For the Penny!
The anger, the raging indignation, the bitterness and the “joy” of living in one of the most corrupt countries on Earth, you wake up early and log into your Twitter account and what greets your fresh morning is hash-tags, either condemning corrupt government officials or defending corruption in high places.
Ran by young people whom majority are either unemployed or living under the destitution of hand to mouth, hopelessness and pennilessness.
They run the social media campaigns in defense of the corrupt for the penny, without shame!
Majority of the corrupt officials and businessmen have graft cases pending in the courts and majorally, these hashtags are based on the presumption of innocence.
Mind you, some of the online marketers of corruption are varsity students who are in covid holiday, bright, sound minds but idle devils workshops, so don’t you dare think that they are Twitter dweebs!
(https://twitter.com/citizentvkenya/status/1275038985501446144?s=19)
This is a country structured on foundations of graft, corruption in the post-colonial government of Kenya has a history which spans the era of the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi’s KANU governments, Mwai Kibaki’s PNU government and the current Uhuru Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party government. In the Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 Kenya is ranked 139th out of 176 countries for corruption, tied with Azerbaijan, Nepal, Nigeria, and Pakistan, basically, Kenya is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
The daily twists and turns in social media campaigns for corruption shows you how ingrained the vice is into the “bones” or “roots” of the society, the younger generation has no choice than to align themselves into the norm, they mostly have the time and energy to run vigorous online campaigns for corruption, and since they are doing it for their corrupt masters who will dish out pennies to them at the end of the day for a “job well done”, they don’t mind provided their belly is full for that day and have enough mobile data to carry them into the next day, to work for the penny!
A bad vicious circle!
The culture of institutionalized graft in high places sustains the quagmire of poverty and its grip is so tight that one may waste their life time trying to free themselves or die trying.
The graft culture gives the younger generation the dream and mentality of “overnight riches”, thus the high rates of crime in the capital’s suburbs. The police harassments for the penny, the prostitution we see online and offline, etc.
Poverty is not a good thing and no one wishes to be poor, but those in civil service need to know that economic crimes is not the solution to it, the top government officials need to be patriotic enough and create an enabling environment for both local and foreign investors who will create jobs for both skilled and non skilled citizens, bolstering the economy and freeing the people from the tight grip of paucity.
Thus my Twitter prodigy apologists of graft will graduate and live not for the penny again!
Follow me on Twitter @ItsTrevorKe
