Please don't torture us any more

Dear Evans and Jonathan,

I think it is time we held a come-to-Jesus meeting so that we can explain to you in terms that even you can understand why we think you are the biggest pair of white elephants since the Siam became Thailand and why, if that #FagiaWote hashtag isn't some sort of cruel joke, these are your final few months of making our lives a misery.

You two had wonderful ideas and the photo-ops you, Evans, engaged in when window-shopping for BRTs was impressive. That was then. Today, there is an entire swathe of the business district that resembles Fallujah: massive craters that some people generously, and erroneously, call potholes; massive mountains of garbage; narrow pedestrian walkways; noise, dust and diesel fumes; and massive crowds tripping over themselves because of the men and women you hope to turn into a vote bank: hawkers.

I understand that the principal job of an elected official is to get re-elected and you are not as different from the other men and women seeking high office. It's what your species does. What I don't understand is why the two of you have such a jaundiced eye of the walking masses. Why do you hate pedestrians and low-income labourers so much? Why do you want to exterminate them? What do you have against the men and women whose labour subsidises your lives to an almost insane degree?

Before you start issuing denials, get out of your suit and walk, incognito, down Haile Selassie Avenue, between the Jesus Is Alive Ministries HQ and the Landhies Road entrance to the Muthurwa Market-cum-bus-station. If you, after keenly looking at the environment that you have allowed to develop, are till convinced that you id all you could since you became the political and administrative leaders of Nairobi City County, then I fear that it will be further proof that you really don't know anything about managing a complex institution such as a county government. 

The pedestrian walkway is more or less a permanent make-shift market. It remains paved in parts; the rest of it is dust which, during the rainy season, turns to mud. The walkways are also too narrow for the huge numbers of people coming from the bus station, Kamukunji, Gikomba, OTC or Central Bus Station. Then there is the garbage that is generated by your makeshift market; the quantities defy logic and might also include mountains that are dumped out of Wakulima Market and Retail Market at the roundabout connecting Haile Selassie Avenue, Ring Road and Landhie Road.

On that ground alone, you do not deserve a second term. You do not deserve to hold any public office. It is proof that you are totally unconcerned with the welfare of the most vulnerable residents of this city. And it is an indictment of your failures at every turn. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Please don't stand in the 2017 election. We've suffered enough.