Takeover should herald a new beginning for suffering Nairobi

The decision by embattled Governor Mike Sonko to surrender the running of Nairobi to the national government is good news for city residents who have been wallowing under poor quality services for long.

It is no secret that service delivery during the so-called Sonko ‘error’ has been below par, thanks to the governor’s confrontational style of leadership that almost made him run the county single-handedly after key county officials either resigned or were shown the door.

The list of Sonko’s failings is long. Among others, heaps of garbage dot various city residential estates, roads are potholed even within the CBD, county coffers are dented partly due to Sonko’s run-ins with a revenue collection agent, developers’ building plans have not been approved since June last year and health facilities lack drugs as the county owes the supplier huge sums of money.

Amid such misery, the national government’s intervention is a breath of fresh air for the residents. Their one and only hope is that the government will bring back order as quickly as possible. They would want to see the money collected in the city put to good use to improve their lot. They would want to see change in the manner the city is run.

In fact, through Nairobi, the national government, which has been lampooning county honchos for mismanaging the counties, now has the perfect opportunity to show them how they should run their affairs. If it flops in Nairobi, it will lack the moral high ground to criticise the counties.

But while the takeover was done with good intentions, there are those who feel the manner in which it was executed fell short of the constitutional expectation. If this is the case, the government must move swiftly to right its wrongs to ensure that Nairobi doesn’t get bogged down again. If it will take the county assembly and the Senate to straighten out things, so be it.

But above all, despite the obvious advantages of the takeover, there would be nothing better than to return devolution on its course in the city. Devolution envisioned a county run by a governor, not by the national government.

Therefore, if the MCAs truly believe that Sonko is unfit to lead, they should not put their plans to impeach him on the back burner just because of the new arrangement.

They should go ahead full throttle and kick him out so that Nairobians can hold an election and pick a new governor.