The National Treasury building in this picture taken on April 16, 2025.
If budget makers and financial masterminds “forgot” a whole exam, how sure are we they did not forget to put aside money for bullets and oil for the tanks in this year’s budget?
Accountants, popularly and pejoratively referred to as “bean counters” are famous for their tunnel vision and obsessive attention to detail. They never round up numbers, however big. If you owe them 10 billion, 416 million, 634 thousand and 75 cents, the .75 will be in the invoice, irrespective of how long and awkward the number becomes.
One would imagine that the folks doing the budget at the Ministry of Education and the Budget Office at the Treasury are accountants and not farm labourers and gamblers, whose attention to detail might leave a lot to be desired. One might also assume that there is a template somewhere in the system based on previous budgets on which changes are input and that they do not start each budget on a clean pasteboard. So how did they manage to leave out funds for this year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams?
There are three ways this can happen. One is carelessness, but this is too big a blooper to be just some careless joker doing a bad job. Besides, there are way too many eyes looking at the budget for something like this to escape attention. The second, is poor management of a crisis, and the government is definitely in the middle of a big one. If you sail into stormy waters, your discipline and diligent application of a well practised routine is your best way out. You have anticipated the negative impact and you have a solution that you can switch to automatically and with calm, not panic.
However, sometimes folks can decide, to hell with structure and discipline. One Danube of Brightness takes over and dictates actions and responses purely on the basis of his own introspection and guesswork rather than resorting to a careful plan. And this is exactly what happened.
The team was required to cut the budget before presenting it to Parliament and rather than applying the scalpel here and there throughout the document, they went at it with an axe. They cut out exams.
Our economy is in trouble
There was a sobering moment reported by the Nation on Tuesday; a public encounter between the intelligence establishment and MPs. “The current threat environment we are facing as a country is dire,” said intelligence chief Noordin Haji and then went on to reveal that the military has not been fully funded for 10 years and the country was struggling to deal with terrorists and bandits seeking to infiltrate it from four directions.
Two things stand out: First, was the decision by the spooks to speak plainly and in public. The second was the fact that they were not just making their own case, they were also pushing the case for other agencies—there is often rivalry between them —meaning that the situation is actually not good.
The fact is that our economy is in trouble. We can all tell that by our suffering as individuals and families. From 2013, we borrowed money and we did not manage it well at all. Now it is time to pay and we are left with very little money to spread around our many needs. The bigger problem is that the government is asking for sacrifices from the people but without the people in government making any sacrifices themselves. They are “stabilising” the economy by prescribing austerity for the citizens but not for the fat cats. And this breeds resentment.
Additionally, dealing with a crisis requires structure, discipline and a good plan. If you are broke, you can’t continue making a provision for roast meat and cutting out your blood pressure medication. One cannot be obsessed with new furniture, new paint or tearing down the roofs of buildings to put up new ones, when there is no money for exams. There would need to be a list of holy cows, whose budget must never go below a certain minimum. National security, health and education should prominently feature in that list.
Finally, the bean counters in government should stop trying to be facetious. I’m sure they left out KCSE funding to make a point and draw attention to something. But like the security people are saying, we need to get serious, even when there is no money. Security is the blood pressure medication.
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Those people who speak to Dr Fred Matiang’i and to whom he listens must prevail upon him to make a serious run for president. He has the orderly, firm mind that we need to clean up all this mess. Of course he will not bring political brilliance to the race, telling 50 lies in a day and keeping friend and foe guessing, but the last thing Kenya needs now is another chaotic political genius. What it needs is a man with a will like a battering ram to restore order, discipline and efficiency to the functioning of the country; to do what he did to exams.
