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AJUOK: Sakaja’s goofs show failure of hyped youthful leadership

He runs the capital city like a roadside kiosk and doesn’t show up for Senate summons.

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by COLLINS AJUOK

Siasa18 April 2024 - 11:15
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In Summary


  • I have often wondered where the Nairobi governor gets the courage to show such contempt to his own voters and his bosses in the Senate.
  • Initially, I toyed with the idea that he may be getting some sort of protection from his UDA party benefactors, led by President William Ruto. 
Nairobi Govenror Johnson Sakaja

Retired General Daudi Tonje is my all-time hero. In my social circles, there is no one I talk about and hero-worship as much. I consider him the one Kenyan who, when he had a chance to lead a large institution, went about reforming it and empowering everyone within it. It is that simple formula for success and the building of a legacy that has escaped other Kenyan leaders in all facets.

Last week, someone online shared footage from a rare interview that the legendary General had given. Kenyan senior military and security folks hardly ever give interviews. And the few who write their memoirs usually scratch the surface and leave out the juicy anecdotes from their years of service that a regular reader would be hoping for. The result is that when they take the final bow, many, possibly all, take these secrets to their graves.

Be that as it may, General Tonje, in the interview, listed some of the achievements from his reign as Chief of the General Staff (CGS), between 1996 and 2000. Some of these are already in public domain. But something he said should be made a compulsory orientation lesson for all public servants. The retired warrior averred that when he led the military, every plan, blueprint and reform he initiated was packaged for long-term sustainability, with an outlook of 25 years to 100 years. No wonder Tonje’s name remains engraved in public service, especially the military, nearly 25 years on.

I know one public officer who should somehow be forced to partake of this lesson: Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja. Given the dramatic circumstances surrounding his ascension to the capital city’s top post, I had taken it for granted that Sakaja would work overtime to acquit himself well in office, if for no other reason than to confirm the freshness of often-hyped youthful leadership. At any rate, there was no way, I thought, he could end up being worse than the cantankerous wind bag with shiny metallic objects hanging from his body, Gideon Mbuvi Sonko, one of his predecessors.

Last week, for the umpteenth time, the Governor skipped a scheduled appearance before the Senate Standing Committee on Energy, to answer to queries about the Embakasi gas explosion on February 1. It is not just this committee to which Sakaja has shown perennial contempt. At least two others have had difficulties getting the Governor to appear before them. They include the Roads, Transportation and Housing Committee, as well as the Public Accounts Committee, investigating the Nairobi Urban Regeneration and the Auditor General’s report, respectively,

The Senate is not only a premier gathering of the representatives of the people, but is typically a governor’s most important accountability platform. Any governor with allegations of malpractices hanging around his neck, and who doesn’t have anything to hide, would presumably welcome the chance to be appear there and set the record straight. At any rate, the issues the Senate committees seek to interrogate are matters directly affecting the Governor’s electors, so the philosophy of running away from the summons makes absolutely no sense.

At a casual glance, Nairobi has become one huge, fat mess, but that’s not new. Garbage competes with airlines to reach the skies, while residents flee the CBD like scared antelope as soon as a drop of rain hits the ground, for fear that flooding will render roads impassable. The drainage system is either non existent or obsolete, coupled with a chaotic building establishment that ignores all order and riparian lands that basically turn the city into a floods paradise.

In the course of exercising his ‘right to silence’ as city issues grind on, some of Sakaja’s omissions border on the bizarre. For instance, on March 27, while appearing before the Senate plenary to answer questions, Lands CS Alice Wahome declared that the land on which Tom Mboya Social Hall stood was public land and the private developer occupying it had acquired the title fraudulently. She was responding to a question by Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna.

Even as the CS vowed to cancel the illegal title and castigated her ministry staff for having misbehaved in issuing it, construction works by the private developer on the site, presumably approved by the Nairobi City County government, continued unabated. One would have thought that this was a brilliant opportunity for Governor Sakaja to score one massive goal by publicly stopping the works and helping reclaim the land. But no, that too passed by without his attention. Meanwhile, more public land meant for social enmities, like the Eastleigh Social Hall, remains mired in ownership controversy.

I am not sure what project Sakaja considers his model for success. But he has incessantly pointed to the Dishi na County school feeding programme as the one closest to his heart. However, oversight tours by Senator Sifuna have raised procurement, management and accountability issues with the programme, which the Governor has predictably failed to address. The same oversight stings have also happened to expose stalled projects and slowed services due to the piling up of pending bills.

The explanation consistently given by Sakaja’s surrogates is that he is usually on foreign trips during these scheduled meetings. According to the Senate committees, some of these letters from the county arrive on the mornings of the meeting days. Often, these meetings have been scheduled a whole two weeks, or more, in advance, and do not fall within the realm of the urgent. In any case, whereas the Deputy Governor can ably represent his boss on those foreign trips, he cannot do the same at the Senate sittings.

Every election campaign season, there is hype around the emergence of youth leadership, a sort of hope in a new, detribalised order. Governor Sakaja would easily have been a card-carrying member of this new, liberal youth renaissance, based on his presumed urbane and suave background. But youthful leadership in Kenya, it turns out, is a stillbirth, because it is yet to embrace the key values of competence and delivery, beyond mere age and looks.

I have often wondered where the Nairobi governor gets the courage to show such contempt to his own voters and his bosses in the Senate. Initially, I toyed with the idea that he may be getting some sort of protection from his UDA party benefactors, led by President William Ruto, hence, his ability to ride roughshod over everyone else. But this wouldn’t make sense, because Ruto’s own members of the Cabinet routinely appear before both houses of Parliament to respond to questions.

The only other explanation therefore is that the Nairobi County Assembly might indeed be the one in whose embrace the Governor feels shielded from action. Interestingly though, the Azimio coalition, whose manifesto was big on the fight against corruption and the push towards good governance, holds the majority in the assembly and therefore, the stick with which to whip the governor into action. One must wonder what the majority thinks about all the service delivery gaps and collapsed city machinery. More importantly, I ask myself all the time, whether Sakaja ever plans for this city into the next 10 years, assuming General Tonje’s threshold of 25 to 100 years is way too lofty for him. Either way, running the region’s commercial hub like a roadside kiosk is no way to sustain it even in the short-term.

Political commentator 

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