You just have to look at the profiles and credentials of individuals being proposed for the position of governor of Nairobi to appreciate how low we have stooped in terms of standards and credentials we demand for public leadership.
In choosing a new governor for Nairobi, we should raise the bar very high. We have an opportunity to bring in a governor that can exterminate the ‘kanju’ mind-set from the leadership running the capital city.
Several years since we transited to devolved government, the management of the capital and leadership is yet to shed the mental baggage and mentality of the ‘kanju’ mind-set.
What do I mean by ‘kanju’? A governance regime characterised by theft of public resources, clueless planning, bloated workforces, predatory taxation of the people and brutal evictions and harassment of hawkers.
I want a governor with no connections or links with the ‘kanju’ spoils system, who will come with a breath of fresh air — ready to break fiefdoms left behind by out-going regimes.
Granted, politics as we practice it, tends mostly to throw mediocrity to power. But as we have seen in the improved services Major General Mohammed Abdallah Badi of the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) has delivered in the short period he has been managing part of the functions of the county government, the position of governor of Nairobi will require men and women of high calibre, knowledge and experience.
The requirements and credentials for the new governor should be set beyond the reach of jokers and populists.
In truth, Maj-Gen Badi and his team have not done anything spectacular.
Digging boreholes in informal sector settlements, building new pedestrian walkways in the CBD, mobilising the National Youth Service into participating in garbage collection, and recovering public land only scratch the surface of Nairobi’s big development challenges — including the backlog in investment in the water, housing and health sectors, inadequate markets, chaotic commuter service networks, congestion, dysfunctional traffic lights and a collapsed public management system.
The reason Maj-Gen Badi and his team have been widely celebrated the passion and new sense of urgency in management of public affairs.
The team has thrilled the public by its approach to managing the affairs of city projects. Kenyans can see that that we still have — within the ranks of public officials — individuals and cadres who approach leadership and public appointments and important national assignments not just as chance to siphon billions from public coffers, but as opportunity make a difference to the lives of the ordinary citizens.
How I wish that the governor we will elect will be a person with a similar mind-set, and individual keen to deliver public service with a similar sense of urgency as displayed by Maj-Gen Badi and his team.
The problem in this country is that leadership is firmly in the hands of self-centred elites whose minds are so glued on their own personal prospects and political careers — and who shamelessly look at the rest of us as mere vote banks — not human beings interested and deserving of decent living standards.
Clearly, the bureaucracy running our capital is an entity that has suffered years of institutional decay, rendering it bereft of ideas and totally incapable of managing and planning the pace and growth at which the city is evolving.
Today, the priority of priorities in fighting corruption at City Hall is deep reforms in basic accounting and financial management. We have a regime where the minimal internal controls are not observed, where accountants cannot even do things as rudimentary as reconciling records of revenue in cash books with the actual cash in the bank.
I read from the report of the Auditor-General how the county government did not have records of some 26 M-Pesa pay bill numbers. The report report contains a litany of sorry tales about unaccounted cash withdrawals, missing payment vouchers, gaping discrepancies between financial statements and ledgers and irregular payments to suppliers.
Which begs the question: If you cannot do something as basic as keeping proper records of the revenues which you have collected, if you are unable to reconcile the records in the cash book with bank statements on a monthly basis, how can you prevent corruption?
I want all these jokers salivating for governorship of Nairobi to answer this question: What must be done to bring the capital investment in Nairobi’s water and sanitation sector in line with the pace at which the city is growing? How do you intend to create sustainable fiscal space for water and sanitation services?
We should have adopted the proposal in the original proposal of the BBI to abolish the county government in Nairobi and to allow the city to be run as a special entity managed by technocrats.
If we can’t elect a governor with deep domain knowledge and experience in public financial management and with skills in other key areas to manage Nairobi, then let’s leave the running of the city to Maj-Gen Badi and his team.
