President William Ruto is a low-hanging fruit. From a business theory perspective. I have spent the bulk of my free time reading up on stuff, especially business.
So I have been educated that a viable business must be based on real, demonstrable need. And the more painful the need, the better for business prospects. The second requirement is that they should be the needs defined, addressable, prosperous and accessible group.
So if you are proposing a product to ease the boredom of a teenage group, you will crash out of business with ulcers and debt. Because though the need exists, the customers are broke and bored, meaning they are difficult psychologically to access, you will spend good money marketing to them. And when you have them, they can’t pay because they are broke.
On the other hand, if you have a clever software which helps stock market barons increase their yield by 15 per cent and save four hours off their work day - which means they can spend a lot of time on the golf course ogling Njeri’s bulbous behind while making millions more - you have a hot winner. You will be rich and retire in health and joy, to join the barons on the course. The President is so liquid and motivated that he and his party are a veritable industry all on their own.
Example, on Wednesday the President hosted 12,353 United Democratic Alliance (UDA) aspirants, not candidates, in next year’s election. Some 149 gubernatorial, 279 Senate, 323 Woman Reps, 1,373 Parliamentary and 10,230 MCA hopefuls.
That’s a lot of hope going on there and this is the kind of carpet mobilisation that brings the whole country into play. This is serious politics, for sure, and by a competent politician who is unmoved by expenses to achieve ambitions. First, let us look at the cost and I’m pulling this off the air.
It will take an average Sh10,000 to transport, feed and entertain one aspirant from Mukogondo at State House, Nairobi. That is Sh123,520,000 in cold cash. And because the minions who were organising this also have children, let us add Sh5,000 per aspirant for the organising officials’ “job satisfaction”, it is only “industrious” that they should seek to ensure that a layer of ugali sticks to the sufuria.
That is the small matter of Sh61,765,000; if you add the earlier cost you arrive at Sh185,295,000. I will not go to court if you accuse me of sexing up the math but you will also agree that the cost per head of hosting an aspirant in Nairobi of Sh15,000 is not fully demented.
Now, let me go out on a limb. I have seen internet rumours that each of those candidates was paid Sh10,000, perhaps as seed money or facilitation for their campaigns. Should that be true, then that is an additional cost of Sh123,530,000.
If you add it all up, you arrive at total cost of Sh432,345,000 (half a billion, give or take a few samosas, sausages and tea) for the whole shindig. In other words, that is a customer who is highly motivated to the point of being fearless of costs and has sufficiently deep pockets to call his semi-trailer driver and instruct him: “Njoroge, hebu enda nyumbani umwambie Waithera akupatie 20-foot container moja ya pesa uniletee, niko na sherehe ya ma-aspirants hapa kesho.” He is a low hanging fruit. Any business built around solving the UDA re-election pain is, from a theory perspective, a viable business even if it involves selling “Tropicals” to aspirants.
That is the cost. Let us examine the opportunity cost, that is, the benefit you sacrifice by hosting the aspirants. I once heard Jimi Wanjigi, who knows a lot of public finance and tenders, that with Sh10 billion you can build, furnish and fully equip a referral hospital in Kenya. Sh0.5bn should complete the grey face, complete with paint, awaiting furniture and equipment, it is enough capitation for 19,652 students at the old rate of Sh22,000, enough for 6.6 million Sakaja meals under the Dishi Na County school feeding programme. In other words, given the country’s needs, it is very bold expenditure.
Sometimes when I’m in a reflective state of mind, contemplating the blue cloudless skies and the water-stressed fields, I always marvel at the sheer absence of prosperity and the cloying grip of poverty that came with UDA in 2022. I have seen the pain of parents sending their children back to school without pocket money.
It is probably the case that the economy was in such a corner that the measures required to right it would come with some pain for us “ticks’, as the President’s economic advisor termed us. I don’t know anyone who is doing well. I do know that the school which has been taking food from my store now owes me close to a million shillings, does not take my calls, and that this week, my neighbour in Makandune was robbed of his goats at gunpoint. Goats.
But it would be a crime to let go of good business, in the light of such want. For those in a position, the only thing to do with a low-lying fruit is to pick it.
