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Former presidential aspirant Mohammed Abduda Dida has caused a stir online after bashing Kenyan university students for being lazy.
Through Twitter, Dida scolded Kenyan university students for relying on their parents unlike their counterparts in the US who take up various jobs to sustain themselves.
“In the US, University students drive Uber, work in convenience stores, work as waiters and make enough money to sustain themselves. In Kenya, boys smoke weed and play FIFA 24/7 while girls just watch movies and wait for Juja’s bedsitter parties. Good luck amounting to anything,” Dida tweeted.
His tweet triggered a heated debate on social media, with many online users faulting Dida for comparing Kenya with the US while others agreed with him.
@pingache said: “Stop lying to the Kenyan students. The US economy is 100 times bigger than the Kenyan economy. If a Kenyan student gets a job in Kenya they will be overworked and end up failing all their courses.”
@owuorgpo tweeted: “Extremely ignorant tweet that ignores the big economic differences. In the US, convenience stores are actively looking for workers while in 254, stores are retrenching and only offer full-time job schemes. In the US, temporary workers are paid per hr while it’s 8 to 5 in 254.”
@johnndaiga14 wrote: “Having studied abroad, I fully concur with
@mwalimu_dida sentiments. I've toiled and moiled. I paid my school fees as well as my rent and other expenses. I was a jack of all trades. It really opened my mind. I agree Kenyan youth should step up.”
@AngelaWairimu7 said: “I studied in K.U and every weekend I had a hustle, either doing promotions for aerial , always etc. in the supermarket, I even marketed Eabl products in clubs to survive….I never went broke in campus!”
Responding to his critics, Dida added: “A KCSE D+ goes to a TVET institution, studies masonry, works as an apprentice fundi earning 1500 at mjengo sites. 6 months later, he is a fundi with his own team. Meanwhile, a university engineering student is still WAITING for opportunities. Ask the TVET student to employ you.”
Comments
There are many things graduates can do in Kenya such as in the areas of farming, fishing industry, etc! We have learnt a very bad behavior of blaming the system and others!
The available jobs are in high demand because of competition to to explosive birth rates and I one practices safe sex anymore! There are many things to graduates gainfully employed in Kenya!
Of course they're LAZY. Some of the "passed" leaked Exams. And others All they know is studying How to Find a SPONSOR .
Comparing apples and oranges by a busy man with 4 wives. Hustlers are there selling clothing, food etc. Formal employment openings are not enough for non students
Selling clothes and food is a job too! We are not hustlers; we are business people! My kiosk selling food makes 7 million shillings a year! That graduate wearing neck and tie is luck to make 200 shillings a year! Now, simple math here, who is the hustler? Me or that graduate who is looking pretty every day while making 🥜 peanuts? Stop insulting us with this hustler monologue!! Will you please?
Then you pay your employees peanuts after overworking them.
Assumptions, assumption and more assumptions which are flatly wrong! Mine is a family business and all the family members working for me are very well paid to include medical insurances, life insurances and an investment package for the future! So, you can assume all you want and that is why you are possible not going anywhere!
Congrats Johnson. Assume 100pc of moi students or Kenyans went into biz how many would survive? U need customers who work other fields and employees off course. Hey don't assume hustlers means politics 4 everyone. My classmate n his gf had chapo den that did well. The man in tie and suit might be happy looking good also
They are not lazy they need guidance. You can not judge until you give everyone a chance. Universities should encourage their students to work part time in all kinds of jobs for experience.
Young Kenyans should shift from this mentality of ‘waiting to be given a chance’ to start creating their own opportunities. Pride goes before a fall and many just don’t want to get their hands dirty to anything and everything that’ll put food on their table. I was at Moi Univ and used to sell fried and fresh fish in mabatini and eldoret every friday and weekends and paid thro undergrad and grad schools. Today, I own my businesses and employ a few graduates who are making less than my polytechnic recruits!
Very impressive @Wacera. There is still a lot of money to be made out there especially in the food industry. I wish there was a compulsory class in campus that teaches students not to expect jobs from the government but instead friendly business policies to promote business environment. I would like to think someone somewhere inspired you to sell fried fish and I wish everyone going through university has that special person too.
Would have loved to read Dida explaining to the students on how to drive for Uber without a vehicle. Every unemployed 20 year old is willing to take any job.
If university graduates cannot find employment, where are university students expected to find jobs?
Be creative to make a good idea work for you! There are millions of things someone can do to make money! Some of them require very little start up capital. And for a thinking graduate, the stipend they get while attending college can be saved up to start a business!
Abduda Dida, wewe ni mmoja wa wale wananjalibu kuongoza nchi ya Kenya.
Unawezaje kutulinganisha na watu wa nchi za ulaya.
Nchi za ulaya zinatumia lugha za mababu zao; zizi tunatumia lugha za wageni.
Huu ni ungwana?
Watoto wa hizo university wamechoka kutumia lugha za wageni. Viongozi wetu, wanafuata nani?
Waambie viongozi wetu waanze kuzema na lugha ya mabaabu zetu ili tuelewane. Tuanze na wewe. Sema na lugha ya taifa. Sisi si wazungu!!
I hope the govt and the country can progressively envision and create industries that will employ most of its citizens and create wealth for the country. We need for the most educated and talented among us starting and managing companies that make a lot of wealth for shareholders and the country. Not this idea of getting into govt to steal public funds.
Businesses create jobs! The government is not a business to be expected to create jobs!
Well well well,I wonder what stung Dida and prompted him to be so vitriolic. What exactly is ameasure of laziness.anyway?. A student in Kenya does not have the same working opportunities as those offered to diaspora students in advanced countries.Period.Even at that, there are some students in diaspora who still rely on their parents for financial support.Are they lazy?
The sole reason for being in the institution of higher learning is not to work,but to do well in your chosen discipline.Yes doing well like those Kenyan prelaw students who flowed whos whos'universities in the world,notably Harvard.
However, he raises an interesting and relevant point when he questions if University graduates are merely waiting for an opportunity to be employed.I for one have asked the same question differently,and that is; close to 60 years after independence,what have our graduates especially in engineering disciplines have to show? With hardly any engineering education,and limited technical knowledge,JUA KALI have alot to show us.Not withstanding their lack of degrees, afew have even employed graduates.It will also help to note that most of these post independence graduates I talk of hardly paid any tuition.The government took care of all their needs-availing them time to only read,so what is their excuse for not producing?Is quest for Office jobs to blame,or do they lack the ambition,and drive to innovate? Iwonder.
Laziness - is just walking around doing nothing significant with your life - loitering like a damn fool burning the important hours of the day while accomplishing anything of any material value. Or better yet getting drunk with some smelly busaa to a point you go blind and starting g telling others it is night time while it is a broad day light outside. Or meeting with like friends on top of a grassy hill and lying there discuss noo is thing of value and complaining about everything until the roosters come back home to rest; if they get home before your frustrated self! Does that work for you @maxmillianly? Ndinda is right! The Uni kids are so lazy beyond any correction!
I have never seen this definition of laziness anywhere before, but I think you are correct! These students do not want to work anymore. But they all want free stuff to fall from Heaven like mana!
Good one @ Mangelepa.Could this laziness be aproduct of our environment?If so,what can we change to restore"order",and make MUSAA( make university students achievers again.)
Did he stop selling our girls to middle east as house girls?
No Not lazy, they lost their creativity and other fundamentals on campus. These campuses have turned to places where borrowed dreams are suffocated and ignorance amplified due to nepotism and corruption in academia.
The guys are busy chasing skirts and the women are busy looking for the monied old sponsors! That is the entire focus of any type of creativity! They all want to laid to make that little money and show off!
@ motifa,that kind of creativity you mention,if unchecked,could result in afew more urchins on the streets of Nairobi.Creating a burden on society-with limited resources.
there are several categories of students
1. hard working ones but the standard of lecturing is poor i.e a chemistry student at Kimathi university told me that they have to send their tests to south africa at own cost because of lack of laborotaties. They have their lecturer is from Chenai India and he can hardly speak english .
2. The lazy ones who pay for someone to do their exams or their examiners
3. some are there to waste time burden their parents with costs whereas most of their times is spent in bars and discos . In general i hear that the standard of education is low unqualified lectures and lack of access to the right stuff no computers
Oh lordie! A lecturer from Chenai India??? Possibly with stolen papers! Been to that dump place, my foot! Them dirty Indian bustards don’t know any better and they are racists as hell!
@loise - Your analysis of the students’ situation and attitudes fits perfectly! But I whole blame them for sinking that low.
I just feel sorry for them! No wonder none of them got any ingenuity left! Good grief!
The students want to eat but they do not want to work! They all want to get blue color jobs and Shan those jobs which make their long finger nails dirty. Ndinda is right to say graduates are lazy!
our system does not promote critical thinking, innovation and enterprise period, students are taught to be employees actually good employee aka slaves to the master hence thinking out of the box questioning authority is prohibited discouraged and punished.
Colonial mentality lives on in a free country!!
Its because Kenyan job market cannot satisfy them. Even people who have great qualifications are jobless. Blame the system you politicians have created