In a society where greed and self-preservation have been sanitized and raised on a high platform, good values to live by become an ever-elusive mirage and the people slump even lower to a point of total desperation. Rules and regulations can only go so far in attempting to correct the situation. In essence, they serve as the hardware of which, without the proper software, they will only be left to gather dust and become a memorial of the good intentions a people once had.
Africa Youth Leadership Forum seeks to bring together a group of young people who share the same values and in the process become a living testimony that we as a people can change and hopefully form societal catalysts for character growth. One of the most critical values that we work around is integrity. For a long time in our country Kenya and Africa at large, we have painfully watched as our leaders use their positions to enrich themselves, ever so often displaying a callous dereliction of their God-given duties.
Integrity has become so rare in our systems that our children are growing up in a world where the word only exists in a dictionary. They have watched as the few citizens who have tried to live honestly have been ruthlessly punished by a system that seeks to sustain itself by silencing any sane voice that dares to rear its head. Most of us are hardly familiar with the story of one David Munyakei. He did our country great good by whistleblowing on the infamous Goldenberg Scandal. According to the Daily Nation, Saturday, July 25, 2009, he lost his job and would eventually die of pneumonia, largely due to lack of drugs. With all the integrity he had displayed, this man ought to have been treated as a hero. It seemed though that his life got so miserable that he worked very hard to run away from the effects of what he had exposed, including relocating and changing his religion. Such can be the cost of integrity.
Integrity has become so rare in our systems that our children are growing up in a world where the word only exists in a dictionary. They have watched as the few citizens who have tried to live honestly have been ruthlessly punished by a system that seeks to sustain itself by silencing any sane voice that dares to rear its head. Most of us are hardly familiar with the story of one David Munyakei. He did our country great good by whistleblowing on the infamous Goldenberg Scandal. According to the Daily Nation, Saturday, July 25, 2009, he lost his job and would eventually die of pneumonia, largely due to lack of drugs. With all the integrity he had displayed, this man ought to have been treated as a hero. It seemed though that his life got so miserable that he worked very hard to run away from the effects of what he had exposed, including relocating and changing his religion. Such can be the cost of integrity.
Sitting through some of our court sessions, one can’t help but feel like integrity is the main defendant who seems to be losing hard. I appeared in court twice in one week on January 2014 following some traffic violations and at the end of those two sessions, I was convinced that a greater percentage of those in court, especially for the traffic cases, was because they couldn’t bribe. In some instances, integrity has proved to be a quicker route to prison than criminal activities.
With this backdrop, AYLF works hard to help keep the candle of integrity burning for as long as we can, or until such a time when integrity will be able to stand on its own. We seek to have conversations around this topic, using live examples of how and when we had to bear the brunt of honest living. At the same time, we offer our members a platform to share moments that they failed to uphold the same without being shamed. We have chosen to be our brother’s keepers so to speak.
We agree that even in the darkest moments, a light, however dim, more often than not does exist. There are Kenyans who have espoused a life of integrity for the greater part of their existence. AYLF has connected itself to these people and created a relationship that seeks to have the youth both challenged and encouraged to adopt this kind of living. We have senior friends who have become a valued library of good morals and character development. These friends have become mentors who have chosen to walk with the youth as they pour their golden selves into the ever-growing minds of the youth.
The need for integrity can never be underestimated. Lack of it affects all sectors of our economy. A member of parliament who has been entrusted with distributing education funds through the CDF dishonestly decides to divert the cash to other illegitimate uses. As a result, a student misses their education, they result in crime to cater for their needs, end up in jail where the government has to feed and take care of them. A contractor uses under the table means to win a road construction tender. They have to spend over 60% of the money on paying off their godfathers. They either never finish their work or do so to a substandard level and this leads to accidents, traffic jams, not to mention perennial repairs. I could go on but it is clear that without integrity, we are all stuck in a hamster wheel of poor standards of living for the majority of our people.
As we nurture the new breed of leaders, we hope that they shall be the ones to change the tide for good and make our country and continent the envy of the whole world as it should be.
By Allan Mwangi.
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