Governor Korane calls for fair revenue allocation

As the war on the revenue-sharing formula rages on, two governors have argued that the fronted revenue sharing formulas are discriminatory.

Garissa Governor Ali Korane and his Marsabit counterpart Governor Mohammed Ali on Tuesday said they want revenue sharing to be fair because the northern frontier counties have for a long time been marginalised.

“The presentation that there are parts in Kenya where there are no people is false. What we have are profound effects of marginalisation,” said Governor Korane.

According to him, the one man, one vote, one shilling is not inclusive and is only meant to further marginalise the counties of Garissa, Wajir, Mandera, Marsabit and Isiolo.

He said the fact that there are no many people who have been registered as voters does not mean that there is no population in those counties, which is the real sense have more people than the counties in the Mt Kenya region.

“They are not registered as voters simply because the government has not given them national identity cards,” he said.

“When you look at registered voters, Garissa has 163,000 registered voters while Kirinyaga has 359,000 registered voters. 60 per cent of the people in Kirinyaga are registered as voters while it is only 19.7 per cent of the people who are registered as voters in Garissa,” he said.

He argued that the parameters being used to come up with the formula are not representative because compared to other areas, the number of health facilities in northeastern are few, whereas 90 percent of the people there are pastoralists.

“We have the population and this is being presented as a contest between the north and Mount Kenya regions. We have nothing against them, they should get their right,” said Mr Korane.

He said while Petronila Were’s formula tries to equalise county allocations, still there will be nine counties which will lose, and therefore something should be done to make sure that the counties do not lose.

On the other hand Governor Ali said senators should make sure that the formula they support will be fair.

He supported a hybrid formula, as well as the 12 member senate committee formed on Monday to resolve the stalemate.

“Let the sparsely populated areas not lose what they had before. I want to plead with senate to exercise the principal of equity,” he said.

They were speaking at Karen Medical Training College where IGAD is donated personal protective equipment to be taken to the Daadab Refugee Camp.