“People who cling to their delusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning.  A people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water” By James Baldwin – re-known African-American author. 

Western Province consisting of the Counties of Kakamega, Bungoma, Vihiga and Busia has a population of at least 4,334,282 as at the 2009 National Census. 

Western Province has without any shadow of doubt and granted its favourable climatic conditions been an underachiever in the past 49 years since independence in the level of prosperity that has permeated its people.  There is no question about it that poverty is more pervasive in Western Province than prosperity by whatever standards, yardstick the two are measured. 

Western Province’s elected leadership in the past 49 years of independence has failed to establish clear parameters, tools by which the region can transparently, concretely measure its economic performance.  And the economic performance or non performance of a people, a region is symbiotically interwoven with their culture, their social issues and their politics. 

Western Province has for the last 49 years since independence been a net exporter of its wealth to other regions of Kenya and that state of affairs has only deepened poverty and hopelessness in the region.  Yes, look keenly and everywhere whether in its cash crops, its food crops, its major manufacturing factories like Mumias Sugar Company Ltd and Nzoia Sugar Company Ltd and Western Province is a net exporter of its wealth to outside the region rather than a net importer of wealth into the region. That state of affairs can never and will never deliver prosperity to the majority of the residents of Western Province. 

Western Province is worse of  the worst and may be the only Province in Kenya that has the highest of its annual National Budgetary Allocations being re-exported out of the Province once they reach the Province through one the majority of the suppliers of the goods and services in the recurrent and development budgetary allocations being non-westerners repatriating the net profits out of the Province and secondly the Public Servants tasked with oversight over the implementation of budgetary allocations through corruption spiriting a significant percentage of those budgetary allocations out of the Province to their home Provinces or major towns of Kenya for personal enrichment. 

Western Province continues to economically hemorrhage and the simple law of nature is that if one losses blood without stopping the bleeding then one can only die.  Yes, that is exactly what it is and has been happening to Western Province for the last 49 years since independence- economically bleeding in all perspectives.  The economic infusions by the thousands of educated and non-educated sons and daughters of Western Province that live and work out of the Province cannot outmarch the outflow of the wealth of the Province simply because the monies pumped into the region by those Diaspora Westerners ends up again being re-exported out of the province through the immigrant business owners and services providers who end up receiving the chunk of that money and re-investing out of the Province and even the Country. 

Western Province must get to the root cause of its socio-economic and political stagnation if it has to lift itself out of the rut it has remained mired in for 49 years since independence.

West fm verily dare suggest that the root cause of Western Province’s failure to economically, socially, politically blossom in the last 49 years may squarely be blamed on the curse, cancer of “Dependency”.  Yes, there is an overarching state of needing the help and support of somebody, a big brother from beyond the region in order for most Westerners to survive or be successful. 

West fm suggest that Western Province must do a brutal reality check on itself.  Is it not a fact that at all levels of the psyche of the native Westerner, there is the debilitating dependency syndrome?  As things stand, is it not true that the overwhelming majority of men and women indigenous to Western Province can’t do things completely on their own.  They want to depend on the Government, they want to depend on their their leaders, they want to depend on their employment, they want to depend on their churches, they want to depend on immigrant communities that are doing very well in the Province, they want to depend on alcohol, they want to depend on witchcraft, they want to depend on handouts, they want to depend on begging, they want to depend on anybody else, anything else But themselves. 

West fm states that the year, the month, the week, the day, the hour, the minute the second the indigenous people of Western Province end the dependency syndrome, the dependency complex, the dependency masks they dorn, they would have the Power to reverse everything that has let them to where they are - perversity of poverty, hopelessness, disease, unemployment, malnutrition, underachievement, lack of self esteem. 

West fm states that if Western Province does not get to the root of its problems it will not solve them in any meaningful way.  Western Province must stop looking at the surface of its problems and getting all emotional and reacting by doing things that make the region feel better in the short term but doing nothing for the region in the long term. 

West fm challenges the residents of Western Province to debate, to interrogate the thesis that at the root of the Province’s underachievement in the last 49 years has been the syndrome of dependency.   Can every man , woman, boy, girl, in the region ask the question  whether they can do things on their own without being dependent upon anybody else, the government, leaders but yourself?  The day Western Province debunks the dependency syndrome it can achieve anything under the sun.  And the day every man, woman, boy or girl in Western Province debunks the dependence syndrome he or she can achieve all the desires of his or her heart. 

The ultimate power in life is to be completely self reliant, completely yourself.  So long as Western Province lives with the illusion of economic dependency, political dependency, social dependency, it won’t rise.  That is the reality the sons and daughters of Western Province must internalize and know is the genesis of our situation.  We must banish dependency in our individual personal psyche and in our collective psyche if we have to rise and fulfill God’s promise to us otherwise we shall wander around in the next half century  of independence as dependants and who are persons especially children who depend on another person for survival.  The choice is thus dependence or independence.  It is yours, it is mine, it is ours to make.

WEST FM EDITORIAL©2012