David Ndii

Shortly after the Supreme Court nullified President Uhuru Kenyatta’s election, I came across a post on social media by a citizen journalist in Kitengela narrating how National Super Alliance and Jubilee supporters were massed on opposite sides of a road touting one another.

Four years ago, the Jubilee administration mesmerised Kenyans with fantastic images of mega-infrastructure, bullet trains and space age airports, iconic stadiums, bewildering interchanges and blooming deserts.

A decade ago, Prof Bethuel Ogot, one of the country’s towering intellectuals, pronounced the “Kenya project” dead. Kenya has never been a more distant idea than it is now at the beginning of the 21st Century. Nationalism is dead, replaced by sub-nationalism.

The end year public opinion polls are in. The prognosis is not good.

More than half the people think the country is headed in the wrong direction.