Kakamega Governor, Fernandez Barasa is a self-acclaimed experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated working record.
The Governor, who is skilled in Audit and Accounting with strong business development knowledge and a holder of a BCOM (ACCOUNTING), MBA-FINANCE and PhD Accounting Finance from Kenyatta University, may be leading Kakamega County towards an uncertain uncertainty.
Truly the good Governor, a Fellow of Chartered Professional Accountants and former Chairman of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (2015 – 2017) requires some soul searching on what he intends to deliver to the people of Kakamega.
He may have been a successful Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Kenya Electricity Transmission Company Limited (KETRACO) and may have been conferred The Order of Grand Warrior (OGW) award in recognition of his outstanding and distinguished service but that is now the past.
A check on his memoirs, he acclaims to be passionate about transformative community development initiatives.
He cites integrity, honesty and servant leadership as his personal attributes. This sounds good on paper and makes a good reading.
But close to one year after assuming office of which he affirmed his commitment to promote good governance as one of his major strategy for development, the Governor is clearly struggling to apply his tried and tested managerial skills to effectively deliver on basic services.
Kakamega County’s population size, physical size, poverty index, infrastructure base, service status vis a vis expectations are not for the faint hearted.
Governance must be seen to organise and channel interests, aspirations of the people in furtherance of guaranteed access to essential elements of dignified livelihoods.
Key indicators of poor governance are corruption, fraud, embezzlement of public funds, inefficiency, lack of financial accountability and transparency and poor legislation.
Governance fails because it is convulsed by internal and external fights and can no longer deliver positive goods to the public. Internal antagonisms, management flaws, greed, despotism is replete in the regime. The ugly head of clanism and intercommunal prejudices is now rearing its head.
Stability and predictability is uncertain in a toxic environment where suspicion, unhealthy competition, conflict and hate abounds.
Kakamega County is truly wavering precariously between weakness and failure. H.E should swallow his pride and seek wise council from Emeritus H.E Wycliffe Ambetsa Opraranya.
The governor has clearly failed to create an enabling institutional infrastructure for good governance. The capacity and capability of people surrounding him have been put to question.
The Department of Health Services is as good as a ghost. The farm input subsidy programme needs re-strategy, the infrastructure program is only responding to the needs of the Governor and his deputy and the level of infighting in the rank and file of his senior officers is now a crisis.
The Governor cannot demonstrate any efforts to fiduciary measures to realise his six-point-agenda.
His intergovernmental relations is strained considering his constant attack on the national government in the pretext of delayed disbursement of sharable revenue.
The spirit of the Constitution is that the two levels are distinct, interdependent and should respect mandates and institutions of each other.
It obligates the Governor to work with each other through Consultation, Cooperation and Coordination. In any case their intergovernmental relations institutions in particular the Summit, CoG, IBEC and IGRTC that can be approached to facilitate cordial intergovernmental relations.
Suspicions, competition, conflict and open hate directed towards the national government does not offer local solutions.
Somebody to move in and offer supportive advice. The twelve elected MPs in the county plus the Women Rep and the Senator should take notice of the challenge and offer corrective supportive leadership.
Members of the County Assembly should be accountable to the people who elected them. They should not serve the whims of the Governor.
They are by law expected to oversight county government services. They are turning out to be the weak link in observed poor state of service delivery.
