By Kipkoech Tanui
Kenya: There is a rising perception County Governors have unbridled appetite for our cash. Members of Parliament are unhappy they have overshadowed them both in terms of the role they play in the Counties and by way of sheer clout.
The MPs no longer control the cash pipe whose funnel is at Treasury, and droplets are CDF freebies. In barazas they speak before the Governor, which is a major statement on pecking order, and which set off a furious protocol war. But the issue was settled by common sense; MPs represent one constituency and Governors administrate over several constituencies.
The other issue was of course the fact that in the new dispensation, the MPs have the preserve of legislating while the Governors are in a different realm, where they oversee the expenditure of monies from budgets approved by Parliament. It would therefore be travesty of justice, insult on common sense, and completely self-defeating for MPs to seek to control the funds whose allocation they approved.
Units in place
I will use my experience from a meeting with four Governors this week, to demonstrate why Devolution has to survive, and why it is too late to ‘kill’ it, even if MPs are dreaming they can do so. Doing so is akin to stopping a plane that has taken off! Why? Because County units are now in place and the national psyche is in its favour. Much to the displeasure of the MPs, the process is irreversible and luckily the drafters of the Constitution anticipated a situation where some cheeky and conniving characters would try and mutilate it with time, and so slotted clauses requiring that changes to some fundamental aspects of it would have to be subjected to a referendum.
Before I come to my experiences, a word of advice for Governors; avoid conspicuous consumption. Don’t live large, the public will interpret this to mean you are gloating and bloating on their finances. Also, don’t be showy and bear titles like “His Excellency”. You are not less honourable when you are not called H.E. And remember, your counties are also Kenya’s and share one President and deputy.
Thirdly, where you can get a modest public office to operate from, stop that gladiator appetite for glamorous Hollywood-type offices. That would be an insult to the thousands living in poverty outside your office.
I know the County Governors, whomever they shall be, and their administrative teams will need permanent and centralised offices, but that can be come with time. The current circumstance in our country require that amid the high cost of living and skyrocketing cost of managing public affairs, we must solve immediate problems first. This week we met four brilliant Governors in Rift Valley over different issues, all of them official.
Mr Patrick Khaemba of Trans Nzoia, a former Permanent Secretary and top brain in African Development Bank, is grappling with strategy on having maize, which has the County labelled ‘Bread Basket of Kenya’, sold in the Kitale silos as finished products. That means setting up a milling and processing plant.
He asked: “Why it is that over the years people just come to Kitale, buy our maize, cheaply and without any value addition whatsoever, and go process it in places as far way in Mombasa?” He explained how poor economic policies have defrauded his electorate over the years.
Technical capacity
Then he asks: “Why is it that we have always used imported fertiliser?” The answer, we tell him, is ‘cartels’. Nodding his head, he explains that he plans to set up a fertiliser factory in his county, because he knows Kenya has the human resource and technical capacity to make this possible. Someone please tell me if the MPs or DCs could do this kind of thinking and have the capacity to link it to faster growth? In Kapenguria, the Governor Simon Kachapin is working on how transform his West Pokot County into an economic and tourism hub. But first he has to prove it isn’t as insecure as Kenyans have been made to believe, and that it is as green as Kiambu — not arid as parts of Baringo!
The Governors for Baringo and Elgeyo-Marakwet — Mr Benjamin Cheboi and Alex Tolgos respectively — are discussing how to get a version of the Tour de France cycling competition involving international stars, on the scenic, circuitous and meandering stretch between Kabarnet and Iten. The two, in whose boundary — Kerio Valley — Tullow Oil Plc is prospecting oil and word has it this the next Ghawar Oil Field, are also working on a tourism expedition linking Lake Baringo and Bogoria with the scenic sites of the escarpment between their Counties. Coming up in Iten, where the reigning Guinness Book para-gliding (parachute on glider) record holder set the mark, is a global competition on this sport. We have not even said what Tolgos plans for the likes of Mo Farah, Paula Radcliffe and other international stars who like training in Iten’s high-altitude camps. In fact, when we met him, his deputy Mr Lamaon had just arrived from US with 15 university sports scholarships!
The story, I am sure is the same in every county in Kenya; the local assemblies know where the shoe pinches, they know the ‘cure’ and, being at home, they have a greater obligation to perform; and if they steal, word goes round the villages fast and furiously. They also need offices and cars, and they don’t come cheap, and so because we are not used to millions, let us not think it is extravagant when they buy 10 cars for Sh50 million. Offices, like the homes many of us have never managed to build, also don’t come cheap.
But above that, didn’t we buy MPs in their own names four-wheelers for free? Yet government has not given the Governors vehicles to move around along with their staff, and the machines will in any case be in the name of the county.
We need to separate the person of the Governor and the institution of Governorship and appreciate that setting up the new structures for Devolution will neither be cheap nor easy. Congrats Cheboi, Kapchabin, Tolgos and Khaemba. You give me hope where the MPs sunk my faith in our nation.
The writer is Managing Editor, The County Weekly at The Standard.
