National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah said on Tuesday, June 2, that students who burn schools to vent frustration picked up the habit from protesters.
Speaking in Parliament, Ichung’wah explained that school fires often rise during Term Two of Kenya’s academic calendar. He said mental fatigue among students drives many of the incidents.
He added that students resort to burning schools because they do not see other ways to express their dissatisfaction.
“Many of the cases are because the students are probably fatigued and want to go home. If you want to go home, you do not need to burn down anything, not a dormitory, classroom, or school bus. We must lead by example as parents, such that if we want to protest against anything as a country, let us not have fires everywhere because these children could be copying from us or from the country,” Ichung’wah stated.
The Kikuyu MP said he wasn’t trying to condemn anyone; instead, he was pleading with the nation to learn from its past mistakes. He added that installing fire prevention and extinguishing technologies wouldn’t solve the spiking cases of school unrest.
“I don’t know whether it will be enough to put up fire detectors or fire suppression systems in all these schools, but can we afford it? It calls for a deeper conversation. It is not enough to just point fingers at each other,” the lawmaker stated.
Parents need to have these conversations individually at home, he explained, as well as collectively in schools, churches, and political spaces.
Ichung’wah called out critics who claimed MPs were enjoying themselves at the National Prayer Breakfast while children died in the Utumishi Girls Academy fire. He questioned why certain leaders would use such a tragedy to score political points by attacking the National Assembly.
The lawmaker warned that these school fires signal a much bigger problem on the horizon.
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