Jerry Okungu.For how long can we put up with a neglegent and an uncaring social system? -- Now that the Marsabit tragedy is slowly receding into oblivion like all other national tragedies that have afflicted Kenya before it, may be now is the time to ask hard questions that need answers in this society.

The fourteen prominent Kenyans who died last week were not the first and neither will they be the last to perish in senseless accidents that need not occur in this day and age.

The death of Bonaya Godana and Mirugi Kariuki among other great Kenyans in Marsabit was tragic only in one sense. They died in a horrific and violent accident that caused them untold pain before their final demise. Secondly, the tragedy was costly in terms of sheer numbers and the amount of investment that this country had spent on their training, expertise and leadership development. The numbers multiplied grief and pain in as many families and the regions they came from. More importantly, the fact that a number of them were national leaders, the impact was felt nationally.

Air disasters, road and rail accidents of mind boggling proportions are not new to Kenya. They have become so routine-like that only the naive among us can claim ignorance of the dangers we face as we try to move within our borders.

Prominent Kenyan politicians who have lost their lives in recent history through accidents include pioneer nationalist Argwings Kodhek (1969), Senator Oruko Makasembo (1964), Hon Aden Khalif (2003) Hon James Mutiso (2003), Ronald Ngala ( 1970s), Kitili Mwendwa (1980s)

Those politicians who have been eliminated through violent deaths have included Pio Gama Pinto (1965), T. J Mboya (1969), JM Kariuki (1975), Hon Ongili (1980s), Hon Echakara (1980s), Robert Ouko (1990) and Hon Paul Ndilinge (2000)

Of these deaths, perhaps the ones that shook this nation to its bones were the deaths of Argwings Kodhek, Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki and Robert Ouko.

Kodhek's death was tragic in one thing; he was the first Cabinet Minister in independent Kenya to die in office through a road accident along present day Argwings Kodhek Road in Nairobi. Foul play was rumoured in his "accident".

Following his death, he became the first cabinet minister to be given a state burial with proceedings of his funeral relayed live on then Voice of Kenya radio and TV channels. I member his friend TJ Mboya reading Kodhek's eulogy live.

Mboya's daylight assassination six months later along Government Road, now Moi Avenue, caused many riots all over the country culminating in the most serious threat of civil war in Kenya's independent history.

It almost sparked interethnic war between two of Kenya's largest tribes; the Luos and Kikuyus. Because of the animosity that his death generated, not a single non- Luo cabinet minister attended his funeral in Rusinga Island except JM Kariuki.

Tom Mboya's Nairobi service at Holy Family Basilica was marred by unprecedented violence in which Jomo Kenyatta had to be shielded from the rioting masses that blamed him for Mboya's death.

Six years later, JM Kariuki was found murdered in Ngong' forest by a young Masai herds boy called Ole Tunda. Following his death, riots by persistent university students caused a lot of uncertainty in the country. Although his death shocked the nation due to his populist politics, the nation wondered why the Kenyatta regime would have opted to eliminate him. A parliamentary commission into his death established that elements in the Kenyatta administration had in fact participated in planning for his death.

John Robert Ouko, another flamboyant Foreign Minister in the Moi regime was also found murdered in Got Alila near his home fifteen years later after rumoured disagreements in the Moi cabinet. His death followed his sudden disappearance from his Koru home a few days earlier. Several commissions set up to unravel his death, together with prosecutions of suspects in the murder have never yielded any tangible results. Like Mboya and Kariuki before him, his death also elicited riots and angry demonstrations against the government of the day.

Back to our latest air crash that killed several MPs, scores of top civil servants and a prominent clergyman, it is important to examine this accident in the light of numerous road and rail disasters that have since claimed the lives of thousands of Kenyans since 1963.

Suffice it to say that when 90 people died in the same region just last year due to inter clan and inter ethnic conflicts, the nation was equally shocked but because they were ordinary people, there was no sharp official reaction from the political leadership save for the local politicians. We never declared three days of national mourning, never lowered our flag and never rushed to bury them at the risk of our own lives with pomp and glory. And I can bet the government has never paid a cent to their families in the form of compensation and comfort.

The reason why our leaders died last week we were told was due to poor visibility at Marsabit airstrip. This may be true but it is equally hurting to learn that in our forty years of independence, successive regimes have never paid adequate attention to infrastructure development in our country. We have continued to operate in Stone Age while we live in the 21st century.

When our trains derail and kill us in our hundreds it is because the rail lines and bridges that Indian coolies built with their hands, sweat and blood have never been modernized and upgraded since 1901. More than that, they have never been expanded to accommodate increased population that has multiplied a thousand fold in the last one hundred years.

When our loved ones die in regular road accidents from public buses, matatu and private cars, in most cases it has to do with impossible roads full of pot holes, blind spots and narrow constructions that can no longer accommodate increased motor traffic in our highways. It is our failure as governors of our society to plan, expand and maintain infrastructure in our transport sector. The issue of bad roads has been with us for as long as we can remember.

At different times in different regimes, the building of road networks was sometimes based on political loyalty to the strong man on the throne. This bias made it possible to build beautiful highways in regions that enjoyed political clout yet had no meaningful traffic to utilize such expensive infrastructures. Little wonder that at times, goats and sheep would occasionally be found lying on such smooth highways enjoying the warmth of sun rays emanating such facilities while economically productive areas with swarming populations were fundamentally neglected if not intentionally excluded from budgetary allocations.

Talking of air disasters, I remember way back in 1987 on a flight to Kisumu in the then Kenya Airways Fokker 27 that used to ply domestic routes; On getting to Kisumu airport, the wheels of the aircraft failed to unlock- so we could not land. The only option to the pilot was to fly back to Nairobi in preparation for crash landing. When we asked why we could not crash land in Kisumu, we were advised that there were no crash landing facilities in Kisumu! Yet there was a high possibility that we would run out of fuel before getting to Nairobi.

At that time, the question that came to mind was; how come Kisumu airport that was once and the first international airport way back in 1920s was 60 years later so neglected and so degraded that it lacked the basic minimum facilities of an airport? There could be no better explanation other than that the neglect was political.

At the time the airport was being killed, another white elephant was being constructed in Eldoret at the expense of the tax payer's money. To this day Eldoret airport has remained a grazing field for sheep and goats of the region.

When Hon Aden Khalif lost his life at Busia airstrip in early 2003, the issue of our airports and airstrips was raised. Even some semblance of a commission of enquiry was set up to update the government on the status of our airports. One would have expected that three years later, something would have been done to equip our airstrips with basic facilities to improve safety landings in extreme weather conditions. This was not to be.

Because of our capacity to procrastinate and get famous more on rhetoric and brinkmanship rather than action, we have lost another set of illustrious leaders that this nation can ill afford to lose.

The tragedy that claimed the lives of fourteen Kenyans last week is the tragedy of negligence and lopsided development strategies. They died flying there because they had no alternative way of getting there. They died because we have failed to build roads and rail lines to pen up the Northern Frontier District to the rest of the outside world. Had we built good roads and rail lines, economic activities would have changed the culture and lifestyles of our brothers and sisters.

Had we improved the condition of infrastructure in the North, today we would be having fewer deaths due to drought and famine, more families would have settled along commercial centres, more schools and even farming would have taken off.

And the more people interact the less they are likely to attack one another. The Masai are a clear example of this integration into mainstream society through infrastructure development.