The worst smart man for NBO

Nairobi was flooded. Nairobi is flooded. Uncle Kidero has come back from somewhere in Arabia to rescue us from the floods. He has decreed that by December, I am assuming of this year, all single-use plastic bags, yamepigwa marufuku, because, you know, the jwala you get from Ukwala, Tuskys, Naivas, Uchumi, the Mama Mboga down at the bust stop and Nakumatt are responsible for the flooding - it has nothing to do with the fact that Uncle Kidero's kanjos (or has he delegated that job to the spectacularly inept Creative Consolidated?) do a piss-poor job of cleaning the streets.

I am seriously beginning to doubt this man's credentials. To get to the pinnacle of any greasy pole, even here in Kenya, one needs a plan. Plans might evolve as they are implemented, but they give you a chance to assess whether the one with the plan understands the challenges he is supposed to be surmounting. Evans Kidero has a PhD and an MBA and that means he knows how to plan shit. So why is he finding it so difficult to write a plan for the City of Nairobi? Has h developed the annoying serikali habit of turning everything into a "confidential" or "top secret" document?

It is time we were honest with him and he with us. Nairobi is not the paragon of municipal virtue that we want it to be. His has to be about as corrupt as all the city governments we have had since Independence, so he shouldn't feel slighted when we tell him he is presiding over a kleptocracy that has the traits of a cockroach: not even nuclear war will destroy it. Therefore, if he attempts to eradicate them with a nuke he will lose; what he needs is the municipal equivalent of Mortein Doom.

Second, it is not just single-use plastic bags that are a problem; it is all sorts of solid waste. Nairobians are notorious for the amount of rubbish they tip onto the public space. It does not matter whether they are rich or poor, educated or not, motorists or commuters - the vast majority of Nairobians litter and they do it with impunity. Even children these days are getting in on the act, littering between their school gates and their homes just like their parents do. Uncle Kidero should know that the national government has tried to ban plastic bags and take the national government's experience to heart when he imposes his own ban.

Third, it is not so much that riparian reserves have vanished or wetlands paved over that makes the flooding so predictable, it is that all this was done with the active connivance of the City Fathers and that no mitigation measures were implemented. Nairobi is not the first city that has rivers crisscrossing its geography; Venice is famous for its waterways and New York City is renown for the Hudson and the East River, with the United Nations headquarters sitting on the banks of the latter. With better mitigation during construction the disappearance of riparian reserves and wetlands should not be cause for incessant flooding every time the skies open up.

However, even if Uncle Kidero puts together a plan that solves the above problems, he will face an impossible challenge because he is an inept politician. He can only win with the support of the national government, whose seat is the capital city. The Devolution Ministry is doing laudable work, but it is not part of the Nairobi Masterplan that Uncle Kidero is proud of. If these two behemoths became true partners, Nairobi would be a more pleasant place to live, waterways would be a joy to live next to, floods would only be because of extraordinary acts of nature and Uncle Kidero would be the toast of the chatteratti. As it is, plastic-bag ban and all, he is quite simply the worst smart man we could have elected to run this City.