Kenyan Governors, It’s Time To Show Direction

By Njuguna Mutonya

Can we look our Governors straight into their eyes and tell them — good job so far or can you pull up your socks?

Any credible comparative analysis of performance and service delivery needs to be based on scientifically verifiable data and systems scrutiny before arriving at conclusions.

Well said. Sounds like a sentence from a book on methodology but this is why a lot of Kenyans raise their hackles whenever Tom Wolf or Angela Ambitho crunch their numbers telling us who is the perceived front runner in the political contests .

Our newly created counties are now up and running (for some) and perceptions as to their performance are quickly building up.

Two months might be too soon to make any verifiable judgement on their efforts but I must admit that it is not too early to see which direction they are taking.

For a region that has been stuck at the bottom of the pile for most of post-independence Kenya’s history, any positive indicator is quickly discernible, direction fathomed and it does not help to perpetually complain about your incapacities.

Some of the governors who have taken over steering of the six counties in the Coast Province have cut their teeth elsewhere as corporate chiefs of no mean repute while some have exhibited some business acumen. The problems facing the counties while being historical have been given a clear exit formula which is based in the 2010 Constitution which created the devolved system of government which has created them.

Governors have no one to blame because the very wording of the new Constitution confers upon them executive authority which enables them to exercise creativity in pulling their people from the adversities of poverty and backwardness.

This is why a news item I listened to last week as I drove to town was both heart-warming and a positive indicator of what can be done in a very short time.

The report disclosed that Lamu County had managed to double the income raised from its licenses from Sh1.8 million to Sh2.8 million in only a month!

Now that speaks volumes and clearly charts out the trajectory of the incumbent administrations policy in matters to deal with financial probity. The upshot of this revelation is that the administration has closed down the loop holes through which the possible revenues to the county were being lost either through poor implementation of public policy or sheer theft of public resources.

For those who are close to the politics of Lamu county and the desperation and sheer determination with which the power to ascend to the governorship was fought , it is now clear that the previous administrations in the county either abetted or ignored past misdeeds .

Governor Issa Timamy apart from being a top corporate lawyer for some of Kenya’s celebrated indigenous transnational companies also served with diligence as Chairman of the National Museums of Kenya for a record three terms.

As an indigenous Lamu citizen, I could understand the fire in his campaigns as he enumerated the foibles of past leadership and presented a blue print for the elevation of the Lamu county to its preferred perch at the top of the rankings by utilising the opportunities availing.

With the Lamu Port under construction , security in lower Somalia now assured with the Jubaland administration in place and tourism starting to pick up, is it far fetched to state that Lamu is rising ?

In Kwale County , a news report in one of the local dailies quoted the Governor Salim Mvurya disclosing a deal in which Kenya Sugar Board would provide capital to improve roads within the county where the revival of the former Ramisi Sugar factory is currently on track.

County assemblies have the power to enter into bilateral agreements with third parties (including foreign ones) so long as it does not contradict national policy frameworks to improve the standards of living of their own people.

vurya was recently reported expressing his disdain for the free for all policy on land which had seen some foreigners getting allocations on marine heritage conservancies including islands which the National Land Commission has indicated cannot be condoned.

This pragmatic stance by the governor is not surprising considering that for years he was the officer in charge of Plan International activities in Kwale and knows all the problems and possibly most of the solutions to the county’s woes.

Again it would not be far fetched to say that a clear direction is emerging which is centred on the development of the county’s resource base and protecting what is in the public interest.

So far so good. This is just about perceptions and what has already been publicly reported.

It is obvious that there are plans, programmes and challenges being addressed at all the other counties, which we hope shall soon become public. Some counties are still grappling with institutional structures while the delivery of services has reached sub-liminal levels.

In cosmopolitan Mombasa, residents are still awaiting the determination of a trajectory even as serious sabotage is suspected by council workers who have been demanding increased wages and back dated allowances for years.

While open industrial action is a constitutional right, sabotage of the economy should earn the same levels of retribution as they earn in other countries like China where it is a capital offence. To be paid by tax-payers money to implement changes in your work place and then abandon your mandate and role halfway is to tease the lion in the wrong place.

Politicians must shed the way they do business and get back to work as they have promised the people of Kenya. That is why Mvita residents are smiling all the way to the bank after former MP and now Cabinet Secretary in Mining Najib Balala and his former opponent now turned friend Abdulswamad Shariff Nassir have buried the hatchet and sworn to work for the interest of Mombasa and especially the Mvita constituents.

That is the way to go. Clean your skeletons and burn them. Kenya is greater than all of us.