Devolution can only work if governors are kept on toes

By Henry Munene

One week ago, I was crisscrossing the dusty footpaths of Runyenjes in Embu County. I also went south to Siakago, to Gachoka and all the way to Manyatta.

In between that peripatetic weekend schedule, I kept scrolling down my phonebook and calling church, political and other leaders.

I had been doing that even in the days before travelling, thanks to social media, phone calls and other tech-modes that have come to collapse distances between places and people in recent times. 

My self-assigned mission was to see how, in the wake of the clamour for more funds to the counties, my upcountry and other county governments are faring in the area of development. As it turned out, most leaders in the counties are very upbeat about the coming days, and so are the residents. I may have been too quick and a bit over the top with my expectation that local leaders in say, Siakago, would be in a position to tell how my Governor Martin Wambora, is doing so far.

The feeling among local leaders and residents, I was surprised, is that it is too soon to judge how county governments have fared so far.

True, most governors have been grappling with teething problems like  election petitions, appointments and putting in place structures and policies around which devolved governance should revolve.  Be that as it may, I think it is not too soon to hold our governors to account, mainly for two reasons. One, many of them are already beating the war drums in their clamour for more cash to the counties.

Of course, I would love to see more cash going to the grassroots because, as I have said before, this country has bled for eons as a result of a centralised system where revenue collected across the country never left Nairobi. This has had the deleterious effect of starving the villages of cash, so much that it became difficult to believe Lavington and Muchonoke were in the same country. But with the push for more cash hitting crescendo, it is important to ask ourselves what we have done with the ‘little’ cash already allocated.

Now, a report released and signed by the office of  Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo on Wednesday makes it more urgent for us to evaluate the performance of county governments even as everyone says it is too early.

According to the report, counties had about Sh23 billion to spend between March and June but, surprisingly, many of the 47 units were not in a position to spend the cash. The county governments were unable to spend the cash due to “lack of capacity and lengthy procurement processes within the limited time in which the counties were  expected to use the resources”.  While I was happy to note that my governor was among those who were able to spend the cash, it was a bit of an irony that counties headed by those behind the clamour for more cash were mainly not able to spend the cash from the Transition Authority.

My feeling is that we may miss the devolution bus if we focus more on more cash, power and other goodies to the counties and pay scant attention to how well we are utilising what has already been allocated and disbursed.

As county bosses will soon realise, five years is an awfully short period of time to deliver under the hail of expectation from the public.

This, therefore, means as we give the new counties time to deliver, we must also hold them to account given that time flies fast. The media, civil society and other people of goodwill must point out the pitfalls that may make the devolution process ineffectual.  That is why I was a bit disappointed that local leaders and residents think they should stand aside and watch as governors do their work. It’s our work, friends!

The writer is Revise Editor for The Counties