Yet whenever Kenya’s parliamentarians demand some governmental action, they never fail to stress that the government must give priority to it. The word prior is synonymous with the word before, sometimes even with the adjectives earlier and first. First, the words first priority logically imply the existence of a second priority and — by further implication — even of a last priority or a final priority — namely, expressions that contain no logic whatsoever, expressions that Edward Carey Francis, my high school headmaster, would have dismissed as utter nonsense. FIRST ACTIONYet it is from Kenya’s politicos that you most get the expression first priority, which seems to lend legitimacy to the expression second priority, which makes possible the expression third priority. But, though all these make possible even the terms final priority and last priority, the word priority refers only to “first consideration”, “first treatment” or “first action”.

Source: Daily Nation April 26, 2019 21:56 UTC