Devolution a blessing to the North

Seven years ago, in 2013, decentralised governance comprising the President and 47 county governors taking up the reins of power at the national government and the grassroots, respectively.

The former Northeastern Province became Mandera, Garissa and Wajir counties. The new outfits were rearing to shrug off the long-standing “marginalised” tag.

And, truly, the sun has shone bright for the restive region as the counties negotiated a working relationship with the national government in terms of power and revenue sharing and have overcame political, fiscal and administrative challenges in the delivery of services.

As new entities, county governments lacked the capacity, knowledge and resources to effectively deliver the devolution dividend of shared prosperity, enhanced delivery of vital services and improved management of public resources. but while challenges remain, there are several bright spots, successes and good practices in the colonial-era “Northern Frontier District”.

Devolution has filled the residents with hope of a bright future. It has boosted separation of powers by adding a new layer of governance, brought resources closer to the people and governors lead the local development agenda of the region that had suffered negligence under successive central governments.

Secondly, devolution has brought some level of resources and development to the local level, particularly to counties that had been marginalised from national politics for a long time.

True, resources haven’t been enough to level these counties with the other regions, Nevertheless, there are new healthcare facilities, ambulances, tarmac roads and street lights, to mention a few, that wouldn’t be there were it not for devolution.

The rationale behind devolution was taking services closer to the people and allowing them to determine their own fate through constant engagement with their leaders. This participatory democracy allows the people to feel that they are directing their own destiny.

Devolution was touted as a cure to the skewed allocation of resources. And, by many accounts, it has achieved quite a lot — deviating from a governance system in faraway Nairobi in which policymakers formulated policies for places they knew nothing about, with the resultant consequence that certain areas became more developed than others.

In the formative years of devolution, the inevitable friction between the national government, senators and governors nearly got us off to a bad start. Over the years though, most of the differences have been ironed out, paving the way for speedy implementation of projects, seeing the counties pick themselves up from the dust of marginalisation.

The process of releasing money for counties is still painfully slow — sometimes it’s thought that the national government uses it as a power tool to frustrate governors’ efforts.

A county like Mandera, which had not had development since Independence, is enjoying the fruits of devolution as the county benefited from devolution in terms of tarmac roads, all-weather murram roads in all sub-counties, fully fledged Level 4 hospitals in almost all sub-counties which reduced infant mortalities, improved agriculture and municipality services.

The Kenyan experience demonstrates the promise and pitfalls of devolution. On the positive side, some benefits will trickle down when resources are fully devolved to powerful political actors at the local level. The most obvious benefits have been visible and easy-to-build developmental goods like street lighting and roads, as well as increased employment in county government administration.

LAND GRIEVANCES
One of the most serious deficiencies of devolution though has been the failure to devolve land administration functions. There’s always the potential for conflict. In addition, meaningful development is difficult. The impact of this has definitely been felt.

Land grievances fuelled the post-election violence in 2007-2008 but have not been addressed, and they have arguably been exacerbated by devolution. All the important land functions, such as titling, remain in the Ministry of Lands while the county land management boards have been abolished.

One can argue that there is merit in devolution, especially in the North. The region might not be at par with the rest but devolution presented a brilliant opening to showcase that by devolving the previously centralised resources, the hitherto marginalised ‘frontier’ counties can make huge strides in terms of development programmes initiated by the governors.