Better public participation can help in clearing Nairobi mess

This story is about public participation, not Nairobi or Nairobi Metro. Let us begin at the start.

When Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko “unequivocally” handed over four out of 14 county functions (and four out of 10 sectors/departments) to the national government, the immediate reaction from colleagues with whom I have worked in counties across Kenya over the past four years was widely negative.

Bad law, some said. “Short-circuited’ process, noted others. Under what authority, a few asked? Devolution is dead, we were warned. The one thing that bothered most was not that the County Assembly had not been informed, but that the public hadn’t participated in the decision. Press comment has echoed these concerns, now being canvassed in court.

Meanwhile, the transfer process proceeds to its March 17 dateline. The County Assembly Hansard confirms MCAs have been duly informed. It would also seem that they are on board with the decision, as well as official “guidance” to hold back on impeaching the governor.

Then there’s public participation. Eighteen simultaneous public participation events were held on Wednesday across the county (one at the Kenya School of Government for the “big dogs”; and 17 in sub-counties for the “little people”). Having worked a “back office” perspective in counties before, I decided to try a “front office” view and participate as a Nairobi voter.

In the company of my wife, I headed for the event venue for my sub-county, Dagoretti North (wards – Gatina, Kabiro, Kawangware, Kileleshwa and Kilimani). About 200 of us were packed into the primary school classroom. National government was the show-runner, led by Interior and Devolution officials. MCAs were present; county executives were not. By some accounts, this was the best-attended public participation event in the area for a long while.

Here are a couple of personal observations.

First, on the purpose of public participation. There is much literature on this subject, but, through our work in counties we have pared it down to three objectives. One, to participate in decision-making, as regards policy, planning or budgeting. Two, to participate in service delivery, or implementation, through advocacy and monitoring or actual partnership and collaboration. Three, to hold government to account, through reporting and oversight.

On the face of it, this event was about the transfer of functions decision (objective one). Except that the consensus view (and concern) was that the decision is already made. As a result, comments from participants focused on real-life issues of the day like poor sanitation, low quality health care, persistent insecurity, bad roads, uncontrolled development and a general neglect of this part of Nairobi (this last one got a huge cheer).

Second, on organising public participation. Officials tend to treat these as “box ticking” events, and this one was no exception. A perfunctory briefing was provided, focusing as government prefers, on the “what”, not the “why” or “how”.

Third, on public participation content. For the few views that spoke to the objective of the meeting – to comment on the legalistic gazette notice that was the only briefing material – official responses were largely evasive. Here are some of the outstanding questions.

Will financing of the transferred functions come from the Consolidated Fund and County Revenue Fund (Clause 5.1 of the agreement) or the County Revenue Fund only (Clause 5.2)? Is the national government taking over revenue collection for the four transferred functions (Clause 5.4) or is KRA taking overall ALL county revenue collection (Clause 5.5)?

If county human resource are seconded to the national government (Clause 5.6), is this a transfer of functions, or a simple outsourcing arrangement? And, what does this mean for Article 6 (on capacity building framework) and 7 (on institutional framework for execution of the transferred functions)? It’s not good enough to say, “these details will be sorted out in the office”, as was the official response. Oh, will this all be done by March 17?

There is also the question of what this transfer means for the county’s current 2019/20 budget (eight months into implementation) and forward 2020/21 budget (with an already approved Annual Development Plan for 2020/21, and sector ceilings in finalisation as part of the county fiscal strategy).

Yet, the public participation box has been ticked, and a neat report will likely be compiled before the court matter is settled.

Here’s a final thought. In numbers, the four transferred functions – health, transport, public works and planning and development – accounted for 89 per cent of the county’s Sh400-500 billion 2018-2022 development agenda. In reality, actual budgets for these functions in the past two years have been proportionately less than half of total (itself a third of need), and 20 per cent unspent, even as the 11 per cent share for “other functions” consumes over half of the budget. Against that, we have a county payroll that is so large (Sh13-14 billion a year) that it can’t be covered by internal revenues (Sh11 billion in a good year, most likely far less this year). “R-word’ (retrenchment) anyone?

This data has “passed through“ participation and the assembly, yet we have this Nairobi mess. Lesson? We could have participated sooner; we must participate more, and better.