BUILDING BRIDGES INITIATIVE IS A WIN FOR DEVOLUTION, BUT I DON'T SEE SOMETHING TO SMILE ABOUT IN MY CONTY OF ISIOLO IF THE TREND OF ELLECTIN SEMI LITERATE, IGNORANT,SELF CENTERED, GREEDY AND CLUELESS MCA'S TO LOOK After OUR RESOURCES.

After the realise of BBI report I was interested mostly in one aspect and that is the increase of revenue to county governments and after I have finally read and analysed that amendment I can confirm that devolution has won as far BBI and constitutional amendments is concerned.But in our county of ISIOLO  there is no doubt that we had our share of a little success in the last seven or so years. We have also experienced myriad challenges. Perhaps far more than our successes? Maybe. But one glaring issue we can all agree about is that isiolo county development projects have been hopelessly ineffective. Yet the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report, at this juncture of rebooting our country, fails to immaculately pronounce itself on this issue.So the only option we as electorates of isiolo county have is to reason hard and elect leaders with vision to represent us at the county level, we cant afford to make thesame mistakes again if we really want to benefit from this huge resources future have drawn to our direction since we came into existence.

I have posted before that amid the sustained challenges of isiolo county, the substantive waterloo remains the palpable poor management of development project. Just because our ward reps openly put their interest first and decided to join hands with executive in misupropriating funds meant for development.And to that far the BBI findings concur. It states in Chapter 9 that, “…they (Kenyans) want development projects to receive enough oversight to prevent wastage. Kenyans want means to report projects that are shoddily developed and to see this information acted on by the relevant institutions.”And I believe isiolo people need this more than other Kenyans.

The report further acknowledges that one of the challenges identified that has hampered service delivery in counties is the arbitrary, nepotistic or crony recruitment of human resource that ignores merit. Let me first put things into perspective, currently our beloved county of isiolo's averagely spend about a mere 10 per cent of total county allocations on development projects. Of this, huge amounts have gone to waste through corruption but more so through poor project implementation. Our county is littered with shoddy projects of proportional time and cost overruns.reaso s behind this is again our MCA's greedy action of awarding contracts to themselves and their relatives together with executive members.

Yet the BBI report only gives lousy, open-ended recommendations to such a fundamental issue to devolution. The report merely recommends a stronger oversight response by responsible bodies which we need more than ever since those we elected to do so don't even care about their constitutional mandates rather join hands with executive to loot our resources to death. Nothing new. Further it advocates for actions to cut wasteful costs but fails to point the actions and then proceeds, without any attempt to address the current wastes, to approve that money be allocated to counties and the ratio of development spending to recurrent expenditure in the counties should match the national one at 70:30.

My expectation was that the report would acknowledge the glaring inadequacy of qualified construction professionals in our county to even manage the current development allocation before pushing for more funds.

The report should have strongly centralised the role of construction professional regulatory bodies to counties and recommended their involvement to ensure counties are well stocked with qualified professionals that can properly execute county development projects to avert wastage and shoddy work.

In a county like ours where construction is still viewed as business for all rather than a profession, every Abdi, Guyo and Aden and Njagi who relates to county assembly members and executive members have become contractors in our county.

From their children, to their aunts and uncles not forgetting their in laws everyone is on path, if not yet, to registering a construction company and the scramble for county loot through shoddy construction work is Isiolo county's revelation. We must cure this mess once and for all. And that cure cannot be more resource allocation rather electing reasonable leaders with people's interests at heart rather than hynas who have been treating our resources like sheeps.

As it is I vehemently wanted the BBI report recommendation  county development allocation by increasing to 30 per cent to also have  addressed the inadequacy in skilled manpower to manage projects. For the record, I’m not against increasing revenue to counties. But I too have been a witness to the wastage through shoddily executed projects in isiolo county.and this gives me sleepless nights.

Allocating money to county wards and increasing development ratio cannot be the antidote to this malady in isiolo county. They would steal loot all this monies unless we elect responsible leaders.On this front there is no veneration for the BBI team, they lacked courage to state the obvious and instead chose the appeasing card. We as isiolo county residents must correct this in our county and the only antidote is to elect real leaders. This is the time.2022 is the time.

Let nobody fool us, if they have failed to deliver with the little we had they probably won't deliver even if they are given more resources.

Kick all isiolo county MCA's out for our betterment.