Why lack of ethos among Kenyans is cause for alarm

Many years ago when I was in primary school, we used to recite the Loyalty Pledge twice a week.

At that young age, we pledged our loyalty to the country, the President and proclaimed our readiness to defend Kenya. We also proclaimed our devotion to the words of the anthem and our commitment to national policies.

Spiritual and professional experts say there is power in the spoken word. I have observed that the people of my age group are more patriotic than the age groups following them. We often sang patriotic songs like Kenya Kipenzi Changu (Kenya my beloved country).

Kenya has been reputed to have the “golden anthem” one of the best in the world.

The anthem has featured as the best one in some online polls. I watched an online video performance of the national anthem after Kenya won a race in the Olympics. The performance received very good reviews from viewers across the world. The anthem was described as “magical, golden and out of this world”. It is not only the musical arrangement that makes our anthem “golden” but the words too are powerful.

The words of the anthem contain a prayer for blessing and are a call to national unity, justice, liberty, peace, prosperity and national building.

The recently launched Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report cited a lack of national ethos as an area of concern, the ethos being shared beliefs and values of a nation.

Indeed, some people view Kenya as a country where corruption and nepotism are rampant. We have lost some investment opportunities due to this reputation. We need to repair this.

From an article I read in the Daily Nation on August 26, 2018, the writer observed that ethos ought to be taught from an early age. In the same article, the writer observed that the lack of national ethos had a lot to do with divisive politics that the country has been subjected to over the years. He observed that once divisive politics are fixed then the rest will follow. I agree with that and further call for the considered use of legal instruments in promoting ethos.

The Constitution contains some of our national ethos.

The relationship between law and ethics is still debatable. How far can the law be used to enforce ethics? While “ethos” may not be subject to enforceability, I believe that a legal policy and instrument would provide some guidance on ethos.

Implementation of ethos would call for a drastic cultural change in our institutions. I am glad that there are proposals to teach ethics in primary school. Our State corporations would have a big role to play in the implementation of ethos and this can be done using similar structures that have been used to implement some policies on HIV/Aids and disability.

When implementing ethos it would be prudent to benchmark with countries that have successfully done so. Rwanda faced a divisive genocide in 1994. However, today Rwandans are very united and a lot of this had to do with the implementation of ethos.

The government campaign ndiumunyarwanda (I am proud to be Rwandan) helped in healing and unity. The government went as far as registering intellectual property rights and earning revenue in the form of licensing commercial entities to use the slogan on their goods.

We are part of the East African Community (EAC) and one of the objectives is to have the EAC identity. Finding ourselves as a nation would help us contribute to the identity. The same applies to all partner states.