Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Piteous Hand-wringing and Self-serving Promises.

Nairobi City's governor spoke - well, wrote - though most of it was statistics twaddle, some was buck-passing ("Sadly, the central government never invested in the infrastructure and services necessary to cope with this growing demand.", "...security and policing remains the responsibility of the national government", et cetera) and some of it were campaign promises in precis form. We don't really care about him passing the buck; he is a politician after all. We don't mind the statistics twaddle; that PhD did not come about because he is the soul of repartee. We mind, and mind terrible, that he is making promises in his third year in office.

Dear keen reader, you will notice that of all the promises he is still making, the governor has developed amnesia over the one that matters most to us: public sanitation. His has to be the filthiest administration - metaphorically an literally - since the death of the Magic Mike Tent Revival of the 1990s. The Capital, which he still incredibly believes will become a world class city, is spectacularly filthy. Mounds of garbage are to be found everywhere, except where he and his fellow plutocrats live, work and play.

When was the last time the governor took a walk down Accra Road, River Road or Grogan Road? Has he experienced Landhies Road on a sweltering Thursday afternoon? I bet he hasn't been to Muthurwa after a rain storm. Whether or not the governor "duals" Ngong' Road or turns the Dandora dump into a power plant, we will all remember him for letting our no-longer-beautiful city drown in garbage and overflowing sewerage.  We will not forgive him either.

He claims that he was "given the mandate to bring business-like leadership to solve our city’s challenges" when he was elected. What he seems to have done coming into the third year of his government is to wring his hands piteously and pass the buck on problems he promised to solve while simultaneously promising to solve the same problems. I don't even know why we are still giving this man audience any more. If you ran my business this badly for two years, I would have you blacklisted in the industry!

We are not fools. Of course things would not improve overnight. But even when George Aladwa and Geoffrey Majiwa were doing their thing in City Hall, rubbish was collected and Nairobi was not the stinking eyesore that it has become. Whatever we feel about the things that the solid waste management industry gets up to, under even Dick Wathika, Nairobi was reasonably well-tended. And these were men who presided over the City Council, a snakepit if there ever was one where a misstep meant flying chairs and weeping men.

The governor is not elected by councillors anymore; that is now a privilege reserved to the long-suffering residents of the City. This governor has abused our hospitality and he continues to do so every day a drain remain filled in with the soil Creative Consolidated dumps in it in the name o making motoring more pleasurable or every day a sewer remains blocked because "it is now the responsibility of the Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company". A recall will most likely fail against this very, very wealthy governor, but I don't think if 2017 rolls around with these mountains of filth we will be in a mood to hear him out on dual carriage roads, rapid transit systems or dumps-turned-to-power-plants ever again.

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