To heal country's wounds, we must trade tribal loyalty with integrity

If new nations can be created, new tribes can be made too. If we are to cure the disease of tribalism, we must birth a new kind of tribe — a moral tribe. A tribe not bound by bloodlines but by values; not inherited by birth but adopted by belief. A tribe where belonging is not determined by the language you speak or the region you come from, but by the character you keep.

Time has come to rebuild not only our roads and bridges, but our souls — to reconstruct the inner highways of honesty, humility and hope. The Integrity Tribe would bind us together by shared moral fibre, not ethnic ties. Its passport would be character; its constitution, conscience.

Kenya invests in construction as if concrete can cure corruption. We chase physical development with the illusion that it will automatically produce moral advancement. Yet, as history keeps reminding us, we cannot tarmac our way into righteousness.

Our dependence on physical progress has outpaced our development of moral purpose. But no matter how smooth the highway, a society without integrity will always drive itself into ditches of decay.

Corruption, deceit, impunity and greed are not potholes on our highways; they are potholes in our hearts. Every scandal is a symptom of moral decay.

We change governments without changing governance, elect new leaders without cultivating new leadership. Politicians deliver eloquent speeches not as true leaders, but as actors in a play — skilled performers in the theatre of politics. They are sick doctors prescribing medicine for others while exempting themselves. Our national software — the collective conscience — has frozen.

Need for a new tribe

Politicians often speak of tribal unity. It sounds noble — until you realize that the tribe is their political home base. They preach unity on stage but practice “vernacular” backstage. We cannot trust politicians to unite us because their survival depends on keeping the tribal boundaries alive.

Visionary Kenyans need to rise above political sermons on tribal peace and engage toward a moral movement to a new tribe — one not bound by blood, marriage, or circumstance, but by conviction.

To champion this, the Church must abandon its lazy mind, rediscover its creative dimension and spearhead the conception and birth of this new tribe. This calling is rooted in its central commandment of love — the most potent pivot of creativity. The Church should gather like-minded builders and steer the nation away from the iceberg of tribalism.

This adventure of moral creation has as its goal creating the Integrity Tribe (IT).  People join IT by choice, not by birth. Its membership is defined by character, not clan.

We witness political overthinkers engage in ruthless actions to preserve power. What we need now is another pool of thinkers — men and women consumed by the possibilities of Kenya. A new platform of idealism and experiments aimed at freeing us from the political handcuffs that have kept our moral imagination hostage.

The tribe you are born into — the one marked by ancestry and geography — gives you a name, a lineage, and a history. But the Integrity Tribe admits you by choice. Impostors may mimic virtue for a while, but the moment they compromise the standard, they fall out of it. Yet falling out does not mean exile — re-entry depends on conscience, not politics.

Its mother tongue will have dialects of integrity — honesty, justice, compassion, humility, accountability, and faithfulness.

As a way of recruiting new members, Character Schools will be established within communities and integrated into educational curricula. These schools will raise a generation fluent in the language of conscience and equipped to rebuild the moral foundations of the nation.

The Integrity Tribe’s alphabet cannot spell the word corruption — such terms are foreign, not familiar. In this tribe, compassion becomes currency. Progress is measured not by hoarding but by healing.

Success is defined not by accumulation but by contribution. Service is the truest form of citizenship, where leadership is no longer about titles but about trust, and power is measured not by domination but by the capacity to love.

Kenya has lived too long as a collection of tribes, not a community of purpose. Our loyalty to tribe has often outweighed our loyalty to truth. We have defended the corrupt because they belong to “our people,” not realizing that corruption devours every tribe in equal measure.

Cost of construction

The task before us is not to erase tribes but to redeem them. The redeemed tribe becomes not a cage of exclusion but a circle of inclusion; not a wall of defense but a table of fellowship. It turns competition into harmony, and diversity into strength.

Rebuilding moral infrastructure will demand more than speeches — it will demand sacrifice. It is easier to pave a road than to purify a motive; easier to build a bridge than to rebuild a conscience. But without this inner reconstruction, all other development is cosmetic.

The work of moral rebuilding is not a government project; it is a human project — one that must begin in families, be nurtured in schools, practiced in churches, and reflected in public life. Kenya’s great project is not a road or a railway — it is a rebirth of conscience.

The Integrity Tribe is not an ethnic rebirth; it is a moral resurrection. When that IT rises, Kenya will not only have infrastructure — it will have a soul.

The Integrity Tribe, like Kenya’s finest coffee, will add taste to the traditional tribes. It is the injection that dilutes the poison malicious politicians so eagerly administer. It neutralizes the toxins of hate, deceit, and division that have long kept the nation feverish.

This tribe multiplies life, not killing it. It heals what history has harmed. It invites Kenyans to belong not only by blood, but by belief. The IT invites us to a higher kinship — where conscience becomes our common bloodline.