I was at the DCI Headquarters this week. That place gives me chills every time I pass by Kiambu Road, I have to put my lawyers on standby in case they’re needed on short notice.
The last time I was there, I had gone to pick back my gadgets that had been arrested by people who associated me with plotting bad things against the country I love.
I fail to understand why anyone would imagine I bought that giant map of Kenya that hangs on my wall just to set it on fire.
The police need to read the history of the people they are sent to terrorize before they arrive to shakedown their gates at ungodly hours.
The next time the Inspector General of Police invites the media to a roundtable forum, could someone in the press corps kindly ask him what beef his officers have with door latches and innocent padlocks.
For a long time, we have been made to believe that gold scammers are the only enemies of tricycle padlocks.
We now know the truth, and the truth is setting us free. If that is the way Jesus will return like a thief in the dead of the night, then let someone send word to heaven that the horrific experience I had in June this year already prepared me for the heart attack that will greet me when my name will be missing from the list of those who shall be boarding the heavenly chariot to finally go join Daniel Arap Moi in heaven.
This week, I went back to the DCI headquarters to join the long list of peace loving citizens who have nothing to hide and were processing their certificates of good conduct in broad daylight.
These are men and women of means who have achieved the lofty state of nirvana, and who let money or power – mostly money – do the work for them as they chill on the pristine beaches of our magnificent coastline tracing the slave routes that might have been used by Tippu Tip on his way to becoming the Sultan of Kasongo.
I am happy to report that at the time I arrived at the gates of the DCI headquarters this week, those menacing uniformed men; wearing steel plates on their kneecaps and dark welding goggles with coiled wires running down their ears; were not in-situ.
I don’t know what guns those are but if you’re going to guard the gates of a civilian government installation, at least have the good sense to assign the police at the gate guns that can give our hearts a fighting chance.
We know we pay the government taxes through our noses, but buying guns that can pick someone’s left eye from a kilometer away is not the best way to demonstrate to Kenyans that you’ve been putting our money into meaningful use.
If the DCI wanted us to carry our blood pressure machines every time we visit their premises, the best time they should have said so was twenty years ago – the second best time is now.
Inside the DCI headquarters is a cyber café that helps their clients with churning out the paperwork off the eCitizen online portal.
I am not worthy to advise them on how best to improve this critical citizen service, lest they send another unit to bang my head like someone told them I resurrected and came back as a door.
You could be given a map of the DCI headquarters full with details of every blade of grass and still fail to locate the cyber café helping Kenyans process their invoices and fingerprint forms.
It also doesn’t help that the officers giving you directions also neither took up geography as an examinable subject nor used that compass tool that used be inside the KCPE mathematical set.
To the Kenya Institute of Career Development (KICD) personnel currently out in the field collecting public views on what cluster subjects those intending to work in government institutions should be proficient at, I hereby submit my views that you can play around with the means testing tool all you want, but kindly make it mandatory for all civil servants to learn how to read and write a geographical map, and while at it discourage them from employing the use of hand signals.
It could also help if they were also proficient in the scientific names of tree varieties - a grafted mango might look like a cactus shrub depending on the visual acuity of the guy leading your lost clients to a ditch unknowingly.
However, to cut costs and improve the efficiency at your stations, it would be prudent to relocate that cyber kiosk from the slum areas to uptown main building where the real action is.
For those of us who last went to a gym before Free Primary Education became official government policy, going up and down that hill to go print out two pieces of paper that costs less than a molecule of water is nasty work.
If the DCI wanted their clients to record their level of physical fitness before being served, they should just convert their premises into a marathon course and let those who make it to the finish line in once piece be given a medal that they can use to win an athletics argument back at home.
Shout out to the officers at the finger prints desk who are the main reason ordinary Kenyans get into direct contact with the DCI arm of government, literally.
I don’t know whether it’s the on-the-job training or firsthand experience that makes them run the mill like industrial robots, but they’re so good it makes you think you’re watching one of those DIY Tiktok reels.
I got into one of those open-air cubicles and no sooner had the lady – a white dustcoat and pristine surgical gloves – grabbed my wrist than she was freeing me to go.
This is a distress call to the local geniuses manning the eCitizen backend from wherever cumulonimbus cloud they’re in, kindly do whatever you can to make that critical online platform user-friendly.
For the less than minutes I was in the queue at the cyber café waiting to be slapped with my printouts, I interacted with Kenyans who had to be turned away because you guys have either locked the portal from new account holders or deactivated some functionalities to prevent account holders from editing their biodata.
I wish you knew how much potential that platform has in ensuring seamless service delivery and bringing in government the much needed cash injection.
Let no one ever accuse me of not giving government feedback when I had the voice and platform to do so. I have paid my dues as a patriotic citizen.
The hyena, in a tone of frustration reminded the rock, “even if you pretend that you haven’t heard, me I have told you.”
