They had had enough of police brutality and extra judicial killings. They stood their grounds but were gunned down. Their noble protest was non-violent when it began. But it was later infiltrated by hired thugs and given an ethnic coloration. Those who used miscreants to infiltrate peaceful protesters were hell bent on giving the protesters a bad name, like the dog whose hanging had to be justified at any cost.
In 2020, Nigerian youths put aside their ethnic differences. Then came 2023, the return of ethnic bigotry and, once again, Nigeria’s delicate baby steps in the movement towards nationhood were halted. The oppressor put a wedge among the oppressed, and the oppressed put on the toga of ethnocentrically selective indignation. Rather than confront the oppressor, the oppressed began to antagonise each other, trading insults and ethnic slurs. They forgot quite quickly who they are who inflict pain on them.
The oppressor cannot be confronted where and when the oppressed refuse to recognise their common humanity. Meanwhile, ages, like a tirelessly galloping horse, course along. Time waits for no one, certainly not for Nigerians. We must wake up to ask those who hold the reins of government in our land to listen to us, to be accountable to us, if indeed they represent us. End of double digression.
The Kenyan protests have claimed many lives. Many have also been injured. And the count is still on. The attempt by protesters to enter into parliament in Nairobi, which, we must confess, is not a good idea, was met with force by the Kenyan police. Government sent the police to kill protesters on the excuse that the protesters wanted to commit the “treasonable” crime of taking over parliament where parliamentarians were meeting secretly to pass the anti-people bill. But here is the treasonable contradiction: that government overlooks the treasonable crimes of a leadership milking the people dry and obeying the IMF, not obeying the people, to formulate and implement anti-people policies.
Could this have been avoided? Probably. It could have been avoided if the state and agencies of state would work for the people. But alas! In Kenya, in Nigeria, and in virtually every African country, the state is more powerful than the people, and, consequently, the state and its agencies like the police repeatedly get away with murder.
It is no longer news that those in our various African governments do not represent and are unaccountable to the people. In their sight, the people do not count. Kenyan politicians are not unlike their Nigerian counterparts. Similarly, Kenyan police is not unlike the Nigerian police.
The police in modern African states was established by colonialists to protect the colonialists from the indigenous population agitating for independence, and to protect the land they had colonised from their rightful owners.
The police was established to protect the colonial administration and its functionaries. The police was not established to protect the indigenous population but to protect the white colonialist. That colonial mindset remains in the African colonial military and police. They do forget that their primary duty is to protect the land and its population. They instead remember to kill and go. They ought to be agents of the people. But they are not. They are, instead, agents of the state. Now, since they are operatives of a state that has no regard for the citizen, they too, will intimidate, brutalise and eliminate.
Africans should know by now why their governments make life increasingly difficult for them by removing subsidies and increasing taxes: to dance to the music of the IMF and other creditors, and to pay back loans secured to sustain prodigality of the political elite. We are at the mercy of a deceitful ruling class preaching to us to make sacrifices to sustain its profligacy.
Father Anthony Akinwale, OP is a Dominican Priest and Professor at Augustine University, Ilara-Epe, Lagos State.