Let Senate allow governors room to work

We, the people of Busia County, elected former attorney general Amos Wako to go to the Senate in Nairobi so that he could present and articulate the most critical issues facing our county to the nation and rest of the world.

We took into account his vast legal and international diplomatic experience, his arresting intelligence and his extensive national and international connections.

We did not elect him so that he could be spending half of his working week touring every village in Busia preparing himself to chair the next meeting of some county development forum or board of which we had never heard.

In a word, we did not elect Amos Wako to govern our county.

For that particular task, we, in our wisdom or stupidity, elected Mr Sospeter Ojaamong, the former MP for Amagoro and his deputy, Mr Kizito Wangalwa.

We wanted Wako to be the face of our county at the national and international levels.

We wanted him to be able to speak for us with the authority and gravitas that so many years of a first class education and experience had bestowed upon him.

We did not expect him to be spending half of his working week drinking changaa or beer with us in the village so that he could know where the latest hide-outs for stolen cattle had been established.

I do not know why the people of Nairobi County elected Mr Mike Sonko Mbuvi to go and represent them in the Senate.

I do know, however, why they elected Dr Evans Kidero to be their governor. They wanted an experienced manager — one who had already proved he could manage large institutions with devastating efficiency and effectiveness.

It is unlikely the people of Nairobi elected Mike Mbuvi Sonko so that he could become the chairman of the most powerful development co-ordination committee in the city of which, at the time of the general election last March, they had never heard.

Pointless turf wars

It is not for nothing that the 10th Parliament, in its wisdom, insisted that both the county governor and his deputy had to possess at least one university degree each.

No such barrier was placed in the path of those who later became our senators.

There are a lot of issues that can engage our senators fruitfully at the national and international levels. Using the powers conferred upon them by us, they can, for example, thoroughly interrogate the whole issue of our national security and what needs to be fixed.

From the floor of the Senate, they can, for example, summon former President Mwai Kibaki and ask him whether or not, from our national security perspective, it made sense for him to send our army into war-like Somalia at all.

They can ask him, or his closest security advisers, whether the only realistic option which we had left at the time in the war against al Shabaab was sending our army into southern Somalia.

These senators know very well that no decision must be left uninterrogated simply because it was made by a president, prime minister or even a pope.

If our senators are looking for favourable national newspaper headlines or TV coverage, they will get plenty of both if they shoot off in these new directions along which our governors cannot effectively compete with them.

They can shout themselves hoarse on the issue of whether or not it makes sense for us  to pull out of the International Criminal Court (ICC) merely because three of our fellow citizens are currently facing charges before that court.

They can debate the state of our environment or the question of whether or not this country should be spending billions of shillings, as it now is, trying to become a nuclear power.

The point is that there are scores of issues of national importance out there with which our senators could engage without having to join in petty and ultimately pointless turf wars with our governors over what, in the rural areas, are basically village issues.

The county representatives, MPs, governors and senators we elected across the country are not, collectively, stupid. Some among them are, in fact, highly intelligent and well informed.

They will know which proposed project in their area would be a duplication of any other one, proposed or ongoing.

In a county like Busia, there is no way any Member of Parliament can embark on any major project or initiative without the governor’s office getting wind of it and, if necessary, raising the red flag.

Articulate issues

The county governments and our MPs have only been operating fully for less than three months. Nobody, not even our senators, know exactly at what operational level or mode these different county structures are going to settle.

Nobody knows whether any formal co-ordination forum might yet be required.

So let the governors govern, the MPs execute their CDF agendas and the senators articulate county issues and defend the spirit and practice of devolution.

Then, after say one year, let us see how it has all gone. In the meantime, our senators must have no business sneaking themselves into our county government structures through the back door.

 

The writer is a lecturer and consultant in Nairobi.

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