A glorified mayor of a slum.

What is wrong with the people who make decisions for the City of Nairobi? I saw a picture of the Governor of Nairobi City County walking to a meeting at a fancy five-star hotel because of the traffic jam. His motorcade couldn't bulldoze its way through so he was forced to reckon with the incredible stupidity of a city with no footpaths for the millions of walking Nairobians long neglected by the government. Instead of the governor sympathising with the hapless ones without the wherewithal to splurge on a three-pointed star, four rings, or airplane propeller, he intends to implement the "raft of proposals" designed to make motoring that much easier for the motoring classes. What is wrong with these people?

Some of us, on someone else's shilling mind you, have had the privilege of visiting "world class cities" and they all have some things in common. Functional public transport systems, superb facilities for the walking public and traffic management systems that are logical, predictable, efficient and effective. Nairobi City has a public transport system that can only be envied by the weak-minded and lazy. 

The facilities available to the walking public are not just inadequate, they are an indication of the great contempt with which their government, and motorists, hold them. But by far the worst thing about the city, I think, is the fact that the Governor, his government and the national Executive have conspired to create the most illiberal traffic management system in the world. It is corrupt, corruptible, inefficient, wasteful, and chaotic, and it has proven to be a drain on the time and resources of Nairobians, whether working stiffs or gazillionaire private developers.

The Governor of Nairobi City is a lost cause. Those who still hope to see him make our city the envy of the world are blind to the incredible lost opportunities our city has suffered in the last two years. When he was first elected, and the national Executive in a fit of pique denied him Shell/BP House, the governor said he would work out of his car to provide services to the people of Nairobi. Every time we are bullied off the road so that his quasi-presidential motorcade can glide past, those words mock us cruelly.

Being a glorified mayor of a metropolitan city must gall for the governor. Being the glorified mayor of a metropolitan city that is more than two-thirds slum must really, really gall. But being a glorified mayor of a slum with no money for slum upgrading must be the worst. Until this simple fact sinks in, until he lets go of his stubborn, misguided idea that he is in charge of a world class city, the governor of Nairobi will continue to live in the Utopian world where there are metro systems and mass transit buses run on a timetable and he can get to his meeting at swanky five-star hotels without having to share the dusty sidewalk with the sweaty, smelly, unwashed working stiffs who seem to crawl out of every wooodwork in Nairobi.