How Sakaja's chaotic reign has invited discussion on how to run city

It is a trite Americanism that “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings.” Another one goes, “It ain’t done, till it’s done!” The Kenya Kwanza Government has not given up on fixing Nairobi, despite the abysmal performance of the UDA governor, Johnson Sakaja, and his strand of Kenya Kwanza in the city. 

President William Ruto’s National Government and Sakaja’s County Government are now officially working together, “to restore the efficiency and glory of the City of Nairobi.” 

President Ruto is only the latest “fat lady” in town, and his song has just begun. Although he does not want admit it, he has taken over critical services from the County Government, for the next 24 months. Both Ruto and Sakaja have engaged Nairobi in semantic hair-splitting over the matter. They say that governing Nairobi has not been taken over, that the county government is still very much in charge. This is despite the heavily slanted outlook of the formations that have been put in place to manage the city, after what can only be described as a hostile takeover. The Prime Cabinet Secretary, Musalia Mudavadi, leads the teams, with Sakaja as his deputy. 

Even before the announcement of the takeover and unveiling of the teams, Kenya’s capital was already suffocating under the weight of the National Government in devolved functions like housing, infrastructure upgrades, urban renewal and transport. The massive Sh80 billion takeover is expected to cover power and lighting; water and sanitation; roads, bridges and drainage; solid waste management, and security and urban renewal. 

All these are very basic focal jobs which, in a bygone age, flowed smoothly, without the need for central government intervention. It is a marvel that while other metropolises in the world function with smooth efficiency, Nairobi has, since the 1980s, had to press the “reset button” several times, usually with the prompting and intervention of State House, or the now-defunct Ministry of Local Government. And yet none of those interventions ever worked.

It is now President Ruto’s turn. But Ruto also has wider dreams, beyond the coordinates of the City of Nairobi. He proposes only to use Kenya’s capital as the launching pad for his fabled dream of making Kenya the Singapore of East Africa. Can Kenya mirror Singapore, any time soon, or ever? President Ruto calls those who doubt, pessimists. He says that they lack both imagination and brains. “They should be ignored.”

Yet even with the best of intentions, genius mechanisms, and brainy people, workable parallels are difficult to find between Kenya and Singapore. For a start, Singapore is a single city-state. There is no Singapore beyond the island that is Singapore City and the small islands that festoon the main island. The capital city is the country and the country is the city. It is simple to see why the national government runs the city. In so doing, it runs the country. There would be nothing else to manage if not the capital city. Moreover, Singapore is based on firm ethics, principles, and the rule of law. The same cannot be said of Kenya. 

Nairobi is a paradox, a jinx that excites and tempts the political class. The allure of City Hall is not so much the appetite to govern as prestige, power, and above all, largesse. As early as the dawn of independence, the Mayor of Nairobi kicked up a storm when he began driving around in a motorcade that rivalled President Jomo Kenyatta’s. His detractors accused him of upstaging the majesty of the Presidency. The mayoral motorcade was short-lived. 

Earlier, the Majimbo Constitution of 1962 arrived with a new entity called the Local Government. The Constitution established a range of councils. An elected mayor, or chairman, replaced the colonial District Commissioner. Charles Hornsby recalls that education, health, social services, and roads were all handled at the county council level.” He writes in Kenya: A History Since Independence that these services were funded by a cocktail of taxes, collected by the councils and topped up by the central government. 

As independence loomed, however, “many people refused to pay tax, forcing the councils to borrow for their activities.” Nairobi was spared, however. Hornsby recalls, “Nairobi City Council remained an exception, unique in wealth and importance. The mayor from 1962 to 1967, Charles Rubia, used his role to launch himself into national politics. By 1965, however, Nairobi was experiencing difficulties, which deepened as the years passed.”

Yet, even then, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania baptised Nairobi the London of East Africa. He probably spoke with intended cynicism, out of his spite for the raw capitalist path that independent Kenya was beginning to chart. Tanzania elected a clear break with the capitalist heritage, preferring instead to experiment with Ujamaa as his idea of African Socialism.  

Regardless of regional cynicism of the sour grapes character, Nairobi was the proverbial City on a Hill. It was a light to East Africa, the Eldorado of the continent. Kenya’s capital was the proverbial biblical city that could not be hidden. It was so distinct from the bucolic Kampala, that Churchill named the Pearl of Africa, on account of its undulating picaresque hills; and the sultry Dar es Salaam, that Sultan Seyyed Majid bin Said of Zanzibar characterised as “a haven of peace.” 

Kenya’s capital worked like clockwork, not just in the colonial era, when those with the means rode in horse-drawn rickshaws and caparisoned horseback, but also in the early decades of Uhuru. It was exciting and tempting. Nightfall was fragrant with aromatic, flowery experience in high-end Western suburbia, and in the low-class Eastern rookeries, too. 

Fresh waters flowed from the Aberdare ranges and the Kikuyu Springs to quench urban thirst. Others arrived from Sasumua and Ndakaini to complete the complex that first drew human settlement to this location. Long before Joseph Thomson passed this way, the nomadic Maasai called this place “Enkare Nyirobi,” the place of cool waters.” 

The people building the railway from Mombasa to Uganda arrived here in 1899. They fell in love with the pristine country. It was treed, serene, and prime with wild game. Karen Blixen –   for whom the most desired abode by the top cream would be named decades later – was, for her part, in love with the animals, the natural vegetation and the people. She went on to write of what she saw as the trinity of the people, the plants and the animals. In her 1937 memoir, Out of Africa, she glorified “both the men and beasts.” 

The foreigners who brought the railway and its trappings made Nairobi their depot, even as the line groped its way down the Rift Valley to the Lake Victoria Basin.  The depot blossomed into a green city in the sun, the city that wowed President Nyerere. 

Meanwhile, everything flowed. Public transport, managed by the London Stagecoach Company and the City Council, was as efficient as it was in any functional European city. Everywhere, paved streets were flooded with light upon nightfall. Night revellers strolled to their homes, unburdened with fears and worries over insecurity. The sick in the night walked to the nearest City Council dispensary for first aid, no matter the hour. Residents woke up to fresh mornings, free of garbage and litter, thanks to the City Council. 

Throughout the day, council groundsmen manicured the lawns, bougainvillaea, and the magnolia, even in low-end Eastlands. The Western suburbs glowed with all families of roses in the exuberance of their fragrance. Lilies, hellebores, and lavender mist filled the air in the evenings. That was Nairobi, a city of hope. Kenyans arrived from far and wide, aboard Jogoo Kimakia buses, OTC, and Nairobi Bus Union, in search of the good life. 

Is that the lost glory that Ruto probably dreams of? If you come to this city for the first time today, you are likely to be lost in a tale of two cities, depending on where you approach from. A westerly entry, for example, treats you to a welcome by cocktails of disordered high-rise residential flats that begin in the neighbouring Kiambu County. You must watch out for hand-drawn carts, stray dogs and donkeys, and harried pedestrians crossing dangerously. 

Motorbikes meander lawlessly from all directions. They are a system of law unto themselves, and a metaphor of life in the city – disorder. They welcome you to one of the widest networks of potholed roads anywhere. They often run side-by-side with broken sewage systems that spew into the streets odoriferous, dirty waters, with semi-solid effluence. The Western dual carriageway disgorges you into the slums of Kangemi, but soon into Westlands. 

Westlands, once long ago a high-end residential area, has since succumbed to Nairobi’s population pressure on human settlements, and to the search for employment, to become a China-based massive construction site. High-rise office blocks, shopping malls, low-end kiosks, unregulated matatu termini, makeshift open-air eateries, labyrinths of motorcycles, mannerless matatus that command the direction and pace of movement, and state-of-the-art brand new second-hand limousines, recently arrived from Japan, all welcome you to Nairobi. 

But if you arrive from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, using the Nairobi Expressway, you will see glory. Despite the murderous speed, you will still witness exquisite concrete and glass, reaching out to the sky. And depending on where you end up, who you are visiting with, and the limits of your curiosity, you could return home completely taken up and taken in by Nairobi. 

If you are arriving today, you will be puzzled by the hostile conversation on the transfer of city and county services to the National Government. You will wonder whether the transfer is necessary in the first place. President Ruto and Nairobi Governor Johnson Arthur Sakaja have recently entered an ambiguous pact on making Nairobi work again.

“Mysterious” is perhaps a more accurate idiom than “ambiguous.” It is not clear what the two leaders are up to. The process they have followed to reach here is especially curious and worrisome. First, they signed the ruling agreement. Then they set out to seek public participation. If this is not cynicism, it is difficult to tell what is. The people’s opinion is just that, an opinion. Accordingly, it can be sought even as the city fathers and the National Government roll on. 

UDA and ODM MPs, the bedrock of Kenya’s new post-ideological elite power bargaining, were paraded on Thursday to endorse the agreement.  It is difficult to say if they have seen the agreement or not. Nor do county MCAs appear to be seized of the details. In a curious move, the county assembly is expected to debate the already signed agreement for concurrence. 

A 21-man ad hoc committee has been selected to study the agreement and report to the assembly, recommending approval, the governor curiously says. This is absurdity on stilts. Methodically, the assembly should debate a proposed agreement, and not an agreement that has already been signed. The assembly voted with its feet, to approve the ad hoc committee. 

Nairobi’s foremost challenge has been a succession of kleptocratic leaders. It is true that Nairobi became both the seat of national sovereignty and devolved county government with the 2010 Constitution. Some said that it should, perhaps, have remained a federal capital, such as Washington DC in the USA. It is possible that the dual identity of the city makes for awkwardness in its management. Yet, does the challenge seem to be more about a succession of city fathers robbing the city, in partnership with others outside City Hall? 

Over the years, public sites have been grabbed with impunity. Older Kenyans will remember the saga of the parking space behind Extelecoms House, featuring persons who had served in one of the City Commissions of Nairobi, after the dissolution of the City Council. There was also the case of the open space between Uhuru Highway and Kipande House along Loita Street, the space between the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and the Kenya National Theatre, the burial grounds saga, and several mayors’ houses in high-end Nairobi, among others. 

But these only constitute the tip of a massive cold iceberg. Nairobi loses billions of shillings every year through siphoning, leakages, under-collection, corruption, and even uncollected revenue. The focus is wrong. A Senate committee and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) reported that Sh. 18 billion collected between 2016 and 2018 was not accounted for, for example. And in 2022, there were believable insider reports to the effect that the city loses Sh160 million of collected revenue daily. This works out to 58 billion annually. 

Audits speak of unreported and unconfirmed revenues, daily leakages due to poor systems and mechanisms, hidden compliance issues, weak enforcement, and other man-made challenges. It is unlikely that the transfer of services to the National Government alone could solve the challenges that have confronted Nairobi since the 1980s. 

Throughout the 1980s, especially, the Media was awash with credible narratives of controversies around the allocation of city land and houses, irregular leasing of property, irregular conversion of public land to private ownership, and what is generally known in Kenya as “land grabbing.” All this happened in an era when the Minister for Local Government had control over councils throughout the country. 

The minister had powers to approve or veto council budgets, approve the disposal of land and property, dissolve councils, and appoint commissions. It is instructive that both the council and commissions, working with and in subordination to the national government, lost industrial land and public utility parcels to cartels. This was always over and above other forms of wastage and malfeasance. 

The big historical lesson is that Nairobi limps not because functions are devolved. It limps and bleeds because it is intended to be that way. Today, institutional memory in City Hall is messy. Informal cartels have survived from the past, and are set to go on. What ails this city is not “a bad governor” or “a weak minister.” It is a wider national ethos that believes that “people must eat where they work.” Governance is extraction-based, where it should be service-based. Someday, perhaps, when the nation places in the State House an individual who is committed to the war against corruption, Nairobi could regain some of its lost glory. Kenya’s traditional “scratch my back, I scratch your back” leadership ethos otherwise remains a huge hindrance, regardless of whether services are left to the county, or they are taken to the National Government. The only difference is the eating mouth.