By: Joseph Mutua Ndonga
Worth Noting:
- I would also defend and support the agenda of two leaders on National TV shows. The interviews were aired by Weega TV and Githima TV. The two stations broadcast in Kikuyu language.
- As we close the year, I want to revisit one of the articles I wrote when President Ruto flew to Dubai to attend COP28 climate change summit.
- As the deliberations continued, I read a headline story featured by one of the mainstream newspaper here in Kenya.
- The story sought to cast President William Ruto in bad light by creating the impression that Kenya is topping the list of the countries with largest number of the delegates.
As a writer and a political commentator, I wish to take this opportunity to wish all Kenyans a Merry Christmas and a Happy, Prosperous New Year.
This year we have had some challenges. Having inherited them from the previous government, President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua have made great strides in addressing them.
In a separate message of goodwill during this festive season, the two leaders assured Kenyans that the situation will continue to improve and get better in the New Year. I have no reason to doubt them.
As for me, the going has been tough. I have been jobless and tarmacking for more than one year. This would not however dampen my spirit of championing the political and social-economic agenda of President Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua. This stood out as one of my key wishes when the year started in January.
I’m happy to have accomplished this.
The raining started beating me during the International Criminal Court (ICC) trial.
Before, I was an active member of the civil society/human rights groups namely NCEC/NCA, Youth Agenda, Creaw and Clarion.
The leaders of the lobbies would interpret my stand on ICC as a betrayal of the human rights agenda. I would not heed their call to stop me from defending then Deputy President Dr William Ruto, now the 5th President of Republic of Kenya.
At the time, hardly a week passed without writing an article denouncing the charges levelled against Dr William Ruto. I strongly believed these were trump up and politically motivated charges.
I was also abandoned by my community, the Kikuyu.
For the lobbies, the leaders started to distance themselves from me and I eventually become jobless.
In 2014, UhuRuto saw my potential and started paying me a monthly stipend.
It is no longer forthcoming. This would not however deter my spirit of championing the course of President William Ruto and his deputy since they assumed office.
For a whole year, I had been penning an article every day. Mt. Kenya Times epaper had given me a column. The Weekly Citizen and The Standard newspapers were also publishing some of them.
I would also defend and support the agenda of two leaders on National TV shows. The interviews were aired by Weega TV and Githima TV. The two stations broadcast in Kikuyu language.
As we close the year, I want to revisit one of the articles I wrote when President Ruto flew to Dubai to attend COP28 climate change summit.
As the deliberations continued, I read a headline story featured by one of the mainstream newspaper here in Kenya.
The story sought to cast President William Ruto in bad light by creating the impression that Kenya is topping the list of the countries with largest number of the delegates.
While ranking Kenya on 13th position with than 765 delegates, the authors cited the registration forms and badges issued.
They wanted Kenyans to believe that the government of Kenya has sponsored all them.
For this reason, President Ruto was not walking the talk.
He had a few days earlier unveiled a raft of austerity measures.
One of them was to reduce foreign travels and cut down on budgetary allocations for the essential trips.
The accommodation money and subsistence allowances for the state officers would be mainly targeted.
To me, the authors of the story were not factual and it seems they were pushing the agenda of anti-Ruto forces.
Let me explain why? One would have expected them to first carry out a thorough probe and scrutiny. This is with a view to finding out whether the Government of Kenya was catering the expenses of the all the delegates. They failed to do this.
As it turned out, the state was only paying the bills of 51 of them. These were essential staff across the government, who had accompanied the President, and they were not joyriders.
Each had specific duties assigned to him by the head of state.
The expenses of the rest of delegates were catered by the local and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and private sector.
It is worth noting that the two lists of the state officers who would accompany the President had earlier been submitted to him.
One of them contained 189 officials. He rejected it on ground the number was too large. The number was reduced to 144. He also rejected it. He finally settled on 51 officers.
This clearly demonstrated that the President believed in austerity measures he had unveiled.
In Dubai, President Ruto once again scored highly. He managed to secure green deals worth Sh680 billions. The monies will be invested in projects meant to actualize the theme of United Arab Emirate’s Clean Energy Pipeline. Kenya is set to become the pioneer of Africa Green Industrialization Initiative (AGII).
President Ruto’s star in Dubai had been shining. This started before he arrived. In one of the sessions, the world leaders led by Bill Gates, UK Foreign Affairs Minster Cameron and President of Tanzania Madam Suluhu Hassan showered him with accolades.
The President of Kenya is showing us the way. We have learnt big lessons from him on how to mitigate climate change.
The Dubai summit comes just a few months after Dr Ruto convened an inaugural Africa Climate Change summit in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city.
This forum endorsed and adopted a raft of resolutions. Dubbed the Nairobi declaration, President Ruto led African leaders in reaching a consensus to push for the adoption of the blueprint during the forthcoming COP28.
At the time, Dr Ruto stated. The declaration outlines the position of Africa. We will not allow the powerful nations to water it down. We will stand firm. In Dubai, United Arab Emirate, President Ruto walked the talk.
He noted Kenya is one of the countries in Africa that has been hit hard by adverse effects of climate change.
It is worth noting that President William Ruto is not only a leading champion on matters climate change in Africa. Lately, he has emerged as a global leader.
Before Nairobi climate summit, African heads of state and government gathered at Africa Union (AU) headquarters in Addis Ababa Ethiopia during which they adopted the proposal by Dr Ruto on Africa to take a proactive role in these endeavors.
Our continent of Africa is bearing the brunt of this problem and our contribution to it is very little. The powerful and industrialized countries of Europe and Asian were the leading polluters.
The fossil fuel is the main source of carbon emissions which contribute heavily to the change of climate.
Our plea to them to shift to the renewable energy has not yielded much fruits.
As Africans, we have a responsibility to explore ways of helping our people.
This explains why the Africa Union (AU) secretariat on Climate change chose Nairobi to host the inaugural summit.
Besides dozens of heads of state from Africa, the representatives of the global leaders, renowned environmentalists and scholars are in attendance.
It is worth noting the summit comes against the backdrop of the dozens of international Conferences dubbed conference of Parties (COPs).
The one held in France drafted the Paris Agreement and the issue of raising funds to mitigate the effects of the climate change featured prominently.
The world’s leading players of air pollution would make big commitments but would not keep their words.
In subsequent COP conferences, the same agenda would be revisited.
Commitments would be made and again end up being unmet.
Besides this, the leaders of the superpowers would also turn deaf ear or do very little towards the implementation of the other resolutions passed. This is unlike the leaders of Africa nations.
President Ruto would not take this matter lightly. During one of earlier COP conference he posed. Were these forums necessary? Were they adding any value to the course of environmental conservation? This is by reversing the devastating effects of climate change.
The forums have become empty talk shows. What is the point of holding them if we don’t implement the resolutions?
Climate change is a global problem.
So, he would urge the leaders of rich countries to reconsider thier position and take this matter seriously.
In Kenya, President Ruto has since launched a series of programmes for mitigation.
One of them is dubbed greening Kenya that seeks to ensure 15 billion trees are planted by the year 2030.
The president kicked off this campaign at Ngong Forest. He has so far planted many trees and mobilized all state officers to follow his footsteps.
The President is also providing leadership towards phasing out of fossil fuel powered vehicular and industrial machines.
They would be replaced by electric cars. As a show of commitment, the President drove electric car to Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC).
He had gone there to meet Africa Youth On Africa Climate Change a day before he officially opened the summit.
The fossil fuel produces the following petroleum products-jet fuel, petrol, diesel, kerosene, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).
Solar, wind, biogas are some other source of clean renewable energy. The president has also been calling on Kenyans to shift and embrace them.
In Kenya, the problems related to climate change were: Biting drought, famine, landslides, rising and overflowing of lake/dams waters and locust invasion.
As an observer, my message to Africa leaders is.
A time has come for Africa to rise up to the occasion. What do I mean? Africa leaders should explore ways of raising their own resources that would go towards mitigating the effects of climate change.
This way, the superpowers will stop demeaning and looking down the people of Africa.
Here the message will be clear. It does not mean that Africa cannot survive. You need us and we need to you. So, if you think you are more superior and continue to treat us with utter disrespect, we can chart our own destiny.
You are main the players in air pollution and climate change. We are not therefore begging you when we tell you to honor your promises.
Joseph Mutua Ndonga is a writer and political analyst based in Nairobi
