BY NBM WRITER
While the average Kenyan can only dream of an appearance on TV, news editors are scrambling to have Babu Owino on their platforms…and for prime news nonetheless! Whilst some may wonder why, it is not difficult to see why the man pulls such a crowd.
For starters, he is SONU chairman – the student leader at Kenya’s foremost university. The man is also pursuing an LLB on top of the BSc in Actuarial Science he already boasts. But most important for this vain generation, he not only has a few coins to spend, a decent ride, a ‘profitable business,’ and an army of subjects willing to die for him, he also boasts the chiseled frame of a roman god.
Like many, I should doubt his credentials: assume that Babu is a typical case of a tortoise on top of a tree. Unfortunately, my initial knowledge of him disposes me of any such right I may have. I have seen him work his craft. The man is no doubt an astute mathematician, a brilliant fellow yet one that is wholesomely unintelligent. He reminds me of a certain Jean Bedel Bokasa- the everlasting emperor of the Central African Republic. A man whose most illuminating speeches consist of large words imperfectly fused into imperfect sentences or statements like mafisi kibim is a public embarrassment that (the) Nairobi University’s top honchos may well do without. Yet that is easier said than done, for such is the grip that Babu has on the institution’s affairs, (allegedly?).
As some would say, far from mediocre, Babu could simply be an astute politician. Perhaps, yet I refuse to believe that he is the progressive type. He is simply another politician who doesn’t deserve mention within intellectual discourses- A scandal in waiting.
Unfortunately, Babu isn’t alone. He is but the poster boy of a university system that has gone horribly awry. Gone are the days when universities were the epicenters of intellectualism; when union leaders influenced opinion, even suffering jail or exile as a consequence. The days of James Orengo, Owiro Karl Marx, the good Professor Anyang Nyong’o and all: when deaths and expulsions were normal, and not for supposedly skewing elections but rather for the government’s fear of the intellectualism and political morality they portended. In those days, lecturers and professors alike had no qualms risking their lives and careers in pursuit of democratic freedoms and the rule of law. In their place, in the place of Micere Mugo, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Professor Ali Mazrui (RIP) and Dr Willy Mutunga we have a union leadership devoid of political ingenuity, uprightness and independence. When should-be inspirational student leaders are not overreaching themselves on TV, there is the public humiliation of a thorough chastening at the hands of law enforcers who, somewhat understandably, could no longer stomach the folly of a petty university election squabble that had spilled to the streets leaving destruction in its wake.
The generation of my good teacher Bwana Elisha Ongoya (who wrote the Moot Court Formula while simply a 2nd year student at the University of Nairobi), Gitobu Imanyara, Professor Makau Mutua and others, has been replaced by an intellectually impotent horde whose only good is to perfectly reproduce information. Little is done to, say, refresh John Stuart Mill’s Hedonism, Tocqueville’s Liberal Democracy, Kelsen’s Constitutional Supremacy or Hobbes’ Theory of the State – not even when Kenya flounders in her pursuit of these ideals, which pillar her democracy. Beyond grades, the reordering of formative jurisprudence to suit Kenya’s tastes ought to be the daily occupation of a working legal mind, the eternal pursuit of universities as research centers. By petitioning Parliament, pursing public interest litigation, writing, worthwhile demonstrations and press releases, even a Facebook or Twitter post, it is for the budding intellectual to reorder the Constitution, protect it if need be and provide permanent cures to Kenya’s leadership problems. Instead the university generation acts oblivious even as union leaders hawk themselves for political nominations.
Unless for exam purposes, the modern student neither reads nor writes: debate clubs and moot chambers have become the preserve of a select few, as have legal aid and awareness engagements. It’s no wonder therefore the curious breed of good students who cannot understand Brentwood, Eurobond, the unconstitutionality of initiatives such as Okoa Kenya, the recent onslaught on the IEBC, our spending, the precarious precedents such engagements set and much more. While a number of these students may understand Civil Procedure (which makes an advocate really), they lose sight of contemporary intellectualism and substantive law upon which society is built then protected.
What remains of substantive law honchos and contemporary intellectuals are but the relics of a dying golden age. For lack of interest, more likely ignorance, the modern law student simply crams, pays, blackmails or sleeps their way to a first class or a decent 2nd class upper hons only to spend the rest of their lives behind a desk or walking a totally different career path – wasted years. And this is the student that we applaud.
If I may shift gaze, it is time we condemned the reckless regime of discrimination society has constantly rained upon privately sponsored students at public institutions or their counterparts in private institutions. Somewhat true, a number of such privately sponsored students were secondary school “failures”. However, many others find themselves pursuing this route out of choice. Means regardless, it’s only proper that institutions are celebrated for their histories, systems and stellar output not composition!
Of private institutions, though a fair share have managed to hide their affection for business over standards in the open, quite a number have succeeded in curving out their own niches as centers of not only academic excellence but also research, innovation and intellectual debate. Some, I dare say, could actually be on the same pedestal as the great colleges of the days past, even higher. Surely it would be foolhardy to ignore the ground covered by Strathmore University under the illuminating guidance of Dr. Luis Franchesci. The achievement of Elisha Ongoya at the tiny Kabarak School of Law cannot be ignored either.
While Strathmore’s IP center continues to earn rave reviews, in four short years, Kabarak has not only realized a consistent student legal magazine of admirable qualities, it also boasts a first ever Student Law Review, a leading faculty Journal of Law and Ethics, not to mention a superb performance at difficult moot competitions among others. It therefore goes that individual feelings of awesomeness in the mere association with the great institutions like (The) Nairobi absent individual effort in retaining the standards its pioneers struggled so hard to achieve can only be classed an achievement akin to being one’s great father’s son – an inconsequence! Perhaps sadder is the contempt with which the internship-hunting alumni from some of these institutions are treated (I certainly loose respect for supposed professionals who are seemingly inclined to risking their firms admitting a common student from a great university whilst overlooking demonstrable legal and intellectual acumen from a recent institution).
I should emphasize that poor privates are not the only victims of the aforementioned discrimination. In the same basket exist largely the entire public horde that isn’t the University of Nairobi or an affiliate college – talk about Kisii University or Moi (perhaps the best mooters in Kenya), name it. But make no mistake, from these latter sons have come such great young minds that the lazy Nairobian would shudder. One only needs to visit Moi University alumni Walter Khobe’s argument on Transformative Constitutionalism to elevate my thinking to sacred truth status.
The regulators may have failed in allowing institutions of higher learning to crop up at every backstreet; the creation of universities in every county, district, location, village or community that feels “left out.” Education has suffered from poor remuneration even as politicians reap so much in benefits; dropping standards with Masters Degree holders lecturing PhD students, poor infrastructure and inadequate resources but initiative and a fidelity to political morality remain musts within the grasp of teachers and students alike.
I rest!
