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"id": 99795,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Affey",
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"legal_name": "Mohammed Abdi Affey",
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"content": "Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, congratulations to the Assistant Minister. I think they just need to do this in all the universities so that we are able to reduce the damage that students cause. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, discipline is very important. It is very dangerous to allow students to be given the leeway to fight and riot all the time. Even if the registration exercise was reduced to three weeks, that is not a reason to justify the destruction of a facility that is worth Kshs100 million. Therefore, I would like to appeal to our students to ensure that they become as disciplined as possible because they are the future leaders. We do not want people who riot in the universities all the time. They transfer that habit to politics or public service and Kenya will become a very difficult country to run. I want to thank the Minister because of the students who were sent away from Kenyatta University. The Question came to the Floor of the House. Some of them were incited by their lecturers. Others were incited by politicians. So, it was very clear that there was too much foreign pressure. I am quite happy that the discipline that was meted to those students was not as punitive as the university had suggested. Some of them were finishing their courses. I had one guy from Wajir South Constituency who was finishing his university degree. He was left with two months. He was sent away for three years. After interventions and pleading with the Minister and officials, they reduced the period. Can you imagine something of that nature? We do not have students from Wajir at the universities. If the few we have fall victim to those kinds of punitive disciplinary measures, then we will be suffering even more. I just want to acknowledge that even as we discipline students, we do not allow our university material not to be destroyed. That is because you can chase somebody away for four years and yet, he has spent four years in the university. You will have destroyed a career and, perhaps, somebody who would have been useful to the country. Mr. Temporary Deputy Speaker, Sir, the problem of ethnicity is very real. It is not only at the KU, but in all the universities in Kenya. The other day, as a Committee of Parliament, we had an opportunity to interrogate the Minister for Higher Education, Science and Technology. If some universities are established in Eldoret, Kisii or Mt. Kenya, you do not have to look for people from that area to manage them. It is a very dangerous issue that is becoming very apparent. Today, if you establish a university in Meru, you must get a Meru vice-chancellor. If you establish one in Eldoret or North Eastern Province, you must look for somebody from there. We do not want our universities to be run that way. They are becoming incubators of tribalism in this country. There is a rush to establish universities all over Kenya, but the way the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology is managing those universities is very dangerous. I would prefer that we have a national spread. Even where you do not have people with that background, create them. We have a capacity to mould professionals very quickly and allow them to work anywhere in the country. That way, you will not go to a university and find one ethnic group managing it. That is happening in all the universities in Kenya. It is not only in KU. All of them are culprits of that practice. I do not know whether we should blame the university, the Ministry or the council? How do we blame the management of the university? Who posts them there? There must be some kind of a policy and it must be reviewed. If the policy is to encourage tribalism, the Minister should sit down with his officials, PS and other colleagues and see whether we can fast-track the Bill that the Ministry is about to bring before Parliament. We want a Bill that prevents ethnicity from growing in our universities. If you do that, then you are not creating national leaders. We will just be creating tribal warlords in the form of professors, and that will be very dangerous for this country. There is some information on Kenyatta which the Chairman had said about the communities. Kenyatta University has one of the largest land space and it is quite attractive for anybody who wants to âgrabâ land. There is a good chunk of land for the university. We had an occasion to raise this issue with the Vice-Chancellor, that there were fears that land grabbers and the so-called communities that surround the university could encroach on the universityâs land and we do not want to lose this facility. We would like the Minister to ensure first of all that, that land which belongs to Kenyatta University has a proper title deed. There are people who have come into the university and taken it to court. You can imagine; you squat there for months and suddenly, you establish big structures there because when we were at the university we were victims of these communities who encroach on university land and establish small kiosks to attract university students who come for tea and chapati in the evening. The university has a wonderful facility there in terms of land. We would like the Minister to protect it and even to fence it off. This brings in the question of funding. You must be able to fund this university along Thika Road. Now that there is a highway with eight lanes going to Thika, it is very tempting for some politicians to go to the Ministries and get that land from the university. It will be very dangerous if that happens."
}