Sonko, Badi 'war' intensifies as blame games persist

Blame games continue to rock the fragile relationship between Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko and Nairobi Metropolitan Service Director-General Mohammed Badi.

Sonko now accuses Badi of fronting lies about the county government and having no interest to have the two entities work together.

Addressing the media on Wednesday, the governor's Spokesman Ben Mulwa claimed DG Badi fronted lies before Parliament, thus painting a bad image of the county government.

According to Mulwa, Badi accused the county government of frustrating the Deed of Transfer and being a hindrance in service delivery.

"The Governor is disappointed by the utterances made by DG Badi just a few weeks after pledging to work together before President Uhuru Kenyatta," he said.

It is evident that the issue of pending bills is causing more drift between NMS and City Hall.

As revealed last week, NMS had shown interesting in taking over the county's pending bills after the assembly passed a motion in July urging the office to take over them.

However, the county stated that the Badi lead team was overstepping its mandate, meddling into issues of functions that were not transferred.

Mulwa highlighted that DG Badi while appearing before the National Assembly’s Security Committee said there is a diversion of public money to private accounts.

He put NMS to task and table the list of accounts where these monies are diverted to.

“In fact, the governor would be very interested to know, who are these people and diverting public funds, yet we have a very clear system that ensures every penny that is collected on a daily basis is banked with the National Bank of Kenya, and by close of business every day that money is swept to the County Revenue Fund at the Central Bank of Kenya,” Mulwa said.

On Monday, the NMS boss told the committee that a woman had died at City Hall while attempting to claim her pending bills worth Sh7 million from the county.

Refuting the claims and referring them as theatrics, Mulwa challenged Badi to provide evidence if at all the death occurred at City Hall Annexe.

"Such a scenario If it happened should be with investigative agencies. This kind of lies will not help him nor the agenda tasked by the President," he said.

The Spokesman also questioned the DG claims that water cartels had built underground water tanks, diverting the water from city residents.

This is after Badi warned cartels and individuals diverting water supply that their days are numbered.

"Why has NMS not revealed these underground water tanks to the media If they really exist?" Mulwa questioned.

In addition, Governor Sonko wants DG Badi to refrain from making utterances, which will jeopardize the process of solving disputes facing the deed of transfer.

“ We already have a team from both Nairobi County and NMS sitting at the National Treasury to facilitate the transfer of funds to the NMS” Mulwa said.

"So Badi cannot start messing up with that process and he is demonstrating that there is no goodwill from his part, yet the county government has been committed all through to ensure that services, and lead NMS is operationalized and services are delivered.”