Let Us Learn and Avoid the Pitfalls of Devolution

Post date: Wed, Jul 24, 2013
Category: General
By: Oscar Ochieng,

As dust settles on the delirium of a new face of government, gaping holes are threatening to roll back the gains of devolution. A standoff between the national government and county government on who should have the full control of revenue collection, imprudent budget allocations at the counties and a battle of wits between Parliament and the Senate over the counties leave a lot to be desired.

When the new constitution was promulgated in 2010, most Kenyans had high expectations especially with the introduction of the devolved system of government. Most did not envision that this system would have pitfalls. Counties like Nairobi and Kisumu have been accused of imprudent spending, diverting monies meant for development to buy fuel guzzlers and allocating huge chunks of money for foreign trips. The story is the same in most counties as the county governments prove myopic and unable to prioritize on wealth creation and wooing potential investors. Kenyans are beginning to feel the pinch of financing this ostentation which is exclusively funded through the taxpayers’ money.

Devolution may not always lead to improved governance and economic performance. For instance, in Nigeria, part of the problem hurting the federalism-devolution debate is the fact that emphasis has on many occasions been placed on distributive as opposed to development policies. This has the potential to ruin a country`s political fabric, as it may reduce the ability of the national government to re-distribute resources and assist the less developed sub-national units.

Devolution may also lead to the capture of local governments by the political elites, especially if devolution rules and systems are not well designed, thereby allowing politicians to use local resources to consolidate their hold on to political power through patronage.

Furthermore, devolution may facilitate elite capture by local government and the persistence of anachronistic institutions based on patron-client relations. They accomplish this by skewing allocations in favor of their kinsmen, supporters, sycophants and all manner of political hangers-on to purchase political loyalty. For instance, the legitimacy of the Constituency Development Fund has been compromised by the power vested upon the Members of Parliament, to sing-handedly select members of the CDF committee. Due to the lack of clear and strict guidelines, the leaders have abused the entire process.

As Kenya rolls out the devolved governance system, there is urgent need for deliberate caution on the rail-track that may hinder its full potential. If not properly designed and implemented, devolution may lead to translation of central government bureaucracies, inefficient utilization of resources and lack of accountability at the sub-national level as is being witnessed already.

By moving allocative decisions further out of the limelight, devolution risks permitting greater levels of corruption and mismanagement of resources. This is prevalent where community members lack awareness of their roles and capacity to execute them. This risk of corruption is higher in the absence of mechanisms to enable the community to effectively monitor and evaluate usage of funds. In most cases, these are the gaps that leaders use to abuse the mechanism and therefore deny the citizenry their right to better services.

As it has been shown by various county governments, this system has the potential of taking tribal and ethnic undertones. For example, there has been a caveat that those applying for employment in the counties should come from within the borders of their counties, effectively defeating meritocracy and national character and negating the rule of fair play for opportunities for Kenyans. To reduce inter-ethnic conflicts, devolution must of necessity involve the creation of autonomous ethnic governments. Based on geo-ethnicity each government would have an ethnic group as its unit of collective choice. This argument, however, remains controversial since devolution may in actual effect undermine national unity and could inflate ethnic, religious and cultural diversities. It has the potential to lead to even greater marginalization of minorities and minorities within minorities. The fact that the colonial government succeeded in heightening ethnic divisions through restrictive community interaction may provide a strong justification for ethnic governments.

The bottom line is that unless we put adequate checks and balances, we have the danger of translating the failures of the central government to the counties.

All is not lost, as case studies globally have shown that this system of governance has serious challenges; Bolivia and Papua New Guinea are some of the countries where devolution took a relatively long period to take effect. The best we can do is to learn from countries that have trodden the same path, so that we can avoid the pitfalls. Not only do we need the checks but also vigilance to ensure that the rule of law is followed to the letter.

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