Governors’ Threat To Shut Down Counties Not Igniting Public Fury, Why?
The Mt Kenya Times 
Council of Governors chairperson and Kirinyaga County Governor Anne Waiguru reading a statement while flanked by her colleagues yesterday.
By: Joseph Mutua Ndonga
Worth Noting:
- The only thing he can do is to remind the National Treasury to give counties first priority because they are expected to play a critical role of ‘addressing the challenges’ of ordinary Kenyans at the grassroots.
- This is not the first time we have heard the governors complaining. The story was the same during the era of former President Uhuru Kenyatta. The opposition would also make similar claims. That Uhuru did not believe in devolution and he was out to kill it.
- Well, the constitution allows the county bosses to collect taxes and rates from their respective counties. They have been doing this. Can they tells where this money go?
The war pitting the Council of Governors (CoG) and National Treasury took a new turn two days ago when the former in a strong worded statement gave the latter a 14-day ultimatum to release Sh94.3 billion arrears failure to which they will shut down the counties.
For three months, the counties have not received their budgetary allocations as required by law.
This has greatly affected the implementation of the services to our people including the most essential.
During this period, the employees in our respective counties have not received thier salaries. They have now threatened to down their tools and so if this matter is not addressed urgently we are staring at a bigger crisis, the governors stated after a full day-long meeting.
By opting to speak publicly, it seemed that governors thought that the move would ignite public anger. Kenyans would sympathize with them and hit out at the National Government for turning deaf ear to their plight. This did not come to pass.
The tone of CoG statement had left no doubt President William Ruto was thier main target not the National Treasury.
The challenges facing the counties contradict the spirit of the meeting we had held earlier with the President in Naivasha.
I’m not holding brief for President Ruto but my considered view is that he has no legal mandate to approve the funds.
The only thing he can do is to remind the National Treasury to give counties first priority because they are expected to play a critical role of ‘addressing the challenges’ of ordinary Kenyans at the grassroots.
This is not the first time we have heard the governors complaining. The story was the same during the era of former President Uhuru Kenyatta. The opposition would also make similar claims. That Uhuru did not believe in devolution and he was out to kill it.
Well, the constitution allows the county bosses to collect taxes and rates from their respective counties. They have been doing this. Can they tells where this money go?
Kenyans would also want to know how the funds were being accounted for. Who was doing the audit?
This brings me to the question that I think should bother governors most. What has contributed to public losing confidence in us? What can we do to regain the trust?
The answers lie in re-looking and interrogating the history of the devolution. The framers of the 2010 constitution captured the popular views and feelings of the majority of Kenyans. This is by ensuring the devolved units became the engine of the new dispensation.
The old constitution provided for centralized government and as such the state resources were being shared from the top.
They believed that this system was being abused and it was riddled with mega corruption scandals.
The devolved units would remedy this. Each county would receive its shareable budgetary allocation and this would mean the people at grassroots benefited. This will spur economic growth; the locals particularly the youth and women will get jobs.
Besides, they will sit in the decision making organs created to conceive and allocate funds to various projects as well as overseeing thier implementation.
But little did they know they were devolving corruption and creating the position of a governor who would end up behaving a small God.
After luring them during the election campaigns, the county boss would not longer value thier contributions.
He or she would instead run the county with cronies and friends whose main goal would be to enrich themselves.
They would dish out lucrative tenders and contracts to companies which are run by their proxies. Reports also indicated the ghost workers, who were paid billions of shillings, were related to them.
Well, a good number of the current governors are trying to eradicate these cartels.
Besides, the war between some governors and members of their respective county assembly has not been auguring well in the court of public opinion. This is because it is mainly hinged on disputes related to misunderstanding on how to share the loot.
It is only in rare cases you would hear the governor is being fought because of refusing to allow the MCAs to have their way. This in terms of raiding public coffers and allowing them to go for luxurious foreign tours camouflaged as ‘bench-marking tours’.
The issue of politics was also at play. Some of the governors were spending much of their energy and time in championing the partisan political agenda of their respective party leaders.
This would work at the expense of serving the interests of the people who elected them.
I hope the current governors will learn something from this article. That is if they want to restore public faith and confidence.
Joseph Mutua Ndonga is a writer and political analyst based in Nairobi
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