MKIDA Meeting

I applaud the Mkida committee for organizing the education conference and the graduation Gala. Since its inception I have seen many people graduate mainly due to the motivation MKIDA has given. It is my hope that the organization will continue to develop and do many things particularly its scion-GEAR. MKIDA created a chance for many individuals in the Diaspora to meet and discuss the problems of education in Gusii. They raised many issues pertaining to the pathetic situation of education in Gusii. Even though they were able to convince the audience, I have a lot of reservation about the meeting. Dr. Nyambane’s comment about including the local elites and subsequent comment of Gekara are baffling. If I am not wrong what they mean about elite is having DR. before one’s name.

The problem of education in Gusii is complex and a solution cannot be reached by assembling the elites who may have the least experience of the situation. The people who can give the best solutions are the education practitioners who through accumulation of many years of experience understand the root causes of deterioration of the education standards. If GEAR does not find a new strategy, it will face the demise which Uganda faced after the ouster of Idi Amin.

After the ouster of Amin, the reformers thought that what Uganda needed was the leadership of her educated citizens. Professor Lule who became a president of Uganda after the defeat of Amin formed a national consultative commission (NCC). He poached the best brains from the University of Makerere where he was formerly principal to sit in parliament and discuss the way forward for Uganda . They ended up not passing any bill as they continued discussing bills each showing his academic brilliance and analysis of options to the wee hours of the night without any solution. He was finally thrown out within 68 days due to the inability to agree on the extent of the presidential powers.

His successor, the London educated lawyer Binaisa also got the same fate for thinking the same way and ended up get fired. His learned team wrote a paper excoriating Tanzania ’s Julius Nyerere’s action of attacking Uganda to be read in the OAU summit which resulted in Obasanjo walk out of the meeting. That is when Museveni saw that Uganda is again going a wrong direction and decided to go to the bush and liberate Uganda . He tried even if he has become drank of power but he made Uganda move forward.

I wish some of our speakers could have included those who really understand what is on the ground like Mr. Onyando who was in the meeting and was never given a chance to talk. Mr. Onyando served as a teacher for many years before getting promoted to be education officer. He could have talked with authority since he was there and understands the problems. Mr. Patrick Monyenye (former principal Kisii high school) spoke with authority and with primary facts from the ground.

Take myself as example, what do I know about the problems in Gusii after many years away. Since leaving primary school 27 years ago the only experience I have is the two years I taught in Gusii out of the five years of teaching. I left teaching more than ten years ago and living far away. Does that give me authority to talk about Gusii problems? Let us face the facts, academic brilliance is not the key to unlocking the situation here but we want the practical people.

I am not trying to be critical, but listening to Dr. Bagaka’s presentation of the assessment of education standards in gusii it was just a review of the Ogutu task force. In other words it is the secondary source of information not primary. How long has he been away from the ground?

As Dr. Nyachama suggested, the best thing they can do is to get grant money for research study and assemble a local team to get research findings with their directions and then interpret the data for us and put it in the simple language we can comprehend.

We are going to face what Goleman calls “the peter Principle” in his book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ . According to the principle, “a person is promoted to his level of incompetence” . You get a person who is a best forklift driver promoted to a supervisory position because of his expertise and finds that his duties involves managing people where he is less qualified.

Do not get me wrong, I appreciate having among as the best brains and really liked the ideas they generated so far. For change to occur we have to establish a contract with the concerned, diagnose the problems with them, plan and implement and then evaluate the system and institutionalize the changes. Giving recommendations and going to the ground to implement them without the goodwill of those concerned will meet strong opposition or lack of support.

Just a thought.

Joash Omandhi