Garissa is one of the northern counties that is speedily gaining national outlook.
However, its politics is steadily losing meaning as clan politics get into play. Leading clans and communities have made it a custom that leading individuals should just transfer power to their immediate families at the expense of other able-bodied individuals from the lesser households.
Just some days ago, a section of local elders said that Senator Haji should take a leave from the county's political arena to pave way for his younger brother Bashir Haji Yussuf.
If this becomes the trend, then the county's political ideologies will just be drowned into a family thing that goes against the constitutional provisions pertaining democracy.
For the elders to make a proposal-cum resolution on behalf of the electorate is ill-advised. It is true that Senator Haji has been at the helm of regional politics for long, but it doesn't guarantee a leeway to exploit the aspirants from lesser households.
Leadership is not a clan initiative but a citizen chosen thing that ought to benefit both the royal and the second families.
If the trend of hereditary leadership as seen in Garissa County continues, it may eventually make the county a political dustbin to dump incompetent leaders.