Failed oversight: Senate and county assemblies to blame

After five years of experience with devolution, Kenyans have a perfect opportunity to review and improve upon the challenges that have bedeviled accountability in county governments.

Devolution is meant to promote democratic and accountable exercise of power, foster national unity, give powers of self-governance and ensure equitable sharing of resources.

It has potential to reduce the vicious competition we see in Kenya every electoral cycle over control of State House.

Every year for the last five years, Parliament has enthusiastically approved cumulative cash disbursements in excess of one trillion shillings to the 47 county governments. However accountability and oversight of these funds has been weak.

The role of oversight at the counties is shared between the Senate and County Assemblies. This shared role has been the source of much confusion which prompted the Council of Governors to seek a constitutional interpretation.

The High Court ruled that both bodies had a legitimate duty to carry out oversight, but cautioned that they should avoid concurrent investigations.

It would be difficult to enforce part of the ruling on concurrent investigations. Senate and County Assemblies operate at different levels of government hence there does not exist a conveyor belt requirement.

Furthermore, the Constitution in Article 229 (8) gives the two bodies only three months within which to complete their mandate. A failure of one body to conclude its investigations on time would result in a failure of the other to undertake its constitutional requirement.

It is expected that an adverse audit opinion should elicit sanctions on the part of the accounting officers at the counties. To give effect to its recommendations, Senate established an Implementation Committee to follow up resolutions of the House and ensure they are implemented by the respective organs.

However this approach has not been effective since it requires the intervention of other institutions with the mandate to investigate or prosecute.

At the county assemblies, members have been rendered impotent by a court order that declared section 40 (3) of the County Governments Act unconstitutional. They can no longer impeach members of the executive committee whose hands are caught in the cookie jar.

Another challenge to accountability is the hostility by governors to oversight institutions. In the last parliament, COG took Senate to court on several occasions to prevent their members from appearing before the public accounts committee.

The High Court ruled that governors as chief executive officers have a responsibility to respond to audit queries.

They further recognized the right of Senate to summon governors or any other witness, but cautioned that summons should be used as a tool of last resort and should be exercised without malice, caprice or arbitrariness.

The issues raised above are surmountable. Senate must provide clarity, through legislation and regulations, on the boundaries of the concurrent oversight role they share with county assemblies.

Parliament must give the Auditor- General financial and operational muscle to conduct quality audits within time.

Senate and County Assemblies must take a more proactive approach to oversight.