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{
"id": 99116,
"url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/99116/?format=api",
"text_counter": 369,
"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Ms. Odhiambo Mabona",
"speaker_title": "",
"speaker": {
"id": 376,
"legal_name": "Millie Grace Akoth Odhiambo Mabona",
"slug": "millie-odhiambo-mabona"
},
"content": "we would go and find that there was no chapati on the menu, and to the rest of the public, it sounded like it was very petty but to the students, it was very important that there would be chapati on the menu. Sometimes, the only thing that needed to be done was to explain to the students why there was no chapati on the table. That is why actually when I was at the university, chapati was named dialogue because the students said that if we had had dialogue, we would have said why we were striking over chapati. So, let us give our students dialogue. One of the things that I would also want to encourage is that students also need to know that we are going through a reformed country. If we do not like certain issues, it is not in order to resort to violence and especially where we destroy things that our parents and the Government has put so much money and effort into developing and building. So I would want us to embrace a culture of non-violence but one of enhanced dialogue between students and the administration. One of the other things that I am happy about is that the Report also mentioned the need to de-ethnicise our universities; that unless we reach a level where, for instance, I would be seeing Prof. Olive Mugenda heading a university in Western Kenya and Prof. Onyango heading a university in Meru, I would be very impressed. The other day, I actually almost raised an issue when I saw an advertisement by one of the universities, I do not want to scandalize them, but when I looked at the entire staff, it came from one region. It is embarrassing and it should not be allowed. If we are talking about moving towards a country that is cohesive, that is united, we cannot practice that. Where we have come from in the past, we did not have that. Countries progress, they do not regress. As a country, we must refuse to regress and especially after the events that we witnessed in 2007 that whatever happens in this country nowadays, we link to the history of ethnicity. Let us de-ethnicise our public universities and even our private universities. However, one of the things I would want to encourage the universities to do, is that even as we are trying to open up spaces for more students to access higher education, and I have said earlier that I congratulate the VC of Kenyatta University for the amount of energy that she has put in infrastructure development but a lot more has to be done to provide infrastructure and to prioritize in relation to where the students live. When this strike happened, I had two nephews and a niece that were affected and that were in Kenyatta at one time. One of my nephews actually was a victim and was suspended and lost a year. He is back now to the university and he is about to finish because he was a student leader. But the situation and the example I want to give, had to do with one of my nephews who is not even politically active, very quiet. When the violence happened, because there was no accommodation, he was living in K1, they were attacked by thugs who took advantage of the situation. He was hurt and we could not reach him because of the way K1 is. At one point, we thought we were actually going to lose him, because we could not access the police and we could not access the university and he was severely and seriously injured. So we could hear him on phone and he was saying he was losing a lot of blood. He went through Lenana School and got a straight A and went to Kenyatta University. Why should he be considered a second priority when he works hard? We encourage our children to work hard and then they will access proper university education. He worked hard, he passed, he got an A went to Kenyatta university but lived in K1 when we give students who did not do as well, the first priority. So as much as I congratulate the VC for doing an excellent job in infrastructure development, the"
}