Devolution is a success story despite hitches

Chairman of the Council of Governors Isaac Ruto (left) with Kwale governor Salim Mvurya during the Devolution conference at Leisure Lodge Resort in Diani, Kwale County on April 3. 2014. PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT

What you need to know:

  • This gripe is buttressed by the observation that devolution has created a lot of offices, and of course the counties are recruiting a lot of people.
  • On the executive side, the total number of new executive offices in the devolved government is just about 500, or 750 if you include the county public service boards.

If you follow the media, you may have discerned that there are two devolution narratives.

One narrative is that devolution is a Frankenstein monster. It is the narrative of tin gods, globe-trotting MCAs and chicken taxes. Devolution is cast as decentralisation of corruption, a fiscal disaster, an administrative nightmare.

The second narrative is that of devolution as a godsend. It is the narrative of Mandera about to get its first stretch of tarmac road — all of 20 kilometres; of Machakos’ new (well, almost new) fleet of police cars and ambulances — and futuristic cities; of Garissa county building 21 maternity units in one fell swoop (only six beds each — very clever).

This narrative is best captured by Mandera Governor Ali Ibrahim Roba’s recent quip to the effect that the county was finally part of Kenya.

Monster or godsend? I will argue and hopefully demonstrate that devolution is so far a remarkable success.

POLITICAL OBJECTIVES

This is not to deny megalomania, corruption or incompetence in the counties. But these are in the nature of politics and government here and everywhere.
Devolution has three pillars or elements — political, financial (or fiscal) and administrative (managerial). I will comment on each of them.

The political objectives of devolution are twofold. First, it is meant to address what we had agreed was overconcentration of power in the presidency.

The second is distributional grievances — what we call the sharing of the national cake. The two are related. The power wielded by the president included deciding where public money was spent, allocating public land, and distributing jobs be they plum government appointments or recruitment into the police and the military.

There is no doubt that, one year on, devolution has had a significant impact on these two objectives. Our political life no longer revolves around the presidency. To be sure, this is not the consequence of devolution alone but rather of the constitutional architecture as a whole.

The more significant impact is on distributional grievances. This we can say unequivocally that devolution is so far a resounding success, Mandera being a case in point.

Let us turn to finance. One of the gripes that one hears often, particularly in Nairobi, is that devolution is costing us an arm and a leg. It has even been proposed that the counties should be reduced to a more manageable number like 14.

OFFICES ELIMINATED

This gripe is buttressed by the observation that devolution has created a lot of offices, and of course the counties are recruiting a lot of people.

Much less mentioned, is the number of offices that the Constitution eliminated. Let us do the math.

We have just under 1,500 county assembly members, who replaced over 2,400 councillors. Sure enough, the MCAs are earning more than councillors did, but the complete separation of powers means that they do not exercise executive authority — they do not sit on tender committees. On account of this alone, each MCA is costing us much less than councillors did.

On the executive side, the total number of new executive offices in the devolved government is just about 500, or 750 if you include the county public service boards. We have over twice that number of DCs and DOs who are effectively redundant.

It turns out, however, that far from straining our finances, devolution is in fact improving them and very significantly at that.

In their budgets for the current financial year, the counties have projected collecting Sh100 billion in revenue. This is an amazing four times the amount collected by local authorities last financial year. I think Sh100 billion may be a bit ambitious — although perhaps not as Mombasa reports that it has increased revenue collection six fold, from Sh50 million to between Sh200 and Sh250 million a month.

According to the national government’s figures, the counties’ wage bill for the coming year is projected at Sh70 billion. This covers 107,000 staff comprising of 38,000 local authority staff and 70,000 that the national government wants to transfer to the counties.

Now, if indeed the counties are able to raise Sh100 billion in taxes, even if not this year, it means that they will be able to cover their entire wage bill from the increase in revenue alone. This is one more reason why the wage bill hysteria we have been treated to lately makes no sense.

What about management? The predominant theme on the administrative pillar has been the question of capacity. We were warned that devolution would have to be gradual, lest the lack of capacity disrupt the provision of services.

POWER IS GRABBED

But this was politically naïve. Power is grabbed — I have never seen it transferred gradually. But the apocalyptic scenarios of services collapse has not happened. Far from services collapsing, the county governments have, by and large, hit the ground running.

Devolution is of course not without challenges. The biggest one in my view is, however, not in the devolved governments, but rather in the national government, and the Nairobi based national elite generally — the unwillingness or inability to come to terms with the reality of not being the fulcrum around which the country revolves. To quote another leader from northern Kenya: “Shida ya devolution iko Nairobi.”

David Ndii is managing director of Africa Economics