Restoring sanity or letting loose chaos:What do Cord and Jubilee really want?

Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu briefs the media on the re-opening of the Nairobi Central registries and Banking Hall at Ardhi House in Nairobi on May 18, 2014. PHOTO/SALATON NJAU 

In Summary

• She is not the first minister to head the Lands docket, but she is the first with the grit to confront a fearsome cartel and deal a deadly blow to corruption.
• James Aggrey Orengo, I read in an old copy of the Bushfire, gave a commanding performance in the 1965 school play, Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
• Recently, Senator Orengo has been talking about making the country ‘difficult to govern’. His commander, Mr Raila Odinga, has also been beating out the direst of dooms — Saba Saba, and so on.

Over 1,300,000 files! More than one million, three hundred thousand. Those are the files that had ‘disappeared’ from the Central Registry at the Ministry of Lands.

You have, or know somebody who has, endured the heart-breaking rigmarole of the ‘missing files’ racket at the Lands offices. Strangely, these files resurface promptly enough if you are willing to part with a fat bribe.

Assuming that each file required Sh10,000 to reappear in the system, it is safe to assume the criminal syndicate that had taken over the country’s property administration system had raked in over Sh13 billion while paralysing the economy.

Messing up people has never been more lucrative. Moreover, the culprits are nice-looking guys in suits, many of whom enjoy government salaries. Absolutely perverse!

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Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu stared down this syndicate and closed the registry for 12 days. That is how this rot was unearthed and stopped.

To prevent a relapse, a secure online file management system has been instituted, making it difficult for files to ‘disappear’ once they are captured digitally.

She is not the first minister to head the Lands docket, but she is the first with the grit to confront a fearsome cartel and deal a deadly blow to corruption.

It is useful to evaluate Mrs Ngilu against her predecessors. Quite bizarrely, the Lands docket has been populated by one or the other arrogant know-it-all, whose failures are accentuated by the bluster that accompanied their careers.

This is not the time to comment on the travails of Mr Amos Kimunya. But it is time to look at a man who used to fascinate me most in my youth.

You see, I am a lawyer, and attended Alliance High School, where I was a stalwart of the Dramatics Society.

James Aggrey Orengo, I read in an old copy of the Bushfire, gave a commanding performance in the 1965 school play, Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

When, in the run-up to the 1997 budget, he threatened to make Kenya ‘ungovernable’, the country was electrified. When in 2002, he announced during a TV interview that there is a future for Kenya based on ideas, the SDP platform became intellectually compelling.

When the Grand Coalition Government appointed him Lands minister, there was lots of hope that all his professed ideals would be brought to bear in a sector requiring radical surgery.

The Law Society of Kenya, which had registered innumerable issues relating to property transactions, was over the moon.

"HEROICALLY STRUGGLED"

He was not just one of us, he was also a fiery reformer and an incandescent idealist, who would redeem his country from the fetters of corruption and lead it into the promised land of transparent government.

It did not happen. Mr Orengo became an insular and parochial Nyanza political operative, who didn’t seem to care about what he had stood for before.

His ministry slipped deeper into the swamp of venality, and the prospects of even minimal reform retreated by light years.

When Mrs Ngilu mounted her presidential campaign in 1997, young Kenyans, especially males, were totally besotted with the ‘Masaa ni ya mama’ campaign.

Mr Orengo, Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o and Dr Apollo Njonjo could not hide their disdain for Ngilu’s limited patience with ideology, and her comparatively modest education.

She acquitted herself quite well notwithstanding, and went on to embark on an illustrious parliamentary and ministerial career.

As Minister for Health, she heroically struggled to unveil universal health coverage against a tide of snobbish, condescending scepticism.

Recently, Senator Orengo has been talking about making the country ‘difficult to govern’. His commander, Mr Raila Odinga, has also been beating out the direst of dooms — Saba Saba, and so on.

Both these gentlemen are obsessed with making Kenya ungovernable. In 1982 and 2007, Mr Odinga demonstrated one way of paralysing the body-politic.

At the Ministry of Lands, Senator Orengo showed even more insidious methods of making the country ungovernable.

The myopia is exasperating. These are people who think that when Kenya is ungovernable, the leafy suburbs, somehow, will be insulated.

Mr Ng’eno is the senior director of messaging at the Presidency.