Author: NLM Correspondent

By George Omuholo Will Kenya’s self-styled hustler, William Ruto, survive the shark-infested waters that are Kenya’s political landscape, to become the county’s fifth President in 2022? That the race to the Big House on the Hill has begun is not in doubt. This is despite political top cats every often petitioning everybody else “to stop doing politics and focus, instead, on development.” The plea is itself at once a contradiction and a misnomer. It is political abracadabra that only brings out the leaven of hypocrisy, for there can be no separating politics from development. By its very nature, social and…

By Tioko Ekiru Emmanuel The scale of deadly attacks reported from Kapedo village, Turkana East every year is shocking, horrible and terrible. From time to time, Kapedo has been in the headlines as the subject of national platform. The main intention of the ruthless bandits patrolling this region is to convert it into a “no man’s land,” and, “a major hotspot of violence.” The merciless killing of school going children among other civilians at Ameyan, Baringo County, is not something new in these remote, ungoverned jungles. It demonstrates seemingly unstable age we live in today. In November 2014, twenty-one police…

By Payton Mathau The announcement by Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i mid last month that contraband sugar seized in various parts of the country contained huge amounts of poisonous heavy metals has elicited a huge debate and caused panic amongst consumers. In the days following, thousands of bags of Brazilian sugar were seized around the country in what appeared to be a synchronised operation by security agents, mainly in Kitui, Webuye, Kakamega, Homa Bay, Kajiado, Ruiru and Mombasa, among other towns. “It is shocking what we are doing to our country. The level of criminality in this syndicate is mind-boggling.…

By Peter Wanyonyi As East Africa’s finance ministers simultaneously presented their countries’ 2018/19 budgets on June 14, a common theme emerged across the region: not a single country in the region can fund its own budget fully. The member states of the EAC, like their counterparts elsewhere in Africa, are living way beyond their means. Traditionally, this has meant having to go with cap in hand to Western big-brother begging fora like the Paris Club, and making the case for loans from the lending institutions of the west, such as the IMF and the World Bank. Those organisations, however, lend…

By Payton Mathau The sale and transfer of a 300-acre property in the Githurai 44 area has come under scrutiny from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) after it emerged that transaction was irregular. Detectives from DCI headquarters are probing the transfer of the multi-billion shilling land sale, which had been registered to Miaraho Ltd, a company associated with a former provincial commissioner but whose directors changed mysteriously to individuals who were nine and fourteen years old at the time of registration. The property has since changed hands and been transferred to an estate developer involved in other land controversies.…

By Edwin Musonye An important tenet in democratic governance is allowing public participation in decision-making. Our constitution recognises this and encourages citizens to exercise this civic liberty. Despite some progress achieved, there is need to entrench the practice further. This can be done through adopting a tradition of preparing green papers and white papers before embarking on a policy or law-making processes. This means that proponents of ideas need to be sensitised on the importance of producing pilot information of their proposed viewpoints. Green papers announce government proposals on particular issues and are meant for general discussion. These come in…

By Emeka-Mayaka Gekara She is a woman seasoned by battles.Despite strong objection to her candidature by former Senator Johnstone Muthama, she floored Bernard Kiala to claim the Wiper Party ticket for Machakos governorship. Kiala challenged her win at the Political Parties’ Dispute Tribunal, on grounds that she belonged to two political parties. When the tribunal cancelled the election, she contested that decision at the High Court and won. A repeat nomination was ordered. She won again – this time by a landslide. After a bruising election battle, Alfred Mutua was declared the winner. She disputed the outcome in the High…

BY NLM WRITER At this year’s Devolution Conference, Raila Odinga urged the country to consider introducing a third tier to the government structure. Two things came to mind: Raila is a good governance junkie and this proposal was not a surprise to those who know him well. Secondly, it is meant to test the waters and ignite debate that will lead to changes in the devolution law. Raila’s obsession with constitutional changes as a basis for good governance makes him appear as a one tool artisan. His astute political skills serve this obsession well, making him a warrior of good…

By Henry Munene In a new tell-all book, a former Kenyan electoral agency official explains how, in 2002, he was forced to drop his decision to contest a seat that Kenya’s second President Daniel arap Moi had held for more than three decades. Thomas Letangule claims his decision to vie for the Baringo Central parliamentary seat in 2002 attracted threats, arm-twisting and warnings conveyed through operatives of the then ruling party, Kanu. In Trailblazer, Letangule claims state machinery was deployed to ensure Moi’s son, Gideon, who wants to run for president in 2022, would clinch the seat previously held by…

By Shadrack Muyesu The failure of public literati to locate the mismatch between our government system and socio-economic identity as the root cause of our governance problems is one that irks me. That we will have a better country if we simply changed our mentality and/or elected better leaders is an idea I find objectionable as it does answer why this shift in mentality has been so hard to come by or why, rather than punish bad leadership, we appear to embrace it. Yet this idea persists. In one way, on the face of it at least, it forms the…