Governor Kivutha Kibwana looks to Nairobi to save his job

Much of what the first-time visitor to Makueni County sees speaks of adversity and isolation. The narrow two-lane highway that takes you from Machakos Town into Makueni passes through barren hilly territory.

Along the way, certain features press to be noticed. Above everything else, there are these valiant attempts at agriculture. What extraordinary labour must be going into terracing these forbidding, denuded hillsides and planting anything on them!

Then there are the many churches along the roadway and their imposing structures — the land of adversity is fertile ground for growing the army of Jesus.

As your mind is absorbed in Makueni’s mesmerising landscape and the impertinent thoughts it inspires, suddenly, without any warning, you find yourself in Wote, the county's administrative capital, a hot, dusty, little market centre in the middle of nowhere.

BUDGET WINDFALL

In Wote, speaking a language other than the local tongue immediately identifies you as an outsider. The normal requests of a hungry man made in English may inadvertently sound to the waitress as the arrogant demands of an alien.

If devolution was intended to bring government and its services closer to the people and help lift the lives of historically “marginalised” communities in Kenya, Makueni County residents ought to be its most ardent fans.

More than Sh4 billion was supposed to have rained on the residents of Makueni in the 2013-2014 financial year. More than Sh5 billion has been allocated for 2014-2015. It’s a great windfall in a county with a population of less than one million.

But the attitude among locals seems to be one of ambivalence. I asked a man who said he was a shopkeeper in the centre of Witu to identify for me a major development project the county government had undertaken in his immediate environment.

MAJOR PROJECT

He drew a blank. As we chatted, clouds of dust blew in from the public square to his right where boys noisily tackled each other for an old soccer ball, many of them going about their daily lives as if the county government didn’t exist.

On the weekend I visited, a group of men were busy building an annex to the county assembly complex, the most visible major county government project in Wote.

But the government complex is so far away from the town's centre that many locals may not even be aware that a major project is under way behind those hardy trees up there on the hill. Or if they know about it, they don’t seem to care.

At a so-so watering hole a few hundred metres down the hill from the complex, youngish men spent their Sunday afternoon drinking beers and sodas and watching English Premier League matches on TV screens.

DISTRACTED

The games of rich young men playing half a world away provided a more enjoyable diversion than local politics, with the matches provoking more excitement among the patrons of this bar than the political wrangles in their own backyard.

In Makueni, perhaps the most dysfunctional county in our country, government in the era of devolution seems as irrelevant to the lives of many residents today as it was when Nairobi was still the centre of power.

Being in Wote makes Nairobi feel like a world away. In the big city to the northwest, the frenzy on the opinion pages of our newspapers is about such phenomenal issues as cashless parking and speed limits, not with basics like clean, drinking water.

Yet, it's to faraway Nairobi that Governor Kivutha Kibwana is looking to save his job and to resolve the political impasse in his county. Billions in cash and local control apparently are not enough. That’s the paradox of Makueni County.

Mr Gekonde is an editor with Nation.co.ke.