Meru was this week awash with opulence. No, it was not the business moguls of the world who had swooped in on business, perhaps to find out how to make millions of dollars from miraa juice, now that the Britons have decided they are done with chewing the Meru cash crop. No, the limos and choppers were in the land of Senator Kiraitu Murungi and Council of Governors’ chair Peter Munya ferrying the 47 county bosses. I’m told even dusty, back-alley hotel rooms that normally charge Sh500 on a normal day were smug enough to blame any would-be guest for not booking in advance. “We are fully booked, please make an effort to book in advance next time.” The aura of affectation that flooded Meru during the third edition of Devolution conference, which ends today, was captured by a writer with The Standard — yeah we set the standards for the nation.
Our writer filed the story of a businessman who took advantage of the governors’ summit to sell cars going for as much as Sh10 million, in a town where I once could not find some spare parts for my old, modest jalopy.
Anyhow, the county chiefs were in Meru not to flaunt choppers and guzzlers, but to take stock of how far we have gone in three years after we started implementing the 2010 Constitution, the centerpiece of which is devolution of power and resources.
And while my two cents on devolution might not rate much, I will give it anyway. Of course you have been bombarded to no end with a list of achievements the governors and their sycophants think they have managed.
You have also heard from the other side, most notably from President Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been lambasting the county chiefs over corruption and has vowed that those who don’t check graft in their counties would taste the sloshy ugali and waterlogged cabbages that they serve at Kamiti Maximum Prison for lunch. So, we will not regurgitate that.
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My worry is that we have lost touch with the taxpayer. The governors, I must say, have adopted a chest-thumping, hard-nosed — even activist — attitude, and are talking of things like “our right as per the Constitution” in their endless fights for cash with the national government.
While I support the view that they must be given cash for health and other devolved services, we have also noticed a subtle, egoistic streak especially in their resistance to welcome help that would bring to the dusty little town the kind of medical equipment that keep residents travelling over many days to Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.
And the reason has not been cost or quality of the machines, or even that the deal clinched by the national government was not implementable, but simply that “we were not fully consulted”.
The national government, on its part, has come under deserved criticism for delaying funds to the counties. I have tried endlessly to make calls to find out who between the counties and the State has not been telling the truth about funding, but what worried me most is the attitude of the two constitutional combatants. First, corruption. The counties have been blamed for spending heavily on peripheral matters. I will not recount the old tale of curtains and Facebook accounts and wheelbarrows that have cost a king’s ransom. Or even the tragi-comical story of contraptions contrived to resemble fire-fighting vehicles.
Back in Embu, I can’t drive to Gichiche village because some national government roads have never been constructed half a century after independence, and now the county can’t do anything because local politicians are fixated on who should fix it, as if the residents care.
Besides the ostentatious lifestyles and self-serving 2017 politics, politicians must remember the whole point of devolution was to reach the lowliest of the poor, not a tug-of-war for riches between the State and governors.
