Coded language used to undermine devolution

By Dominic Odipo

Kenya: Were the original thirteen colonies of what is today the United States of America “ready” to govern themselves by the beginning of 1776? If they were not, then roughly when could they have been?

Was the Democratic Republic of Congo “ready” to govern itself by the beginning of July, 1960 when it was granted independence by the Belgians? Did the chaos which quickly engulfed that country, including the overthrow and assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, occur because the Congo was not yet ready for independence in 1960?

What about Kenya? Was this country “ready” for independence by the beginning of December, 1963? Should the British have postponed our independence until at least 1975 as some top Conservative Party leaders had suggested?

Consider. By the end of 1963, more than 80 per cent of all adult Kenyans could neither read nor write. When we went to the polls on May 10, 1963 to elect our MPs, senators and the prime minister, most of the voters could only identify their political parties by their symbols, not their names. To the average voter then, Kanu was Jogoo while Kadu was the open thumb.

We had only one radio station, the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, and no television. We had no national university, no national airline nor shipping line.

Were we, then, “ready” for independence in December, 1963?

If you consider this question carefully, you will easily realise that the answer is an unmitigated Yes. First of all, the British had no business being here. This was our land, not theirs.

Whether 80 per cent of our people could not read or write was absolutely irrelevant. We had an unalienable right to chart our own destiny whether the British understood that dynamic or not. It was not up to the British colonialists to determine whether or not we were ready for independence. We were always ready.

True, independence came with its own special challenges and ironies. Some of our leaders stole or unfairly acquired millions of acres of land from their own people. We murdered some of our best and brightest under our new national flag. But no one ever seriously suggested that we should appeal to the British to return and help us govern ourselves.

In an earlier articles carried in this column, we stated that the most important function of our new county governors would be to defend and protect the core interests of their counties from all internal or external forces, including the national government. In order to do this, we said, we needed to elect governors who could stand up to anyone they perceived posed a clear and significant danger to their counties’ core interests, whether that person happened to be, for the time being, the head of the national government.

Three months into the new administration, we can repeat that statement here, verbatim. One of the most dangerous weapons that those who do not believe in the spirit of devolved government are likely to unleash upon county governments are loaded words and symbols. There are certain words which those who manage the affairs of county governments need to be very careful about. Among those words is “ready”.

Let us take Busia County, for example. There is no major industrial enterprise anywhere in this county. By traditional economic parameters, it is probably one of the poorest in the whole country. Yet, paradoxically, it is one of the most educated, if you use the number of professors per capita as your gauge.

Is this county “ready” for self-governance? The answer, just like in the case of Kenya in December, 1963 is an unmitigated Yes. Like all of our other counties, Busia has always been ready to govern itself. It is ready to spend any amount of money that the national government can allocate to it. No one should use the subterfuge of the word “ready” to deny it any funds that would otherwise be allocated to it. This applies to all of our 47 counties. Just like it was not up to the British to determine whether or not Kenya was “ready” for independence in 1963, it is not up to the national government to determine whether or not any of our counties is ready for self-governance.

Those who argue that our counties are not ready for this or that function, and therefore for this or that new line of funding need to be quickly exposed for what they really are-- dangerous closet anti-devolutionists.

If those who drafted our new Constitution had been of the view that our counties were not ready for self-governance, they would not have put devolution so squarely at the core of that constitution.

Finally, if the county governments are not financially ready for self-governance, then the national government, too, is not ready. How many billions of shillings do we lose every year through corrupt or suspect financial transactions at the national level? If the national government is ready, why do we lose so much money every year? We must call a spade a spade.

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

dominicodipo@yahoo.co.uk