Alarm as counties fight over resources and boundaries

The eight-hour blockade of the busy Nairobi-Nakuru highway motorists had to endure on Monday over a dispute on a ban on charcoal burning some 200 kilometres away in Kitui County has brought to the fore heightened conflicts over resources among devolved units.

While Kitui Governor Charity Ngilu denied having incited youth to burn charcoal-ferrying lorries, the angry demonstrators in Limuru deflated tyres of vehicles, causing a major snarl-up on the busy route as they demanded compensation for the burnt lorry.

“As we speak now, there is no rain in the entire Ukambani. If we do not fight the burning of charcoal, sand harvesting . . . this county is going to be declared a desert,” Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka summarised his client’s argument before the Francis ole Kaparo-led National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC).

Then he warned: “If you ask me, I imagine that the third world war would be around resources.”

COUNTY NATIONALISM
Nearly half of Kenya’s 47 counties are involved in a vicious war for resources with one or more neighbours.

Kinuthia Wamwangi, the former Transition Authority chairman, theorises:

“There is a growing sense of county nationalism. It is a feeling of power, and internal democracy.

"There is a sense of ownership of county resources and, with it, comes a feeling and urge to protect ‘our own,"' he says, adding that counties are now getting awakened and positioning themselves as autonomous centres of power, with the mandate to protect what they have.

With that comes, at times, a feeling to hive off what’s your neighbour’s — a classic case of only the strong surviving in the jungle of 47 counties attempting to make as much money of their own as the national government did in 50 years.

“With devolution, we have put these resources under the control of the counties, and their people. The people feel they are the protectors of these resources, and the rewards are instant,” he says.

JOBS
Kiambu and Kilifi counties early this year passed laws barring Kenyans from the other 47 counties from taking more than 30 per cent of the job openings in the two counties.

Most recently, tea-growing counties have been embroiled in a push-and-pull with Mombasa County to scrap the Sh32 levy imposed by the county for each package entering the port city.

While these are only the most recent examples, at least 18 other boundary disputes – that are always centred on a resource whose location is undecided – are raging across the country.

Devolution expert Mutakha Kangu argues that we got it wrong from as early as the creation of the boundaries themselves.

In creating the current 47 counties, he argues, the Committee of Experts copied and pasted the boundaries as set out in the Districts and Provinces Act of 1992 under the independence Constitution that stood repealed after the 2010 document was promulgated.

“In creating these boundaries, we gave no other reason other than the districts as had been set out in the Act of 1992, but unlike in that repealed law, we failed to state, to the specific longitude, the boundaries of these regions,” Dr Kangu argues.

LEVY
Given that some districts had developed attachments to some resources, the advent of devolution, and the semi-autonomy that comes with it, Dr Kangu opines, has just made matters worse.

In Kericho, apart from the fight to remove the Sh32 levy imposed by Mombasa, a border war with Kisumu in Sondu has been there for years, and which ropes in Nandi County on the Chemelil border.

On the other side of the Kitui border, conflicts between herders of Somali origin from Tana River County and the residents led to the death of 30 people in 2017 alone – showing just how fatal the conflicts can become.

At the heart of the conflict are the Nziu and Aithi community ranches, which cover 40 square kilometres, and by virtue of being dormant, have attracted a host of pastoralists seeking to graze their cattle.

BOUNDARY REVIEW
With a planned boundary review by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission starting this year, and ending in 2021, the battle for the shifting of these boundaries for the benefit or loss of resources to various counties will be closely watched by many.

In Kwale, Governor Salim Mvurya, Senator Issa Boy and Kinango MP Benjamin Tayari early this month issued a scathing statement against Taita-Taveta and its Governor Granton Samboja over Mackinnon town.

It is a lucrative township claimed by both counties.

These cases, Mr Wamwangi said, will continue.

“While tribe has been the dividing factor for long, now we see people of the same tribe but different counties going against each other,” Mr Wamwangi said.

KONZA CITY
The multibillion shilling Konza techno city is under intense push-and-pull pitting Makueni, Kajiado and Machakos counties, each claiming ownership and rights to collect taxes.

The three counties are also at war over sharing of water resources from Oloitokitok in Kajiado after Governor Joseph ole Lenku said that his constituents will no longer suffer lack of water, arguing that the water should only be pumped to Machakos and Makueni when Kajiado has had enough.

“Most of these conflicts, you will notice, are about sharing of resources. Others are a battle to have the boundaries changed as part of the same fight for resources.

"If not addressed, there is a huge risk that this could create chaos,” Senior Counsel Nzamba Kitonga, who chaired the Committee of Experts that drafted the 2010 Constitution, said.