Kenya is not ready for a senate.

The ongoing notion is that senatorial positions in Kenya are insignificant. Is this really the case or the norm that senators are cultivating?


If we take a trip down memory lane, circa 580, the conceptualisation of the senate was originally reserved for the elders, as they were surmised to be wise.


That is exactly what is happening in Kenya, the senate has been synonymies as a brain trust of the elderly. To the senate, sitting back and overseeing what governors, MPs, and other representatives are doing is still a foreign ideology. They would rather have power and control over county resources.


Simply put, they prefer to be the caretakers of the county’s funds and not watchdogs. This gesture has risen above stereotyping to legitimising that in Kenya a leader will only perform when the peoples' revenue is at their disposal.


This is premised on the fact that, more than half of the 67 senators have relinquished their senatorial posts. With data deducted from the posts the senators have migrated to, it denotes that senators believe their positions have paralysed them, whence handicapped. This explains the scramble for the gubernatorial seats, from the likes of Senator Hassan Omar, Chris Obure, Mike Sonko et al.


Also, Kenya is a soft regional power that is transitioning. The Majimbo system might have been the renaissance of devolution but Kenya is still a brainchild to its complexity. The US senate is quite paradoxical to that of Kenya, regardless of our carbon copy mandate, the US senate is actually the most influential arm in the US. The difference is that for the Kenyan senate ‘pork-barrelling’ is not as potent as consolidating funds.


The senate is not irrelevant, actually, it is an important faction of the county. If the senate concentrated on their job and fulfilled their mandate and not throw a pity party for five years, funds could not have been volatilised through corruption.