EduCAtion shouLD neveR HavE onlY bEEn aBouT AcceSS.

There is a dangerous thing that happens in countries that survive dictatorships: people begin to confuse relief with transformation. The day oppression loosens its grip, whoever walks in next is immediately crowned a savior. In Kenya, that man became Mwai Kibaki. 

 

And maybe that is where we failed to ask harder questions.

Because the truth is uncomfortable. Kibaki was not simply “the best president” because of unmatched brilliance or revolutionary leadership. He became who he was because an entire generation had already fought a war before he arrived. A generation bled emotionally, politically, economically, and psychologically trying to remove Daniel Arap Moi and dismantle the fear that had consumed Kenya for decades. Kibaki inherited the reward of resistance. The groundwork had already been dug by people who were tired of silence, tired of authoritarianism, and tired of surviving instead of living. However, I’m not trying to downplay the role of Mwai Kibaki in the fight against Moi regime. 

The tragedy is that after years of struggle, Kenyans were so exhausted that normal governance began to look extraordinary.

Things like building the economy, roads “education” and reducing government drama in public, even though his government was not free from political and corruption problems. Public systems functioned slightly better and suddenly excellence had arrived. But maybe what we were witnessing was not greatness. Maybe it was a population traumatized by poor leadership finally experiencing the bare minimum and mistaking it for liberation. I mean this is the same population that criminalized mental health and made it like it was some sort of witchcraft. 

Nowhere is this more visible than in the conversation around free education.

Free education was never the pure gift people romanticize today. Yes, it opened doors for thousands of families who could never have afforded school fees. That truth cannot be erased, and it deserves respect. But another truth also exists, one people rarely want to confront. The system was overstretched, underprepared, and abused in ways that robbed an entire generation of dignity and quality.

What exactly was “free” about an education system where ninety students squeezed into one classroom while another child somewhere else sat in a class of fifteen? What was equal about sharing lockers, sharing desks, sharing attention, sharing exhaustion?

 One student received education.

Another survived a system.

 And survival became the culture.

We normalized chaos so deeply that cheating in exams became strategy instead of shame. Students were no longer learning to think; they were learning to escape. Escape poverty. Escape embarrassment. Escape failure. Escape being left behind in a country where opportunities felt deliberately scarce.

The irony was brutal. The same system that forced students into ruthless competition would later demand that they write on their CVs: “Can work well with others.”

How do you teach collaboration in an environment built on desperation?

We were raised in classrooms where anxiety became discipline, overcrowding became normal, and emotional exhaustion became character development. The government of the day produced a generation conditioned to believe that suffering was necessary for growth. That to become somebody, you first had to be broken by something.

And yes, suffering is part of life. To be human is to struggle. But the unnecessary suffering, the suffering we create for one another through neglect, poor systems, and normalized dysfunction, that is what should disturb us.

Because Kenya did not lack potential.

It lacked imagination.

We prepared young people to become laborers in systems they never questioned. We taught obedience more than curiosity. Memorization more than innovation. Endurance more than self-worth. We built citizens who could survive pressure but struggled to understand freedom.

Maybe education should never have only been about access. Maybe it should have been about value. About quality. About teaching law, governance, critical thinking, self-awareness, and appreciation for the country we already have. 

Because the painful reality is this: many Kenyans do not dream of building Kenya. They dream of escaping it.

Give someone a passport and an opportunity, and their eyes immediately turn toward London, Toronto, or Melbourne. Not because Kenya lacks beauty or talent, but because somewhere along the way, we raised generations to associate success with departure.

That is not entirely Kibaki’s fault. No leader inherits a clean nation. And history must still honor him for stabilizing an economy and restoring confidence after difficult

years. He remains an important figure in Kenya’s story, and many families genuinely experienced progress during his presidency.

But admiration should never prevent honesty.

A country grows when it learns to separate gratitude from worship.

Kenyans are emotional people. We carry loyalty deeply in our hearts. Once someone gives us relief, we immortalize them. But history deserves more than emotion; it deserves interrogation. We must ask ourselves whether we were truly transformed or whether we simply became comfortable with a slightly softer version of dysfunction.

Because abnormal things were normalized for us so consistently that we stopped recognizing them as abnormal at all.

And perhaps that is the deepest wound of all.

Not that we suffered.

But that we were taught to romanticize the suffering.

Maybe the real conversation Kenya needs is not whether Kibaki was good or bad. Maybe the real conversation is why a nation with so much intelligence, creativity, resilience, and humanity has repeatedly settled for systems that only teach people how to endure instead of how to flourish.

Until we answer that honestly, we will continue celebrating survival while mistaking it for progress.