The challenge for Kidero and lessons from Sonko

Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero is, by most measures, the worst performing governor in the country. This is for the simple reason that on paper, he was handed in 2013 what one might call the dream county. Nairobi produces about 40 per cent of Kenya’s GDP. It is the most urbanised and most educated county in the country, both of which make it one of the easier counties to govern. In other words, Dr Kidero is lucky to be the governor of a county with immense economic and social capital. He also has the advantage of running the county that benefits most from national government policies. All he had to do was tap into this immense resource and serve as an example for the rest of the country.

Yet instead, he chose confusion and failure. His original sin might have been to bring with him to County Hall the baggage of Mumias Sugar Company. This entrench a popular perception that the sorry state of public service delivery in Nairobi is a direct result of corrupt contractors, many of them linked to Kidero and his associates while he ran Mumias.

The second mistake Kidero made was to dabble in Nyanza politics, an act that has arguably distracted him and created political obstacles to his agenda in Nairobi. He may have been seeking a soft landing with an eye on national politics after Nairobi. Yet this was the wrong way to go about it. Instead of seeking to create an ethnic base in South Nyanza, the governor would have been better served showcasing his public service acumen in the biggest and most important county in the country.

So what next for the governor? Well, 2017 is still more than two years away. Kidero still has time to finish strong. The logic of politics dictates that if he is to have a fighting chance in 2017, he needs to invest in visible goods. For one, he can pour money into housing and sanitation. Affordable lower middle class and working class housing is sorely lacking in Nairobi. And there is absolutely no reason why this should be the case. Forget the ill-conceived and purely palliative “slum upgrade” projects we routinely waste money on. The Governor should think big, and imagine ways of transforming much of Nairobi – including Eastlands, where he grew up – into decent neighbourhoods where Nairobians can live with dignity and adequate security.

Needless to say, such a task will require serious planning and disciplined implementation, unlike the tenderpreneur boondoggle that we have come to associate with the County of Nairobi.

Kidero’s other options include figuring out how to create jobs for Nairobi’s urban youth; how to fix the county’s healthcare and schools (in conjunction with the national government); and how to fix the city’s traffic problem. Another possible avenue of action would be to provide a basic minimum income for Nairobi’s poorest families. These are interventions that would directly benefit Wanjiku. They are not fancy CCTV cameras that do not work. They do not provide too many opportunities for tenderpreneurs to make millions while not meeting their contractual obligations. But they are what we elected the governor to do. And for his own sake, they are the kinds of visible policy choices that might earn him reelection come 2017.

Many Nairobians like to complain about the clientilistic political style of Senator Mike Sonko. But Sonko might yet prove to be the biggest gift to the county and country. By making ‘wananchi’ get used to more than just cash handouts, he is raising the expectations among voters. No longer will Nairobians be content with politicians who specialise in whipping up emotions at rallies and reminding us what languages we speak with our grandmothers. Not any more. Nairobians want politicians who know about the challenges facing residents of Umoja, and have ideas of how those challenges can be addressed.

Obviously Sonko’s style raises multiple issues about the quality of governance in the county, a fact that makes many shudder when they consider that he may be Governor in 2018. But his style of politics is reminder of what Nairobi really is like for the vast majority of its residents; and by extension a reminder of the kind of country Kenya really is. Confronting this reality will force us to consider a type of politics that is oriented not just towards making the Kenyan middle class more comfortable, but doing so while at the same time lifting millions of our country men and women who still live in abject poverty.

The sad reality is that currently, only Sonko is really thinking about the poorest of the poor in Nairobi.