I think it's a terrible idea because our tribal divisions further compound the insignificance of our small country on the global stage but I believe we are sober wazuans and should have an intellectual discussion here, may be just for fun.

That said, the drafters should have at least curved out Garisa to Lamu under the Central republic so they can also have their own desert and port, ama?

But a more pertinent question would be, since the break-up idea has obviously been hatched to control Turkana for its oil and the port at the Coastal, what happens the day when Turkanas or Coasterians in the People's Republic of Kenya feel marginalized by the bigger tribes of Luos and Kambas or Luhyas? Will they also break off?

That map will slowly cave in to only Nyanza which will be landlocked Rwanda style. Otieno will have to apply for visa to fly internasional or to bathe pale mambasani.

https://www.kenyans.co.k...president-uhuru-kenyatta

This is the ideal solution, but unfortunately human beings will always have an obsession with the top position. Look at UK, where the Queen was turned into a purely ceremonial figure, but they still obsess over her like it's life or death. Even in USA they have devolved so much that any major decision from the president must pass through several people, and the individual states are so independent that each has its own set of laws, yet still they treat the presidency as life or death

The "secessionists" have conveniently curved off Garissa,Lamu,Narok, Kajiado,Pokot and Samburu even though the said counties voted overwhelmingly for Uhuruto. If they left them out, then , Nyanza, Western and Turkana would become two landlocked enclaves. Funny

South Sudan was ok until Garang passed away. South Sudan had not seen past John Garang hence the mess they are in now.
Kenya would be no different if we broke off, I can assure you,like South Sudan, Turkana with its oil and aquifer, will eventually want to break off from the 'peoples republic of Odinga' due to marginalization by the bigger tribes. You won't ever see an end to this once it starts.

But now that we are discussing this issue soberly, at what point does go into the realm of treason? As you know, most countries secede after war and this kind of talk mostly leads there.

As I said elsewhere... before swallowing a mango seed - be sure not only to have measured the size of your mouth but also the size of your anus!

I argue that South Sudan didn't really know what "independence" is/was!! They still don't! to them it's being free of the influence of the North... being free to do "your thing"... Kinda reminds me of a line in Spiderman

If you listened around do you hear people moaning that "colonialists" should not have given independence "too early"... maybe they should have waited until the 70s or 80s.

These things are not as romantic as people want to paint them!! Lastly, break away republics are normally poor inviable and unsustainable things!

if you cannot figure out how to use your intellect to stay together - in a viable country... do you think you will figure out how to live together in that "people's replublic of whatever"? Ukistajabu vya musa - utaona vya firauni!

Shouldn't the secessionist shouting from Nairobi, first move to their "new found country" (Canaan?) and make noise from there if they are serious?. I mean, it's bad manners to complain about your "country" while in another "country", ama?

Guys.. why are you letting facts come in the way of a good story? Kill Joy!!

By: Stephen Derwent Partington, on Facebook

As an ODM-leaning chap (and I want to be very specific about the NASA party that excites me, given its last ‘on our own’ manifesto; the other constituent parties and ‘principals’ make me shake my head) who also sees some value in some of what Jubilee did during the last term, I think this secession talk is dangerous nonsense, which also has a whiff of capitulation in it. Ndii is of course a valuable economist and possesses one of those rare minds that can express itself clearly in the general newspapers – I have to admit, though, that in the run-up to this election, I found some of his articles skewed so that the statistics fit the prescribed ideology, whereas many of his earlier articles seemed to credit me as a reader with a greater ability to make up my own mind. I liked those articles more. Also, reading back through some of Ndii’s articles, as I recently have due to my concern about the privatisation of Health and Basic Education in Kenya, I’d probably want to point out that he seemed, some years ago, to explicitly praise privatisation, a fact that worries me in itself, but also because it makes me wonder which Ndii is the real Ndii’l (pardon the pun). Yes, people change their minds, but few change them honestly so radically as to move from being a cheerleader for privatisation, to being its nemesis – I’d need reassurance prior to fully trusting him.

And this carving-up of Kenya concerns me as an idea in itself, but also in its timing and intention. We all rightly jumped up, scared, when Kalenjin leaders of a certain stripe argued, some few years ago, that the Rift Valley Province should become an autonomous ‘nation’. We worried because: a) it seemed ‘tribalist’/ethno-nationalist; b) we all knew that it could theoretically work because the Rift Valley is large enough (it’s the same size as the UK) and because it’s fertile. This new proposal by sections of NASA is no less tribalist, even though it appears to hug many ‘tribes’ together in one ‘Kenya A’ while pushing away another couple of ‘tribes’ into another ‘Kenya B’. What’s the difference between NASA isolating the one or two ‘Kenya B’ ethnic groups and Hutus shouting ‘cockroach’ at Tutsis? I find it profoundly disturbing.

I also feel that it accepts the ethnic cocoons that the British as vile settlers and colonisers forced peoples into. It accepts fences. In fact, this is NASA paddocking the nation, and it’s disgracefully dangerous. And in the process it cynically suggests, by means of cartography, that one or two tribes only are the problem, are the maintainers of tribalism, are in need of ostracism, are the power-greedy and have been the power greedy since the last Kenya-map of the 1960s. I consider this to be appallingly wrongheaded and cynical, for by lumping together an area of land, it also lumps together people of other groups as being ‘all the same’ and therefore ‘all complicit in the same perceived crime’, when you and I know that the mass of the people are NOT fundamentally the problem in our nation-of-Kenya, a Kenya riven by fundamental class divides more than it’s riven by ethnic divides, even though, superficially, the latter might seem, during the pantomime of elections, to be the stronger force. And this cartographic crime being committed by NASA does all this while slyly managing to throw up the hands of all these other ‘tribes’ so they can say, ‘We’re not the problem; THEY are!’ – and this, even while it’s NASA sketching the map. No, map-making is never neutral, and is always motivated; and the nature of cartography is that, in the heat of the moment, caught in the discourse of the day, we fail to see the dangers and the hatreds and the wickednesses, even if they were not necessarily intended. The outcomes would be appalling.

I have no time for this map, and certainly have no time for it coming now, at a moment of utter antagonism between groups. Ndii is an economist, not a student of culture, and I think he’s overlooking the human aspect of things and eliding history. Indeed, the map seems like a terribly threatening blackmail, to me and therefore, I have to assume, to one or two ethnic groups. We should presently be arguing strongly against ossified forms of ‘given ethnicity’, and exploding certain cultural myths that make ethnic groups communitarian monoliths; as a socialist I believe that while ethnic diversity is something to be celebrated for its wonderful difference, it’s also very dangerous when it fossilises and fixes, and that class divides need to be more clearly identified and evangelised, in order that the poor of even ethnic groups ‘we’ think have ‘oppressed us’ can move to act for their own benefit. I fear that this pernicious map will rather force ‘them’ to more simplistically become ‘them’, in more closed a fashion. In fact, this map is a recipe for fashioning those ‘others’ into what NASA possibly believes ‘they’ already are, and is therefore a self-fulfilling prophesy. No, maps never innocently describe reality; they instead actively construct reality. This map is tribalist in the simplistic sense of the word. And, although I think Ndii lacks cultural sensitivity and possibly unconsciously elides some of the complexities of Kenyan history, I find it difficult to believe that a brain as competent as his is fully ignorant of what happened in Rwanda, what happened in Burundi, what happened in Sudan and elsewhere.

And I feel that there have been clues in Ndii’s writing in the past that beneath the economic talent there’s a worrying ‘tribalism’ – I wrote about it in an unpublished piece responding to his ‘Bogeyman’ article of many months ago, which article concerned me in its implication that the Kikuyu are all land-grabbers bent on ‘primitive accumulation’ (his term), while all Luo are wholly irreproachable in this regard. He set up on this level of land-grabbing, and on other levels, and he did so with ONLY an economist’s eye, fully failing to consider the cultural and socio-political writings of numerous academics who have more subtly commented on, for example, the pre-colonial moral economy of the Kikuyu and other groups. Ndii created a very harsh Kikuyu/Luo dualism in that article, of a sort I now see replicated in this silly yet dangerous cartography. I personally won’t be quiet as such dichotomies are strengthened at a time such as this, when perceived Luo/Kikuyu antagonisms are being pumped up again to a point where (certain members of) one side is capable of hating the other to, possibly, extreme and widespread violence. This map is part of the problem.

It is this map, more than anything else, that will see me move away from supporting NASA, and even perhaps that constituent party, ODM, especially if Raila becomes a lame duck leader, because I don’t trust anybody else in that movement (and certainly not those tiresome ‘principals’) NOT to retreat into ethnicity and into believing that this map describes the present state of Kenya and a need. The implication of the map and its contextualising comments is that ‘since this is anyway how Kenya is, let’s go ahead and carve it up’; somebody is accepting that this is ALREADY how things are, and that mapmaking is innocently descriptive. People, it ain’t. This map is what ‘the other side’ will see as propaganda and a threat; it is what I see as wrongheaded and antagonistic, naïve and cruel, culturally insensitive and (even if unintentionally) hateful.

Kenya can still form itself as a coherent yet diverse nation under the new Constitution. And it can do so in wonderfully imaginative ways, different to those dull nation states of 19th- and 20th-century Europe, for example. To remain with our present borders will force us to become ever more excitingly imaginative and loving. To secede and to carve Kenya up will be to capitulate to the very basest form of right-wing identarian and communitarian politics, of the sort imposed upon Kenyans by the dull and cruel British and which, dear NASA, you claim to loathe when, with your equally segmented eyes, you see it in others.

I don’t think NASA is thinking straight at all; it’s like a boxer trying to articulate himself when, post-bout, s/he’s still suffering from concussion.

We can all be better, wiser and more loving than this.