They call it a “pilot phase,” but let’s be real - in Kanairo, a pilot is just a trial run to see how much you can get away with before the Controller of Budget starts shouting. Margaret Nyakang’o is out here sounding the alarm about “governance gaps” in the Lokichar Basin, but for the rest of us living in reality, those aren’t gaps. They are deliberate, well-paved highways for looting. While they talk about “lessons in logistics,” the real lesson was how to move black gold without anyone seeing the receipts.

The most hilarious part of this report is the “limited disclosure” of Production Sharing Contracts. In this city, if a man won’t show you his phone, he’s cheating. If a government won’t show you an oil contract, they’ve already sold your soul to a billionaire in a shell company. We’re being told to wait for “full-scale exports” while the people who actually live in Turkana are still waiting for that five percent royalty that seems to have evaporated into thin air.

Nyakang’o wants a legally constituted local Board of Management to stop the misuse of community funds. It’s a cute idea, really. But in a country where even the “legal” boards are just committees of relatives and political rejects, adding another layer of management is just adding more mouths to the trough. We’ve seen this script before in the Meru County Crisis, where personality cults and “victimhood politics” are used as smoke and mirrors to block actual development while the elites feast.

Then there’s the warning about oil revenues being used for “recurrent expenditure.” That’s government-speak for “we’re going to use the oil money to buy tea, mandazi, and fuel for the V8s of people who spend all day sitting in meetings about how poor we are.” Instead of building a sovereign wealth fund for the future, we’re preparing to burn our grandchildren’s inheritance on per diems and foreign trips for “benchmarking” how to spend more money we don’t have.

Failure to seal these loopholes will “undermine public trust,” Nyakang’o warns. Margaret, sweetie, what public trust? We haven’t trusted a government project since the SGR turned out to be a very expensive way to move cargo from one debt-ridden point to another. The only thing “sustainable” about this oil plan is the way the same families keep staying at the top of the food chain while the rest of us argue about the price of unga.

If you think full-scale crude exports will lower your fuel prices or fix the economy, I have a “get rich quick” crypto scheme and a plot of land in a swamp I’d like to sell you. This isn’t an oil boom; it’s just the same old vultures finding a new carcass to pick clean. Stay cynical, Kanairo, because optimism in this economy is just a polite word for being a victim.