Raila: It's a waste of time for Senators to keep summoning Governors

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has criticised the Senate for repeatedly summoning county bosses to appear before committees in Nairobi, saying the practice is unnecessary and undermines devolution.

According to the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party boss, it is the work of county governments – not the Senate – to oversight county governments.

He singled out only two Parliamentary committees that could summon county governments to answer to queries; noting that even these summons should only go to county executives, and not the Governors themselves.

“County governments are supposed to be oversighted by County Assemblies, not the Senate. It is unnecessary for Senate to be summoning Governors to go to appear before Senators in Nairobi,” he said.

“Only the Public Accounts Committee and the Public Investment Committee should summon – not even Governors – chief executives of the county government. It’s a waste of time, all the time summoning Governors to appear before Parliamentary committees.”

Speaking in Homa Bay County on Thursday during the second day of the 9th Devolution Conference, Mr. Odinga said centralism was outdated and that devolution offered better governance by empowering local leaders to make decisions on local issues.

“Centralism still has strong supporters, but I believe its days are in the past. Centralism comes with some bad habits; it thrives on keeping the whole country waiting for Nairobi to make decisions on very local issues that Nairobi knows little or nothing about. Devolution beats centralism at allowing local people to make decisions on local issues,” he said.

He called for more functions to be transferred to counties, including management of education up to secondary school level, road construction and funds currently under the National Government Constituencies Development Fund (NG-CDF) and the National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF).

“A time has come for Kenya to devolve education up to secondary school. It is a shame to see a Minister of Education inspecting school structures or construction in counties because that should be done by the Governors,” he said.

On infrastructure, Mr. Odinga said it no longer made sense for agencies based in Nairobi such as the Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA), Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) and Kenya National Highways Authority (KeNHA), to manage rural roads in counties.

“It does not make sense that some roads in Kisumu town cannot be managed by the Governor of Kisumu. There’s no better way to power this economy than to have major road construction works going on across all the 47 counties at the same time,” he said.

The former premier added that while some of the proposed changes might require constitutional amendments, others could be achieved through legislation and delegation of functions.

He also proposed that Governors who complete their two constitutional terms be automatically entitled to a pension.

“In Parliament, we did an amendment so that any MP who serves two terms is automatically entitled to a pension. Why can we not do the same thing to the Governors? A Governor who has served two terms needs to be entitled automatically to a pension,” he said.

The ODM leader stressed that his push to limit national government control over counties was not an attempt to trigger conflict between the two levels of government.

“We must continuously push the national government to stop micromanaging counties. We must constantly fight off the national government’s instincts to hoard power and resources. But let me be clear: references to the national government’s bad tendencies is not a call for a war between the two levels of government,” he said.