TRIBALISM IS FOR FAILURES

So VC’s in public universities across the country had their undies in a bunch this week thanks to one NCIC Chairman. The storm in a teacup, as one of the dons observed, was as a result of a report by the hate speech-ometer which suggested that public universities were tribal. According to the VC’s, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
Yet out of 15 institutions surveyed, 10 had the majority of their staff coming from the same ethnic community as the Vice-Chancellor or Principal. The audacity! But whose fault is it? After all, Kenya is known to be a highly ethnicized country where resources are allocated by proximity. Proximity to the said resources, proximity to power and proximity to an M-Pesa in case you need to chota, these are the real determinants of who gets what. Anyone who thinks otherwise has obviously never tarmacked.
In which case it would therefore appear that ethnicity may not be the most accurate unit of faulting efficiency and accountability within our corridors of learning. While ethnicity is a key element of consideration, there is a lot more that goes into defining the constituents of a given University community than tribal affiliation.
Take Egerton University for instance. Whereas Kibunjia and his team gave the institution a clean bill of health with regard to ethnic balancing, the emerging culture in the main campus seems to tell a different story. That of Nyerism. Apparently there have been increased cases of male battering in the Njoro based campus as hapless male students endure the wrath of their female counterparts within the halls of residence. Incidentally, the culprits are not exclusively from Central Kenya. Perhaps Mr. Patriot the NCIC patriarch should unravel that puzzle.
On the other hand, Moi University is reportedly comprised of Kalenjins in majority with 55% of the staff population coming from the community. It would therefore be expected that Kalenjins would be frontrunners (pun intended) for crucial positions in the institution yet it was one Dennis Wanjohi and Eva Ng’ang’a who clinched the Mr & Miss Moi University title held recently in the campus. Or could it be that perhaps the conspiracy stems deeper than the Cohesion Commission could dig?
Kenya Polytechnic University College students recently made the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the students ran amok causing havoc in the streets of Nairobi because someone forgot to change their diapers. The aggression that characterized the episode could only be attributed to a healthy diet which would be expected if the same were happening in MMUST or Maseno where the locals, who have reportedly monopolized all sectors in the institution, are well known for the same. Or so they say.
Under these circumstances, USIU’s just concluded culture week provides the most suitable conclusion on the subject. For the better part of this week, it was all about Maasai culture, Indian cuisine, Nigerians, Tanzanians, Arabs, Somalis and what have you all rolled into one big party hosted at Club Tortilaz.
So you see, it’ very easy to use tribalism and ethnicity to blame or defend whenever one is wrong or wronged but the fact is, our ethnicities are not the problem. It is our unique failure to play our designated roles based on what is expected of us that derails the functionality of the whole. Our differences are to be embraced in order to serve a meaningful purpose in the grand scheme of things. How do you think we got into the mess we are in in the first place?

Does tribalism exist in your campus?