Bullet points from my manifesto

1. Affordable Quality Health Care for all residents by rehabilitating existing health facilities  including Nzoia and Sinoko Community health centres.

2. Creation of job opportunities for the youth to fully participate in the economic development of our ward by empowering them to acquire skills and access to credit facilities in order to improve their capacity in the ward. this will achieve a plough-back effect! it will inject funds in our economy at ward level.

3. Universal education for all in the locality through disbursement of bursaries and scholarships to the deserving and vetted orphans, the needy and vulnerable children. 

4. Creation of job opportunities for the youth. Everybody needs work, but the modern world requires a networking approach, being a global village. By introduction of capacity building and training centres, we are hoping to equip the youth with skills relevant to the needs of the ward and contribution to the nation at large.

5. Through connecting Sinoko  Ward with the foreign and local investors which has been already planned we expect to initiate as soon as possible. Talk of peer mentorship and exchange of ideas.

6. Support Small scale Business enterprises, this being one area of my profession we hope to empower Growing business to be more stable than before.

7. Honest leadership through ultimate accountability ,transperancy, service delivery and community participation in governance.

8. Economic stewerdiship by rehabilitation of existing infrastructures I.e water accessibility, electricity supply, road maintance, and aggressive push for implementation of development plans by the county government etc

9. Re-engineering of farmers cooperatives , support table banking among chamas and Bodaboda Sacco among others to achieve bargaining power and control of our resources. This should see us achieve an all-year-round agriculture production chain with irrigation systems. 

10. Promoting, nurturing, marketing and sponsoring young talents to realize their full potential. 

POLITICS: THE GAME OF NUMBERS

Its a calculation

Let us assume that we can trust our media when they report that there are 40,000 MCA aspirants in the whole country for the 1,422 available slots. This means that each ward has an average of 28 aspirants’ pre-nominations! This is quite a huge resource you know!
Now let’s digest the implications of these figures;
1) ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS
The aspirants pay an average Ksh.20, 000 to the parties to secure nomination papers. This adds up to 800 million. This is money from savings, loans, gifts, disposal of assets and God knows where else! Serious money released to the economy.
For an applicant to get necessary clearances as per sec.6 of the constitution; HELB(1050), DCI(1050), EACC(1000), CRB(2,200), KRA(0) They fork out a total of Ksh.5,300 each totaling to Ksh.212 million! This however ignores other overhead costs like transport, meals and kickbacks!
In order to mobile their troops to back them in the nominations, there is substantial facilitation required. For the general elections, the IEBC capped expenditure by MCAs at 10.3 million. Suppose we say at nominations, we can only have these aspirants use 10% of this limit each; this will mean each one needs at least Ksh.1 million to successfully campaign for nominations! In total, Ksh. 40 billion will be injected into the economy to facilitate campaigns for nominations alone!
In a nutshell, pre-nominations campaign for MCAs alone has a gross contribution of a little over Ksh. 42 billion to the country’s economy! If there is one man who loves this game of figures is CS Henry Rotich!
Throw in some other figures from MPs, Senators, Governors, Women Reps and presidential candidates!

2) SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
There are 1,422 administrative units called Wards in the 47 counties across the country. According to IEBC stats, there are about 14.4 million (Give or take due to pending register clean up) registered voters across the country. This is not inclusive of prisoners and those in the diaspora. A quick calculation means each ward has an average 10,200 voters.
As at Monday 6th March 2017, Kenya has a population of 48,066,894 citizens. (Source: www.worldometers.info). With this in mind, each ward has an average population of 33,802 people! A further breakdown shows that each ward has an average 23,000 children below the age of 18 (including adults who have not registered!)!! Eeiiish! Kenyans can be productive I say!
Okay, let’s look at the stats soberly! Let’s say after nominations, only 12 of the 26 aspirants actually get nominated and actually run for the post of MCA! The law here is very lenient and grants the winner the seat by any majority! Not necessarily 50%+1!
Assuming this is a hotly contested seat and give the winner 42%(4,284 votes), The runners up 35%(3,570 votes), The second runners up 20%(2,040), then the rest of the aspirants can share the balance in whatever ratio! At this point, who cares? We have an MCA!! Yeeeiiiiy!
However, we all have this tendency to negative ethnicity! Unhealthy competition and always feel the need to divide the electorate based on party lines, religion, race…name them! At the end of the day, we create enemies in the society!
Suppose you are the winner, 4,284 votes! Say these voters who voted for you have families of about 6,000 people (Unregistered adults and kids), That means only 10,000 people supported your candidacy by default! How do you propose to manage over 20,000 citizens as enemies for 5 years in your ward? This is two thirds of your ward my frenn! Fanya hesabu zako poa!
Endeavor to co-exist with your opponents! Healthy politics is about compromise and conceding honorably! Don’t mess this generation only to win an election and divide the future generations in the process!

CDF: The new corruption leak-hole!

With politics, we always are at crossroads.

As a country that is ever grappling with an exploding annual budget that exposes the taxpayer to a higher cost of living, legislators should prioritize their functions of oversight, legislation and representation and strengthen mechanisms of monitoring development and other projects in their constituencies.

However, barely two weeks ago, a call was placed on proposed constitutional amendments, key among them to establish the 

1. National Government Constituency Development fund, 
2. National Government Affirmative Action fund and the 
3. Parliamentary oversight fund. 

These proposals wish to further drain cash from the consolidated fund under Article 206 and from the Contingency fund under Article 208 of the Constitution of Kenya.
The introduction of the CDF in 2003 was a relief to many Kenyans especially those residing in rural areas; a chance for them to chart their course of development through decentralization of resources and decision making through their elected Members of Parliament. 

Where the funds were prudently used, schools got face-lifts and children had access to better learning environments through provision of learning materials, residents received better healthcare through improvement and constriction of health facilities and farmers were able to access markets easily. However, the corruption monster found a home in some constituencies and monies started falling from the cracks, hampering and stagnating development for the common man. Seven years into the CDF, Kenyans voted in a new Constitution, a key highlight of the milestone being the establishment of devolved governments.

Save for key national installations such as security; autonomy, power of expenditure and decision-making was given to the public in order for them to exercise rights and freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. Thus, finally the common man had even greater power to interact with their taxes and supervise their use closer home. 
Over time, it is presumed, the National Assembly should have released management of funds to counties and shift focus to its key role of oversight and accountability through legislation of relevant laws and oversight into their implementation. 
As opposed to management of funds, they would activate powers granted to them in the same constitution to determine allocation by allowing counties to access better funding for furthering constituency and other development agenda. Thus, the Act of Parliament that established the CDF should have been fizzled over time to allow devolution to take root. To seek the entrenchment of the National Constituency Development Fund in the Constitution is therefore backtracking on the gains on autonomy and resource management envisaged for the people of Kenya.

This duplication of roles in funds management, especially, can be a catalyst to further corruption, sinking poverty levels deeper. So is the proposal to establish the National Government Affirmative Action Fund in the Constitution.

To drain the country’s contingency funds over functions that can be delegated to county governments with the National Assembly playing oversight is a path likely to lead to more destruction than good. Mark you this is the same fund being among those targeted by women representatives who are also demanding funds to allow them implement ‘their development agenda’. 
That the same fund duplicates activities such as bursary distribution, which is also undertaken by the different constituency development funds, leaves a lot to be desired.