When news came through this week that Moi University students were organising a protest march over delays in disbursement of higher education loans, Kenyans expected to hear reports of the students stopping traffic.
The reports would not end without notifying the public that the police joined the students in patrolling the streets, only for things to turn chaotic after a disagreement between the two groups on who should collect bribes from motorists, and what time they would sit down to agree on a revenue sharing formula.
There were no such reports from Eldoret. Unknown to the public, Moi University students have been living under squalid conditions since they reported from the “Corona break,” and they wanted to alert the world that the government should be held responsible for luring them from their homes in the pretext of resumption of learning, only to cram them inside hostels and starve them to near-death.
Kenyans are yet to recover from the collective shame when the students asked why the university administration was happy to see them faint in class, when all they ever wanted was to live to fulfil their dream of using education to pull their families out of cross-generational poverty.
Monthly stipend
There are still not many university graduates in this country: anyone who makes it to university transitions to the elite of society. That’s why villagers always pool funds to hire school buses to the city every graduation day.
Once a villager appears in your graduation photo, you automatically owe them a place to stay whenever they find themselves in the city, and a monthly stipend to keep them from retelling the painful journey they went through to stand by your side during that photo-op, even when you’re the one who should have called security on them for gatecrashing your party.
It therefore goes without saying that a university student should be categorised as a prized human resource, and the ground they walk on be given the same status as other protected areas. If a public university student is sleeping hungry then the government has no business engaging in the business of running universities.
Even the cockroaches living inside the university mess have no money but the university guarantees them a balanced diet every mealtime, as they pray for the prolonged sickness of the procurement officer in charge of the fumigation budget.
Covid-19 pandemic
The Covid-19 pandemic has not been good to Kenyans, and the government is struggling to make ends meet. But even the parent struggling with finances always budgets for food first before calling their nearest aviation expert for quotations on the latest helicopter model. The annual budget required to put all needy university students on a balanced diet is far less than the amount the President told us we are losing every day to robbers in suits disguised as government officials.
The government would want us to believe they are too broke to afford the Sh6 billion the Higher Education Loans Board (Helb) asked for, yet they’re all over the news rewarding phantom companies hundreds of millions just for eavesdropping on conversations around the Kemsa go-downs.
If the government genuinely wants Kenyans to help them prevent Covid from popping champagne on its one-year anniversary, the least they can do is send “Helb” to starving university students. BY DAILY NATION