For some counties, it was all foam and no beer at summit 

The first news item that came out of the just-concluded Devolution Conference in Kirinyaga County was the story of the 150,000 free condoms distributed by Governor Anne Waiguru to take care of the delegates’ sexual and reproductive health needs.

One wonders what the conference organisers were thinking when they stuck to the conference theme of “Remaining Accountable”, because immediately after news of the free condoms broke, the theme should have changed straightaway to “Remaining Protected”.

STONE-FACED MEN

Governors have been pinching our devolution money to enrich themselves since 2013, but they have remained protected from accountability and prosecution. Members of county assemblies have been flying to first-world countries to learn how to use an iPad, but they have remained protected from answering to this daylight robbery of public resources.

You have all seen that picture of Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana hosting conference delegates in his county’s packed exhibition tent at the conference. On the table is a display of a range of milk products from the recently launched Makueni County Dairy Factories at Kikima and Kathonzweni. There is also a wide array of samples from their fruit-processing plant at Kalamba. You can see the faces of the delegates, visibly glowing with admiration at this devolution success story from Makueni, and there would have been much more on display had the recently launched, ultra-modern, 200-bed Mother and Child Hospital been mobile and portable.

Contrast that with the picture of the Kisumu County exhibition booth. There is nothing to see there, except for four stone-faced men sitting on what looks like bar stools, facing a life-size banner of Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o’s pre-election manifesto. They are visibly lonely in that tent; you would have been too, had you been in their shoes, because no man would like to be the one being displayed as the face of incompetence in a county that just launched a refurbished water hyacinth dredger that works slower than a kitchen spoon.

NON-EXISTENT OPTICS

Kisumu County is the home of Kit Mikayi and the giant python Omieri. There is even a new shrine in Seme where religious pilgrims claim to have seen and spoken to Mary Mother of Jesus, and busloads have been ferrying worshippers to marvel at that site ever since. The county couldn’t even sponsor one of the pilgrims to market Seme sub-county as the religious capital of Nyanza? If you can’t beat them with milk and mango products, you can surely blackmail them with religion, can’t you?

Then there’s Homa Bay County, which didn’t even try to hide its monumental shame. Their tent was as empty as the eleven o’clock passenger train to Imara Daima. The Homa Bay County government couldn’t even bother to carry their oversized banners commemorating four months since their MCAs almost broke the neck of their assembly Speaker. They should have considered carrying a flash disk containing the clip of that infamous brawl but with the way things are, it would have probably contracted a virus along the way. The guy who had been hired to man the tent went missing since there was nothing to show, because that’s what the poster image of hopelessness looks like. They get an A for honesty, nonetheless. At least they didn’t waste public money trying to patch up non-existent optics.

Another case is Narok County. It is being reported that Governor Samuel Tunai rushed to Eneng’eetia in Mau Narok, bought beans, potatoes, wheat and green peas and rushed to the conference to display the wonderful results of their partnership with local farmers for the conference delegates to wow at.

NO DIGNITY

Narok County manages the Maasai Mara Game Reserve, which collects Sh3 billion from tourists annually, but when you drive around Narok town you are forced to keep depositing litter in your pockets because the last time a dustbin was seen in that town was during the signing of the Anglo-Maasai agreements in 1904.

The Narok County Referral Hospital is all stone and no dignity. There is a running joke that even the rats that live in the crevices of that facility wouldn’t consider it as their first point of care should they fall ill.

These are the stories people are talking about in low tones in villages around this country. Every county has its own version of this real talk but no one has cared to listen. Kenyans are having their own devolution conferences at their dinner tables and there seems to be near unanimity that the governors called the Devolution Conference in order to compare notes on three things: how to eat without being caught; how to negotiate your freedom when caught; and how to survive in prison if jailed.

Gabriel Oguda writes on topical issues; [email protected]