Leadership shortcomings stifling socio-economic growth in counties

By MY ELMI

Wajir celebrated its 100 years of existence in November last year. It’s age mates are either cities or big municipalities. The county developmental and health indicators are among the worst nationally. It is among the poorest counties, with a maternal mortality rate of 1,300 deaths per every 100,000 live births. It is also one of the dirtiest towns.

As if all these are not enough, the recently released report by the National Transitional Authority code named: Quick Readiness Assessment for the Transfer of Functions to County Government revealed that Wajir County cannot benefit from devolution because of lack of capacity and it can only get two key functions out of the 14 allocated to counties by the Constitution.

The authority gazetted 13 counties that met the timeline and had the capacity to fully take all the functions and remarkably, far-flung Mandera and Garissa counties made to the top 13 to represent the former Northern Frontier regions. The two negligible functions given to Wajir County would mean that most of the key functions like education, health, agriculture, transport and public works will be performed by the National government until the county would convalesce its capacities to perform.

This new discomforting development has complicated the perennial problems of marginalisation and underdevelopment in the county because the purpose of devolution was to bring services and development closer to the Wanjiku’s and Wanjala’s. If there is no funds to the county, there will no development and service delivery. The million-dollar question is who is responsible for this quagmire and abyss conundrum that Wajir County has found itself in?

The simple answer is that the newly elected Wajir county Government under the leadership of Governor Ahmed Abdullahi has the constitutional mandate to have created all necessary structures and capacities at all levels including the individual, the institutional and environmental as stipulated by Schedule 4 of the Constitution and Devolution Act of 2012. Additionally, the county was supposed to carry out self-assessment prior to the Transitional Authority Assessment so that the county government could remedy areas of weakness.

The cornerstone of effective and efficient county government is putting in place a well-educated and skilled Executive Committee members and a Public Service Board. The selection of these critical officers should not be based on short-term political expediency, political power games of rewarding political cronies and mediocre rather meritocracy and skills.

Comparatively, the County of Meru has being allocated all the 14 functions and it’s the second richest and one of the counties with best developmental and health indicators. This because the Meru people and their government was involved in prudent selection of highly skilled Executive Committee and in fact two of its members are university dons with doctorates in their fields of specialisation.

This means the people of Meru through their county government saw the golden opportunity in this new political dispensation and decided to put all the necessary structures that will strengthen the new governance system. While the county of Wajir is struggling with inefficiency and insecurity, the County of Meru is negotiating with bilateral donors to fund development agenda. The devolution aircraft laden with development goodies has taken off and is gaining height and altitude in the Kenyan airspace, aboard the aircraft are governors of Bomet, Nairobi, Mombasa, Machakos, Meru, Mandera and Garissa among others and all the county governments that took devolution seriously and with aim of improving the lives of their citizenry by bring development and services close to them.

The aircraft of devolution was charted plane by the Constitution and nobody knows when the next flight will be.

My crystal ball shows me that the Governor of Wajir County and his Government were late for the flight because of failure to observe the rules of reporting to the airport for flight clearance three –to four hours afore departure.

Currently, the Governor and his government are still stranded at the airport of devolution and awaiting the small charted air-craft that the Deputy President has promised to give those who failed to make to the Jumbo – Jet of the thirteen Transitional Authority.

Let me take this opportunity to congratulate the 13 counties that have successfully qualified for the full functions of the County Government. For Wajir County people, until the next assessment by the Transitional Authority no funds without functions and it goes without saying “choices have consequences”.

The writer is a lecturer at Mt Kenya University