PhD? Why can't we just have Baba Yao?

Few of us care that Governor Evans Kidero is being given a political lifeline by Raila Odinga. Most of us have very strong opinions on Gov Kidero's performance as governor: it has been shit. We aren't asking for the moon anymore, but if he has failed to even create the impression that Nairobi City is ever going to get better, there is a collective feeling that if his political career is fucked, only his nearest-and-dearest will mourn it. The rest of us would rather even put up with the uncouth Baba Yao; at least we'd know what we are getting and our civic hearts would never get broken again.

Devolution has proven to be a heartbreaker. There are governors who have made their counties the centre of attention: Alfred Mutua in Machakos and William Kabogo in Kiambu spring to mind. Both, as it happens, are oily media hounds with a nose for what popularly works and what will sink like a lead balloon. Gov Kidero and the likes of Chepkony from some backwater in Kericho are the epitome of dull and ineffective. If they pulled off the dull genius professor move even once, all, perhaps, would be forgiven. But their PhDs seem to have turned them into arrogant shits that simply refuse th help the peoples of the counties they govern get a leg up in the rat race.

We stare in awe as billions in public contracts are bandied about by these governors and their government. A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we are talking about real money. But the billion-shilling truffles that the governors and their county regimes snuffle do not seem to have smoothened out our potholed roads, rehabilitated fire stations, or ensured that doctors and nurses are not getting murdered on their way home from the dispensaries and hospitals that dot our counties. Instead, it is allegations of graft and the ever swingeing taxes that seem to define governors and their governments. Few governors can claim to have any more friends left; from their equally avaricious MCAs to Senators to the National Executive, they have made pests of themselves and persuaded other pests to come and afflict a generally peaceable people.

MCAs have seen the light; MPs squander billions through CDF; Senators seem to have a conclave every three minutes to do god knows what. It is time, MCAs have decided, to get in on the show and they are doing it in style. Whether they spend ten billion or eight hundred million, MCAs know that the trick is to start small and suddenly your empire covers everything from Ward Development Funds to pie-in-the-sky boodnoggles of massive, white-elephant proportions. If only MCAs received the governors' leadership, or the governor had the capacity to lead (rather than lead-by-bribes), we wouldn't be wondering why the largest collection of PhDs in politics in Kenya's history has brought such great misery and disappointment.