County leaders are indulging in incest by locking out ‘outsiders’

A famous African man said: “When a jigger is wriggling in your small toe, your buttock does not sleep because it is fat.” Sorry, it wasn’t Chinua Achebe or Ngugi wa Thiong’o who said that — I just made it up. County politicians may want to spare a moment to think about that jigger because they are all getting into this ‘me’ mindset. They want to hoard the resources in their small counties for ‘their people’. Unfortunately, Kenya is like a human body and no part, however well endowed, can function effectively without the other.

Four examples suffice. One is the assertion by Tana River Governor Hussein Dado that he will not allow the central government to irrigate one million acres of land in Tana River because the land is a county asset. “We shall not take the issue lightly,” he warns darkly. There is one problem, though. The land in Tana River may be a county asset but who owns River Tana? Tana’s waters originate in the Aberdares, meander through Meru and Bisanadi National Parks and Garissa before getting to Tana River County laden with silt eroded from other counties. If the communities upstream kill your river, Bwana Governor, you will be controlling unfertile ‘assets’ without a drop of water.