New boundaries after team sifts census data

File | NATION
Kenyan Nubian Council of Elders chairman Issa Abdulfaraj before he met the chairman of the boundaries commission, Mr Andrew Ligale. He wanted Langa’ta constituency split into three for equitable distribution of resources.

What you need to know:

  • Parliament to pass laws to specify sharing of revenue between the national government and counties, but it will be difficult to do away with CDF for now

At last, the team to review boundaries can get down to work.

The Interim Independent Boundaries Review Commission can start demarcating constituencies afresh following the release of the census results which show that Kenya’s population has risen to 38.6 million.

The IIBRC, which is scheduled to submit its recommendations for both old and new electoral areas by August next year, has been eagerly awaiting the census results to guide it in fixing boundaries of constituencies and wards.

IIBRC chairman Andrew Ligale said they would sift through the census figures and come up with a system of arriving at the 80 new constituencies which are to be created.

“Now that we have the census report, we will look at the figures and calculate how we will arrive at the number of new constituencies which are required to be created,” he said.

In creating new constituencies, the Ligale led team will be guided by the density of the population and its trends, means of communication, geographical features and community interests.

The number of constituencies has been increased from 210 to 290 under the new Constitution.

This therefore places the population quota, which is the figure arrived at after dividing the total population by the number of constituencies, at 133,138 people.

This, in ideal terms, means that constituencies which have more than 133,138 people should be split or some of their parts hived off for the creation of other electoral units.

According to the census report, Embakasi constituency in Nairobi with a population of 925,775 people, Kasarani (525,624), Juja (486,121), Mandera Central (417,294), Kisauni (405, 930), Eldoret North (391,655), Kajiado North (387,538), Saboti (387,366), Naivasha (376,243) and Turkana North (374,414) post the highest population and should be split.

The least populated constituencies are Lamu East (18,841), Isiolo South (43,118), Saku (46,502), Wundanyi (56,021), Samburu East (59,094), Galole (60,866), Mogotio (60,959), Laisamis (65,669), Budalang’i (66,723) and Taveta (67,665).

Mr Ligale however, said his team was likely to come up with more constituencies which require splitting based on the population quota that has been set as the guiding factor.

“We are likely to find that those constituencies that are to be sub-divided are likely to be more than 80. In the event of this, we will have to use our discretion to ensure that we don’t end up with all of them in one area,” he said.

In addition to the determining factors, the Constitution gives leeway to the IIBRC to delineate constituencies with a population either less or more than the population quota of 133,138 people.

However, this variation will be higher in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu by a margin of 40 per cent, raising the figure to 186,393.

For sparsely populated areas such as North Eastern Province, constituencies could have a population of 84,883 — 40 per cent less than the population quota.

In other areas, the population figures in constituencies will either be 30 per cent more (173,079 people) or less (93,197).

The census figures, by implication, mean that the highly populated Rift Valley Province with slightly more than 10 million residents will get the highest number of new constituencies followed by Eastern Province which has posted a population of 5.66 million.

Nyanza Province with 5.44 million, Central (4.38 million), Western (4.33 million), Coast (3.32 million), Nairobi (3.13 million) and North Eastern (2.31 million) will follow respectively.

This equally means that the province with the highest population and more constituencies will receive more money in terms of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) which is likely to continue until the counties stabilise.

Former Siakago MP Justin Muturi said Parliament would pass laws which would guide the sharing on devolved funds countrywide.

“Parliament will have to pass laws to specify the sharing of revenue between the national government and counties, but it will be difficult to do away with CDF until counties have stabilised,” he said.