Eastleigh deserves Government tour

It is easy to tell that the Government has given up all forms of authority in Eastleigh – the fastest growing business hub in the city.

Both the local and the central Governments are either disinterested about what exactly goes on in Eastleigh or are plainly pretty clueless on how to handle matters in the area.

Despite hosting brisk business running into millions of dollars, Eastleigh remains by and large a Somali enclave with little Government presence.

With the Chief’s Office — the last Government outpost — having been carted away to create room for private development, it is telling just how helpless the Government has become.

You would think that the same zeal with which we spend over Sh1.2 billion manufacturing the first Somali Government after the ouster of Siad Barre in 1991 should inform the Government’s decision not just to exert its full authority in Eastleigh but to also demonstrate that Mogadishu outlaws will not export their trade to Nairobi.

But this is just one of the challenges. With its bustling crowds, Eastleigh still suffers acute lack of running basic utilities.

Its roads are impassable. Sewage and rotting garbage flow through gullies. Traffic is thick with some access roads fenced off. Verandas are littered and manholes gape dangerously.

And even as building experts warn of unsafe structures in Nairobi, the real danger lurks in Eastleigh. Live electric cables lie open in some shopping malls — some snaking just under metallic staircases, others dangling treacherously overhead.

Some buildings have already developed cracks, hardly a year after they were put up. Some, especially their basement are poorly lit, with unmarked exit points. The malls stretching the main street of the shopping centre are one big mass grave in waiting.

However, except for the City Council licences glued to ceilings of shops, there is little else in the form of Government in Eastleigh. Until it happens — and it will surely do, this ticking time bomb remains insignificant to city authorities.

The Government, on the other hand, maintains bookish silence like it is true that Eastleigh is a "Sovereign State". It is this inaction that has quickly transformed what was once a haven for Somali refugees into a commune of criminals – Kenyans and Somalis alike.

Today, it is an open secret that Eastleigh serves as the recruiting and financial centre for hardline Islamists exporting war back to Somali and elsewhere on the globe, a terrorist hiding place and a money-laundering hub. Tax evasion rings have it easy, as smuggled goods find their way into the market without as much ado.

There are two things why the Government need not remain helpless. First, Eastleigh is not just another Mogadishu outpost. It is the Dubai for so many Kenyans — selling anything and everything.

By neglecting Eastleigh, the Government has left her people to their own devices — exposed to all forms of risk.

Secondly, it is the duty of any disciplined Government to provide services to a community that does not only pay taxes but also serves a large of part of the population. And with the onset of heavy rains, the imperative to repair roads in Eastleigh just became more urgent.

Of Gays and their statistics

The marriage of Charles Ngengi to his sweetheart Daniel Chege in London has exposed our Government for what it is — out of sorts with its own priorities.

To any Government, Sh40 million may not be a lot of money but to think that the same will be spent on counting gay people in the country is simply mindless.

In fact, not any amount of money is enough for this sort of task at this stage.

Even as Chege settles into his marriage, he knows that the problem with his other lifestyle has more to do with accommodation in society than statistics.

And if this should be true, the Government’s planned census as the first step towards managing HIV/AIDS and other complications among the gay community is to say the least, holding the wrong side of the stick.

The biggest challenge at hand is not that we do not know how big the gay community is but that we have the wrong information about this community.

Much of what we know about this lifestyle is inaccurate, biased, and served to us with the aim to ostracise, and condemn.

Unfortunately, this has driven the gay community and their challenges underground.

And like in the fight against HIV/AIDS, the single most obstacle to helping the gay community is stigma. Stigma fans denial, ignorance and prevents people from seeking treatment.

To be gay in Kenya therefore must be a lot harder, because besides the stigma, the law punishes this practice with nearly 15 years of prison time.

Before thinking that we want to know how many of our neighbours are gay therefore, the Government should devote the money to a campaign that opens our health system to gays.

A census for the sake of statistics is doomed to fail.

As Minister, I too would keep my fuel guzzler

Like Otieno Kajwang, or even Soita Shitanda, I would not surrender my so-called fuel-guzzler for some pint-sized car. But unlike Shitanda, my disregard for the directive from Treasury would not be for mere status because as a Cabinet Minister, I would certainly afford my own monster of a car, without taking a loan and secondly, I can fathom more intelligent excuses to stay with my Prado.

As a Minister, I would hate to respect a directive — executive or otherwise — whose sanctions for non-compliance is anything but a sack. If I can’t be sacked, so will I keep not just the car, but a convoy. As a politician and a Minister at that, I would know the difference between what sells to my ‘people’ and what counts as mere city populism clothed as austerity measures.

But what makes the motivation to disregard this directive even sweeter is the fact that while the move talks of saving the country close to Sh2 billion a year in costs, we are yet to tie the same amount to specific projects.

Until this is done, respecting such a move would be creating room to transfer money from one small hole occupied by many of us, to another hole occupied by one person. In other words, my continued use of the now endangered fuel guzzler is intended to democratise government extravagance.

There is another reason I would suspect such a directive is meant to score political points rather than cut Government spending.

It appears the Government never runs out of cash to spend, including splashing Sh100 million to MPs who could not even be elected as village elders with the excuse that they serve national constituencies.

Granted, nominated MPs are supposed to serve special interests but except for one or two, then ones I know and see, serve mean political interests. If Treasury can find money for non-elected leaders, can’t it find twice as much for a Mininster who has a real, not imagined constituency.

And truth be told, as Minister, I would still need the Prado to access my ‘people’ off the highway in Talitia deeply buried somewhere in Bumula, one of the richest constituencies in the country — so thinks Oparanya of Planning Ministry— without a patch of tarmac and where Mumias Sugar Company is the only Government.

But if finally I accept to scale down to a low-engine capacity, all I will need to be given is the specified maximum engine capacity and not the brand of the car I should drive, lest I serve as an honourable billboard for this favoured car.

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