KAIKAI’S KICKER: Stop this State lodges madness!

A new State lodge is coming up. Kitui County, which will be hosting the next Mashujaa Day celebrations on 20th of this month, will be home to Kenya’s latest State lodge.

The Kitui State lodge will be coming just three months after the inauguration of another new State lodge in Homa Bay.

Like the Kitui state lodge, the Homa Bay state lodge was constructed for purposes of hosting the presidential reception that followed the Madaraka Day celebrations hosted at the Lakeside county. So, on the score of a new state lodge for each national holiday celebration, we are at 100 percent efficiency this year!

A year ago, Kwale County hosted the Mashujaa Day celebrations and for that, a state lodge was inaugurated, and gazetted as such in April this year by Interior CS Kipchumba Murkomen. In the same gazette notice was Bungoma State lodge, which joined the nearby Kakamega state lodge in the list of Western Kenya presidential retreats.

Back in 2020, Kisii County hosted the Mashujaa Day celebrations and the then President Uhuru Kenyatta inaugurated the Kisii state lodge. As at today the 3rd of October, the list of state lodges around the country stands at 11. Alongside Kisii, Kwale, Bungoma, Kakamega and Homa Bay, we have the Sagana State lodge, the Mt. Kenya colonial retreat that ironically, was constructed as a gift to Princess Elizabeth who later became Queen.

Then there is the Kisumu State lodge, the Eldoret State lodge, a State lodge in Kilifi, a state lodge in Makueni, and coming up shortly, the Kitui state lodge. Total count, 11 state lodges; then there was talk of renovating the Turkwell state lodge in West Pokot – talk of affordable housing on steroids! And oh, don’t close that state lodge list just yet…

Meru… that would take the number to 12, 13, depending on impulse… now, alongside the 11 designated state lodges, the President of the Republic of Kenya enjoys three official residences listed as State House Nairobi, State House Mombasa and State House Nakuru.

But let’s talk about this rapid expansion of the state lodges network. As the circumstances of their inauguration show, state lodges serve short-term purposes. They are short-stay facilities for the exclusive use of the President when visiting the regions.

But here is the problem, presidential events, let alone permanent facilities such as state lodges, do not come cheap. From security to general staff, maintenance and utilities, it takes millions of taxpayer shillings to keep these state lodges running.

Yet as is humanly the case, no President can ever find simultaneous or cost-effective use of 11 state lodges and three state houses.

Even if they were to host delegations of ethnic Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs on a daily basis, the three members of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina would still struggle to make optimal use of Kenya’s sprawling presidential facilities.

And in a country wallowing in foreign debt and a nation whose critical sectors such as education, healthcare and infrastructure are in dire conditions, this state lodges construction craze can no longer be justified. Invoking constitutional principles of advancement of devolution, promoting regional equity and the like is insincere.

Not even the Kenyan ancient logic of ‘moving the presidency closer to the people’ can wash this. The United States, a vast country and a superpower, has only three official residences for the president – the White House in Washington DC as the primary residence, Camp David in Maryland as a countryside retreat and Blair House in Washington DC for the president’s guests. There are no little White Houses or federal lodges dotting its 50 states for the president’s regional visits.

The bottom line: it will always be difficult to validate this torrent of state lodges in Kenya. No president – past, current or future – would ever really find justifiable, round-the-year use of all those person-specific national Air-B-N-Bs – rather, state lodges.

That is my kicker.