President Uhuru Kenyatta has maintained the dream to amend the 2010 Constitution is not dead.
Speaking during the 58th Jamhuri Day Celebration at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi on Sunday, the Head of State expressed optimism that the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) will succeed someday.
He insisted that Kenya cannot survive on ethnic majoritarianism, exclusion, and skewed representation.
“BBI is just a dream deferred one day, someday it will happen,” said President Kenyatta.
“We ask Kenyans need each other as our forefathers taught us, to come together reinforced our resolve.”
The President attributed unrest witnessed in the country after every General Election to unequal representation, an issue he said, BBI was meant to solve.
Read: Blow to BBI Proponents as Court of Appeal Throws Out Petition
He said his handshake with ODM leader Raila Odinga was a step forward in dealing with the electoral mess.
“In 2007, we ran into another architectural defect in our nation building project. We discovered that the politics of exclusion in which the ‘winner takes it all’ was not good for our country. We were bold enough to change the Constitution and expand the executive in order to accommodate the excluded. And when the former Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga and I shook hands on March 8th, 2018, it was because we saw a crack on the wall of our nation,” he said.
The President noted the tension cost the country up to Sh1 trillion losses.
Read Also: AG, IEBC Move to Supreme Court to Challenge BBI Verdict
“We had run two elections that cost the country Ksh1 trillion in business losses and we were staring at a nation divided right in the middle. Because we had disagreed respectfully, we knew that this was a mark of progress. It was difficult, but the necessity, the reason and the recognition that we as Kenyans needed each other, nation before self, as our forefathers had taught us to come together, reinforced our resolve,” he said.
“Therefore, the need to come together and mend the crack on the wall of our nation necessitated the first amendment to our Constitution. 19 And although it encountered some legal obstacles, I can only say that BBI is just a dream deferred.”
Read Also: Waiguru Links Office Raid by EACC To BBI Remarks
BBI was a product of the handshake between President Kenyatta.
The two leaders were dealt a blow in August this year after the Court of Appeal declared the process illegal and unconstitutional.
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