The road to Schiphol.

Politics can be set aside to provide a world class institution, run on world class business principles and delivering a world class experience. ~ The Nitpicker, Like Schiphol Airport, JKIA too can be key driver of our economic growth (Business Daily, 23 February)

The Kenya Airports Authority, KAA, has a board chaired by the former Inspector-General of Police. Ponder on that a little. The man who oversaw the swiftest decline in public confidence in an institution after a change of guard, who was flatfooted when at least seventy Kenyans were murdered in cold blood at a popular mall, who didn't see a constitutional freedom he didn't want to override, and who, by all accounts, can't run a lemonade stand, is the chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Authority that runs our airports.

The Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure was the Managing Director of the Kenya Railways Corporation when the corporation was concessioned to a South African company that did not have a record of running a railway company and, it eventually emerged, did not have the capital or the management team to run the concessioned railways. He sits on the Board of the KAA.

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, JKIA, is not Schiphol Airport and the Kenya Airports Authority is most definitely not the Schiphol Group, the operating company that runs Schiphol. The Board of Directors of the KAA, as with many boards of directors in which the national Executive has an interest, is the soft landing for public servants such as the former Inspector-General of Police. It is not the place you would go looking for sound management, investment strategy or light-bulb-moment ideas about converting JKIA's earnings into Schiphol-like billion-shilling profits.

That can only be done in the private sector, where the Nitpicker thrives. Her ideas are sound, bold and have a sense of style about them. They are completely wasted on David Kimaiyo and Nduva Muli, who serve political masters with a penchant for patronage. Esther Koimett, the Investment Secretray at the National Treasury, would be in sync with the Nitpicker - if only politics didn't prevent her from successfully divesting the national Executive out of the JKIA.

It is true that "politics can be set aside to provide a world class institution" but the fact that by any global standards none of our public universities is ranked in the top ten, none of our parastatals is ranked in the top 100, and the only thing we are famous for - our world-beating long distance runners - the national Executive cannot create by tenderpreneurship, politics or tribalism, should be a Very Big Clue that the road to Schiphol-like glory will be long, arduous and littered with the detritus of fifty one years of received political wisdom. Even the Nitpicker will have to admit that not even she can identify the politician who is willing to give up the lucrative political opportunities ownership of the KAA entails - and the tender opportunities control of the JKIA brings.