The eruption of demonstrations against the Narok County leadership on alleged resource misappropriation, resulting in a fatal confrontation between members of the public and the police recently is a big indictment of the fidelity, in terms of stewardship, of county governments across the country.
It comes hot on the heels of similar chaotic revolts in Embu, Kisumu, Machakos and Makueni. It counts for less that the failures may emanate from county assemblies, a legislative arm of the county government, and not the Executive as in the case of Makueni.
Agonisingly, the frustration in Narok that pushed residents to take to the streets is the common denominator in all the other 46 counties. What is different is only the manner in which residents in other counties have chosen to vent their frustration. That most counties have exuded calm even in the face of arrogant and extravagant county leaderships should not be construed as a clean bill of health on those governments.
In fact, it is in the counties where there is seeming peace and calm that there is bigger disquiet, where misappropriation of public funds and overindulgence in reckless expenditure is near primitive. Most residents in these counties have resorted to hushed lamentations. Others are merely contented with crumbs that drop to them from the high table. After all, has devolution not taken at least a piece of the pie from Nairobi to where they are?
A county in western Kenya had fingerlings starved for months on end before it came to the attention of the new officials that they had the responsibility of running all the functions of the Fisheries Department after it was devolved, including providing feeds for the fish in all ponds that were under the fisheries department in the county.
“Looking at this catfish, they are only head and tail and no flesh. They are malnourished. This pond alone had more than two thousand pieces but they resorted to cannibalism when the county authorities did not heed our pleas for feed for more than six months. They are now hardly 1000 in number,” says an attendant who did not want to be mentioned for fear of reprisal.
White elephants everywhere
The same facility, for the purpose of having an independent source of funds for its smooth running, successfully proposed to the county authority to build accommodation and seminar facilities on their idle land from which they would generate income.
The first contractor was stopped after completing a seminar hall, ten self-contained rooms and a kitchen in a record six months. His undoing, according to our source at the facility, was that he was professional – a euphemism for stingy – who stuck to the budget and never gave kickbacks to the fat cats at the county. The one who the mandarins at the county headquarters replaced him with was tasked and adequately funded to construct a three-floor storey hostel. He exhausted funds before even finishing the ground floor, and the project has stalled for the last one and a half years.
That is just one insignificant example of how funds are being pilfered in the counties. Residents elsewhere, unlike in Narok, are not rioting and issuing ultimatums, but they know what is going on. They only lament quietly. They will narrate to a visitor in surprising detail how, for instance, Sh30 million meant to do a 25km murram road ended up doing only 5km, and many other such failed undertakings.
They won’t take to the streets since, among other reasons, it may put an uncle or cousin or an auntie who could also have canvassed for the bursary of their daughter or son, on the spot. Or one might, in the remotest way possible, in a ‘trickle-down effect’, have benefited from the loot. It is mired in a web of communal co-existence that transcends all else. It has rendered the policies and purposes for which devolution was put up useless. But the lull in the counties should not for one second be mistaken for a job well done.
Hot on the heels of the riots in Narok, the last of which we are not about to see, came a damning World Bank report on expenditure in the counties, whose statistics were not shocking at all. Only 10 out of the 47 counties, according to the report, spent at least 30 per cent of their budgets on development projects: 37 counties failed to meet this bare threshold.
According to the report, only Wajir, Turkana, Bomet, Machakos, Murang’a, Homa Bay, West Pokot, Trans Zoia, Kisii and Nyamira, in that order, met the 30 per cent requirement. Obviously, the whole purpose of devolution, which was to bring closer and offer enhanced services to the public, is not working very well.
The report shows that, on average, most of the counties spent 21 per cent on development, 30 per cent on administration and 46 per cent on salaries, and warns that the high recurrent expenditure is potentially dangerous to the achievement of the objectives of devolution.
Salaries, fuel and office expenses are common components known to dig deep holes into which county funds disappear. Unbeknown to many, however, county assemblies, whose members hold sway over governors and their executive, have become the biggest threat to county funds. Members of the County Assemblies (MCAs) leverage on their power to have their way in the way affairs are managed.
This stems from the fact that they are the ones closer to the electorate and, for a governor to be re-elected, he must be in their good books. As such, MCAs travel by air to exaggerated workshops and seminars in local towns and cities from which they also earn hefty allowances. It should prick everyone’s conscience, indeed shame every proud Kenyan soul, that last year alone, the United States and eight other African and European countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Israel, Malaysia, Singapore, the Netherlands and Brazil, banned our members of county assemblies from visiting. They had complained of receiving too many and too large delegations from Kenya which hardly added any value to bilateral relationships.
Cumulatively, these expenditures run into hundreds of millions of shillings every budget year. The other category that has its hands in the devolution purse is a clique that has angled itself into the good books of county procurement departments. They masquerade as suppliers. In real sense however, they are briefcases for county fat cats, including but not limited to county executive members and those of the National Assembly.
In essence, devolution is, at its best, giving birth to little millionaires in the counties who, desperate to leap from the middle class into the rich category, use their ill-earned cash to invest in bars and restaurants, hardware stores and pharmacies here and there.
Devolution, as envisioned in Chapter Eleven, Article 174, of the Constitution was to, among other objects: promote social and economic development and the provision of proximate, easily accessible services throughout Kenya; and to facilitate the decentralisation of State organs, their functions and services, from the capital. This cannot be achieved if it is only 10 counties utilising barely 30 per cent of their budgetary allocations on development. Public hospitals in counties, for instance, have degenerated into consultation centres as pharmacies run dry.
And in yet another budget year – 2015-2016 – the National Treasury will give Sh274 billion to the counties. Your county will also get an additional Sh1.9 billion, besides other conditional grants, for the leasing of medical equipment.
The plot is unlikely to change in 2017. The narrative of the World Bank report will be the same, which begs the question: Has the concept of devolution failed us or is it our approach that is wrong?
The answer to this may lie in the 2013 General Election. We went into the poll with little knowledge of the just-promulgated Constitution; as such elective politics was left to seasoned politicians. They shared the spoils of the new opportunities of the new Constitution amongst themselves with most senior politicians scrambling to be in the Senate – which, as they have found out, is a big name but without real power. And so, the average politician competed for and won the office of the governor.
It was almost hilarious, a year later, to see senators salivating for the trappings of the office of the governor. At some point, they proposed the formation of county development boards, which they were to chair, but the National Assembly stood in their way.
Light at the end of the tunnel
The same happened with the county assemblies. We have in the legislatures of the counties the chair-throwing councillors of yesteryear. A year ago, this publication pitched for a certain county in Western Kenya to subscribe copies for its MCAs. The only reason the speaker of the assembly, who is the executive in charge of the assembly, declined to oblige is because he had no faith at all in his MCAs ability, leave alone desire, to read. Because of lack of knowledge of the new Constitution, these are the calibre of people that Kenyans elected to manage their affairs.
And so, experience in politics has taken centre stage rather than management skills in running country affairs, and will remain so until 2017 that this calibre of leaders will remain in office.
There is, however, light at the end of the tunnel. The frustrations that Kenyans have experienced from politicians have taught them a lesson. It is the reason why the Council of Governors’ Pesa Mashinani campaign has not gained traction with the masses. Why stick out your neck for more money when the little available is squandered and pocketed by individuals? Had governors demonstrated the ability and willingness to channel funds towards benefitting the masses, they would have had their support and the central government would not have been able to avoid increasing their funding.
Equally, Kenyans will not shun elective politics in 2017. Professionals are likely to the plunge – the ilk of former KCB managing director Martin Oduor and retired Kenya Airways boss Titus Naikuni, proven managerial records of large parastatals or private entities are likely to endear them to the people. The electorate, with hindsight, will also choose more wisely. Equally, the position of MCA has shown the potential to attract better leaders. The second term of devolution is poised to offer better candidates; the result can only be better governance as well.
By: David Wanjala (Nairobi Law)
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