How AG’s office is sabotaging devolution

By Dominic Odipo

When the Task Force on Devolved Government (TFDG) went around the country last year collecting the views of the public on how effective devolved government should be implemented, there were a number of recommendations which stood out as bearing the stamp and support of almost the entire country.

Among these was the near-universal recommendation that, in order to allow citizens at the lowest or grassroots level to effectively address the issues that confront them every day, there should be established both Village Councils (VCs) and Citizen’s Participation Forums (CPFs) along the models that existed in most Kenyan communities during the pre-colonial period.

Duly recognizing the vital importance of these organs, especially for the minority or marginalized communities, the Task Force recommended that these organs be established by national legislation, not by individual county initiatives.

The rationale for this recommendation was very simple. If you leave this decision to a county which is dominated by one community, this community is likely to ride roughshod over the interests of the smaller communities within the county, effectively driving such small communities to the periphery of the periphery of the county’s development process.

If, for example, you leave it up to Baringo County to determine how governance at the grassroots level will be prosecuted, the majority Tugen community might ignore the wishes of the minority Njemps and Endorois communities, and deny them the right to form and manage their own nationally-recognized and supported village councils.

Accordingly, when the Task Force published its Draft Bill on Devolved Government last year, it duly included both the Village Councils and the Citizens Participation Forums.

Unfortunately, if you peruse the latest version of this Draft Bill, which has now been published as the Devolved County Governments Bill, you will find that the village councils and the citizen’s participation forums have both been removed.

In other words, the Drafters of this new Bill, whoever they might be, have unilaterally not only struck at the core of devolved government but they have also foolishly and cynically overturned one of the most popular recommendations that the Task Force received.

For a number of reasons, this blatant and cynical abuse of bureaucratic power must not be allowed to stand. First, there can be no real devolved government if the actual organs and mechanisms of devolution do not percolate to the grassroots level which, in this case, is the village.

Or, to put this in reverse, if the ordinary Kenyan citizen does not see the trappings and institutions of devolved government manifested at the village level, he or she will assume that no devolution has occurred.

Second, if the overwhelming majority of the people who presented their views to the Task Force said that they wanted to see these village councils and citizen’s participation forums established, who are these people who have Drafted the latest Bill on devolved government to exclude these organs?

Are there some hapless legal apparatchiks in the Attorney General’s Office who really do not know what they are doing or is this part of a much larger and sinister plot to defeat real devolved government?

There is also a particular security component to this matter which needs to be mentioned here. Every village in this country knows its thieves, robbers, murderers, or witches.

If you leave village government to the village itself, within very little time, these negative elements within the village will be identified and the necessary action taken to deal with the situation. If you leave village governance to a larger and more distant organ, the motivation of the villagers to confront such matters directly will be necessarily constrained.

If you let the villages run their own affairs, as the Task Force had proposed, and they refuse to identify the thieves, robbers, murderers and witches amidst them, then, in good conscience, you can let them stew in their own soup for a while before taking much more drastic, remedial action.

Fifty years after our independence, the Njemps are still fighting the Endorois in Baringo County; the Gabra and the Borana are still slaughtering each other in Moyale County and the Pokots are still causing havoc along their borders with the Samburu and Turkana communities. If we needed any proof that our governance systems at the grassroots level have failed, these killings are surely it.

This means that we need to overhaul almost all those governance structures which have existed at the community level since independence. We need to take real government to the grassroots through these village councils and citizen’s participation forums.

In its latest memorandum to Parliament, Sayari, the Nairobi-based think tank, in conjunction with CEMIRIDE, the Centre for Minority Rights Development stated:

"This Bill is subjecting voiceless grassroots communities to the vagaries of political dealings and power play at the county level. This is likely to harm politically marginalized and minority communities the most." Indeed! ENDS.

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk