It is on Monday, September 13, 2021, at 8am. As you will recall, on January 30, 2021, President Uhuru Kenyatta, while meeting leaders from the former Central Province at the Sagana State Lodge, he directed that all the 2,224 Members of County Assemblies (MCAs) countrywide receive Ksh2 million ($273,000) each as a car grant.

This was an illegal use of taxpayer’s money to bribe the MCAs in return for their support for the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) or the Constitutional Amendment Bill 2020.  

In addition to this, the car grant, amounting to a total of Ksh4.5 billion ($41 million), was given at a time when the whole country was suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic and its negative consequences including sickness and death, massive job losses, collapsed businesses, lost livelihoods and the government’s inability to provide adequate public healthcare for its people. 

In a letter dated April 9, 2021, the president was urged to cancel the car grant that was given to the MCAs and instead apply the funds to other more deserving and pressing public necessities. He ignored the letter. Subsequent letters to the Senate were likewise ignored.

This led to the issuance of a ‘people’s proclamation’ directing the MCAs to bring our money back. However, to date, the MCAs continue to illegally keep our money which they were illegally awarded by the government. 

We The People, in the exercise of our sovereign responsibility in accordance with the Constitution, hereby direct the MCAs to Bring Our Money Back without further delay. This is not a request or a suggestion; it is a demand. And make no mistake about it, the MCAs shall bring our money back; it is not a question of whether, but of when. 

And this is why we have an appointment with history. 

Beginning Monday, September 13, 2021, we shall hand-deliver to each of the 2224 MCAs in the 47 counties a personal demand letter through a People’s Postal Service that shall be convened for that purpose. Our goal is to have all the Ksh4.5 billion ($41 million) returned to the people by January 30, 2022, which will be the first anniversary of the illegal transfer of our money to the MCAs.

We shall begin our national effort to hand-deliver the demand letters by marching from Thika Town to the Nairobi City County Assembly to deliver the letters to the 122 MCAs in Nairobi County.

A sample letter that shall be delivered to each of the MCAs, and a Note on Logistics and Security for the People’s March was circulated on Wednesday September 8. The Timetable for delivery of demand letters to the other counties shall be made public in due course. 

For 58 years since independence, we have read or observed history being made by others. We now have the opportunity not just to read or observe history; we have the opportunity to make history, to participate in our own history, and to write the history that our children and their children after them will read about how we stood up and said no more to our government giving luxuries to the classes while denying necessities to the masses. That history begins in Thika Town on Monday September 13, 2021. 

If you are one of those who would like to be a part of writing our story and Bringing Our Money Back, please register for the March by sending your name, phone number and County of origin to me at Tel. No.0721308911 or email njonjomue@gmail.com, and plan to be in Thika for the start of the First Leg of our Historical March on September 13, 2021. We shall meet outside the North-East Corner of Christina Wangari Gardens, on Uhuru Street, Opposite Thika Post Office, at 8 a.m. to start our March at 9am.  

Together, we shall make them Bring Our Money Back! Together we shall make history! Don’t be left behind!

• A Tell opinion/ Njonjo Mue/ An advocate of the High Court of Kenya