For West Pokot residents, uhuru has just come

The biggest irony of the current Senate is that it was weakened by some if its own members during the 2010 Constitutional review talks in Naivasha.

Then MPs, the senators were members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Constitution (PSC) headed by Mohammed Abdikadir, now the presidential advisor on constitutional and legislative affairs.

On the table in Naivasha was a draft constitution that had created a powerful Senate as the Upper House with a clear supervisory role over the National Assembly as the Lower House.

Under that arrangement, the Senate was empowered to vet the decisions of the National Assembly. It was also the trial chamber for impeachment of the President.

Senior Counsel Nzamba Kitonga, the former chair of the committee of experts that drafted the Constitution, blames MPs of the 10th Parliament for watering down provisions on the Senate.

“We had created a very powerful Senate, but Naivasha tinkered with it. They even declared it a Lower House but we salvaged it to have what we have now,” Mr Kitonga said in a past interview.

The PSC crafted a peculiar structure of the Senate as the Lower House with limited legislative powers. Mr Kitonga describes the arrangement as a “constitutional absurdity”, arguing that the world over, the Senate is never the Lower House. He says the current Senate is a compromise of various competing interests.

Limited mandate
“The Senate is not the Lower House nor is it the Upper House.”
More significantly, the Kitonga committee had proposed a Senate that was to be involved in both national and county legislation.

West Pokot Governor Simon Kachapin strongly believes that as currently constituted, the Senate is incapable of delivering on its limited mandate. He considers it almost a nuisance. 

A number of governors share this opinion, saying the Senate is largely idle and struggling to be relevant by exercising  responsibilities assigned to the county assembly on the oversight of devolved governments.

Governor Kachapin feels that the Senate is a threat to devolution which he sees as the only hope for his people after many years of neglect by national governments.

The soft-spoken but firm former teacher is largely overshadowed by the county’s senator, the indefatigable Prof John Lonyangapuo.  In fact, some residents we interviewed think of Prof Lonyangapuo as their governor.

But Governor Kachapin is very clear minded, efficient, militantly pro-devolution and considers himself the embodiment of the spirit of a people struggling to regain their place after decades of abandonment. West Pokot is a land of contrasts; while the lower part is fertile and a producer of all manner of crops, the north is dry, and its residents often go without food.

“Devolution is like independence to us. We are starting from scratch, filling the gap that was not addressed by national governments for more than 50 years. There was a deliberate decision not to develop this area,” he said.

According to the governor, his challenge is to build an economy which had been abandoned. And he thinks the media has not been of much help in protecting devolution.

So when we settled in his Kapenguria office for the Sunday morning interview, the former principal of Ortum Boys High School was unhappy with a Sunday Nation headline that described governors as “besieged”. Two, he is  extremely uncomfortable about the portrayal of Pokot County as the home of cattle rustlers.

He holds that governors have been treated unfairly, misunderstood, accused, judged and condemned unheard. Moreover, he thinks the national government, which wields many more resources, has not been called to account.

“The controller of budget should release the allocation and use of funds for both governments. The national government only pays teachers and security agencies. The rest is paid for by county governments.”

He criticised the media for being unhelpful in explaining the roles of the various positions created by the 2010 Constitution.

Q: It is apparent that the offices responsible for the protection of devolution are speaking at cross purposes. What went wrong?

A: Implementation of the new Constitution has not been guided well. The Transitional Authority was supposed to serve both governments, but it was starved of funds. Civic education was not handled well especially on the role of governors, senators and the county assembly.

The Senate is supposed to make laws that empower counties. But we have a weak, bitter and desperate Senate. Most senators want to be engaged in development activities, but we are the people who have the money. Now they are saying they brought the money.  The Constitution is vague on oversight. We have a dangerous Senate. Unless we amend the law to have a strong Senate, this one will never be effective. It should be dissolved.
Q: You have been in office for almost a year now. What have you done?

A: We are lucky to have settled without much conflict. A lot is being done on health, education, agriculture and water. We are starting from scratch. We have done 15 new dispensaries and revived those built by CDF. We are building staff houses in all sub-counties and completing structures for a medical training college. We have never had a single one in West Pokot.

The county government has employed 68 medical workers, supplied drugs, equipment to all facilities and bought ambulances for Sh56 million. We are expanding the Kapenguria hospital theatre, casualty theatre  for  Sh10 million each as well as building a perimeter wall for Sh24 million. Can you imagine we had no mortuary, no X-ray machine, no supervision?
Q: What about other sectors?

We had four large locations which did not have a road. We have opened 45 roads where there were none and are expanding others. It is like a miracle to the people. You know 70 per cent of our county is semi-arid. Nothing was done by the central government here.

For 10 years, the former President came here only twice during campaigns. That is the mindset that we are a cattle rustling area. In fact, the only developments here were done by NGOs.

We are sinking boreholes in north Pokot, 24 water points, we are in the process of buying two drilling machines and have supplied water tanks to 10 schools. Our intention is to use gravity water for crop production.  Our county is among the 14 classified as marginalised.

We are supposed to get the equalisation fund. No senator has raised the matter. West Pokot got its first secondary school 17 years after independence. I am doing 30 new schools. There is no single school in the Turkwel Valley.

Q: But isn’t that a national government function?

A: The national government has failed us. It is not building schools. It is only paying teachers. That is why we are telling them they should manage the teachers and let us do the infrastructure.

My government has started building a training college for nursery school teachers at Sh35 million because we have employed all those who were trained in that area. The assembly is discussing a Bill to create a bursaries fund. We have already allocated Sh50 million for needy children.

Q: A significant part of the population has no food because of the arid conditions. What plans does you government have to ensure food security for all?

A: We have revived the irrigation scheme at Wei Wei. They are harvesting now. We want to revive three more irrigation schemes. The national government has done well in distribution of fertiliser.

More than 3,000 farmers have benefited. We produce a lot of food here. Ortum has the best onions. Despite our challenges we feed several counties in western Kenya such as Kisumu. We are not all about cattle rustling.  The county government is working hard to revive livestock farming. We have finished a vaccination campaign, rehabilitated 50 cattle dips and are setting up milk cooling plants. We have been selling our milk in Limuru. Soon the county government will set up an agricultural training college, the first in the county.

Q: West Pokot has a lot of resources but is home to a large population of poor people who fight over resources. What is not being done right?

A: We ought to utilise our resources better to benefit our people. We are well endowed with huge cement deposits at Ortum, fuel and gas and our agricultural potential is very high. Our livestock feed the whole of western Kenya. To us, it is now that we have got our independence. 

The power generation plant at Turkwell is bigger than the one in Naivasha. We have security challenges but they are being addressed. We have given out a vehicle to patrol Turkwell area.

Q: There has been conflict between the Pokots and Turkana over resources, administrative boundaries and cattle rustling which has tainted the image of your county. How do you address the image problem?

If you go to Makutano you will realise that it is cosmopolitan. The indigenous Pokot man does not say much but we are welcoming people. We are victims of stereotypes. A lot of great things happen here but the media is focused on the negative such as cattle rustling. It does not say that we deliver good milk to Brookside and our county performed well in national examinations. People should think about us positively. For West Pokot residents, uhuru has just come