Hustler accuses MPs of corruption, naysayers now await deliverance

Going back to Homa Bay for the nth time in less than a year this past week, President William Ruto must have smiled at how clean his path has been swept.

Before he shook Baba Raila Amollo Odinga’s hand in July last year, the path was littered with eggshells, and Bwana Hustler, recently more famous as Kasongo, had to measure his words. Not anymore.

Buoyed by his partnership with Tinga, Hustler can talk with the assertiveness of a man in a house he bought with his own money. Courtesy of their alliance, Hustler is only renting Homa Bay and the rest of Luo Nyanza.

He might have prayed himself into finding favour with the good people from the Lakeside. Hustler is the embodiment that prayer works. A chicken seller who went to school barefoot rose to the presidency, beating odds, dynasties, and the deep state.

And he would win over Tinga, a man who previously sang Must-Go more fluently than Gen-Z. Tinga has forgotten the lyrics as he learns the notes to the song Tutam. Si uchawi, ni maombi!

The product of prayer was last week's answer to prayers, a prayer, to be more specific, said by elements Hustler likes to call “naysayers.” Ahead of the 2022 election, these ‘naysayers’ had faulted Hustler for saying nothing about corruption.

The naysayers prayed and fasted, and prayed again, almost to the point of giving up. Their only ask was that the Head of State would talk about corruption. He did on Wednesday, lamenting that lawmakers for seeking bribes from state officials for favourable reports.

“The legislature must be held to account,” Bwana Rais roared. There are instances where money is being demanded from the executive, governors, ministers, and those seeking accountability before our houses of Parliament.”

He did not reveal whether or not the executive had been paying out the bribes for the favourable reports. Not that it would matter, owing to the fact that the reports are mostly used as seats for parliamentary journalists.

Given how long it took Hustler to talk about graft, naysayers will need specialised prayers and more fasting to have the president do something about it. They might need to procure the services of the shoulder-quaking Roho evangelists from Mulembe.

Does Hustler look likely to do something, anything, about corruption? Well, it is telling that graft cases involving many of his allies collapsed as soon as Hustler “put the Bible down.” Not to mention his loud silence over the scandals that have rocked his administration, such as the Sh9 billion e-Citizen scam unearthed recently.

Talking may be as much as Kenyans will get. Since he was elected in 2022, Hustler has been faulted for mostly being a Kusema-na-Kusema guy, and not the Kusema-na-Kutenda president he promised to be.

He dishes promises he cannot keep, such as a machine that will produce a million chapos a day and a 6kg cooking gas cylinder that goes for “Sh300 to Sh500.” There is the promise of hosting the Grammys in Kenya, which failed to materialise. Yesterday, Hustler amended the pledge, saying Kenya would host an “African edition” of the Grammys.

“As usual, there are those who doubt – the cynics who question everything we do. But as we have always done, we will answer them with tangible outcomes that benefit Kenyans,” Hustler said in Nyeri, where he hosted the Kenya Music Festival state concert.

Mtukufu Rais should specify the tangible outcomes he is talking about, especially to a group he empowered with bodabodas last week, but who still walked home.

But there is hope that Hustler may be learning the Kutenda skill that has evaded him. Indeed, he has promised and delivered millions for our valiant Harambee Stars team, whose alphabet does not feature an L.

Bwana Rais has kept promises about corruption before. When asked how he would end the vice ahead of the 2022 elections, he vowed to ensure there would be no public money to steal. True to his word, MPs are struggling to find unclaimed loot and have hence resorted to extortion.

Hustler’s government has succeeded in making money scarce. Not just for corruption, but for critical sectors like education and health. The free primary education, introduced by the late President Mwai Kibaki in 2003, has produced youth whose hobby is smoking tear gas, and so it could soon be scrapped.

The only sector unaffected by this cash crunch is opulence, which has grown in leaps and bounds since Hustler became president.