Keep your bad advice to yourself, Safaricom will pick its own CEO

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore. He died on July 1, 2019 after a long battle with cancer. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Kenyans would really appreciate if you took your motormouth to the front-line to help our soldiers fire rockets at Al-Shabaab hideouts.
  • Even people who voted in mediocre political leaders are queuing to lecture Safaricom on corporate governance and management practices.

There is nothing as frustrating as Kenyans jumping into conversations uninvited to give unsolicited opinions on matters they know nothing about.

We no longer need to ask the magic mirror on the wall who the fairest of them all is.

Whenever a discussion arises, the answers are always at our fingertips. We already know who wrote the fake assassination letter, where Dedan Kimathi was buried, what killed Tupac, and who should replace Bob Collymore as Safaricom CEO.

We did not even have to wait for Bob Collymore’s body to cool before we stormed social media discussing the identity of the person who should replace him.

PLEASURE

Your heart has to be colder than a dog’s nose if you feel the urge to engage in such discussions without empathy to the family and friends whose faces are still salty from mourning their dearly departed.

It takes a high degree of bad upbringing to derive pleasure from the death of people you never interacted with and whom you know nothing about.

There are many places Kenyans would appreciate uncultured people turning up to do their thing, but dancing over dead bodies isn’t one of them.

Kenyans would really appreciate if you took your motormouth to the front-line to help our soldiers fire rockets at Al-Shabaab hideouts.

You will not hear us complain one bit if you put your running mouth to good use representing the country in international rap competitions.

For a country desperately in need of technological innovators, you would do our country a great service by donating your negative energy to physics students for use in their science projects.

If the Safaricom board of directors needs to replace anyone, they know who to talk to – and you won’t find these opinion shapers on social media embarrassing themselves with sponsored hashtags.

CURRICULUM

People whose names don’t even appear in a graduate intern’s curriculum vitae are all over social media making recommendations on who Safaricom should hire as their next CEO. You’ve never stepped in the farm to water tree seedlings and you think Safaricom would listen to your advice on who they should entrust with growing their share capital?

People who have never been to the kitchen to watch over boiling water are all over advising us on who should be inside Safaricom’s kitchen watching over their shares?

No one in your lineage has ever run even a village water pan and you want to make us believe you have know-how on how to manage a blue-chip company? You lack the requisite capacity to serve as a committee member for your village cattle dip association and you think you can determine the destiny of the most profitable company in the region?

Your village school has never asked you to recommend the brand of paint they should use on their refurbished classes, and you expect a call from the Safaricom board of directors for advice on who they should hire as their next CEO?

POLITICAL LEADERS

You have to be more delusional than a murderer investing in heaven as to think the world revolves around your opinion on things you know nothing about.

Even people who voted in mediocre political leaders are queuing to lecture Safaricom on corporate governance and management practices.

When the government gave you the freedom to elect Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) responsible for grassroots development, you gave us people who needed further studies on how to use an iPad and who can’t articulate government policy to save their lives.

Counties had to waste public resources taking MCAs for benchmarking tours in foreign countries to learn what a plastic paper bag looks like, what causes constipation in goats, and why the windmill isn’t called a watermill.

You want Safaricom to listen to your advice yet you elected Members of Parliament who crowd inside toilets to receive dirty money, who flew to the World Cup to cheer Panama taking on Tunisia and then shamelessly plagiarised the report of their joyriding tour.

PUBLIC VOTE

Your MP has not spoken in Parliament since you sent them to Nairobi, and you want to recommend someone who will be needed to speak to shareholders every day without missing a beat?

And if Safaricom were to subject the hiring of their next CEO to a public vote, who would conduct the elections? The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), as currently constituted, is mashed up in internal wrangles and the resulting noise from inside their boardroom is louder than a bloated stomach.

If you wanted to kill Safaricom you should just have cancelled its operating licence instead of extending your bad choices to its leadership.

Mr Oguda comments on topical issues; [email protected]