Former Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale who has been on a different page with NASA Principal Raila Odinga on many issues has finally agreed with Odinga’s idea.
Khalwale speaking on Citizen Tv’s Breakfast show Thursday said that it is a good idea to have regional governments that would divide resources among counties within that region.
“Devolution is good but we can make it better by holding a referendum and merging counties so that we end up with a few in each region. Those counties will be economically viable and the revenue collected will also go up,” Khalwale said.
Khalwale further said that originally the country was to be divided in to regions but that was not realized because of political ambitions, saying that the current system is expensive.
“It was purely due to political expediency that we ended up with the 47 counties. Not many Kenyans know that we have over 800 nominated MCAs. That is too much” he added.
The idea of coming up with regional governments was suggested by the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the ongoing Annual Devolution Conference in Kakamega where he said that, it will be good to have a 3-tier government; the national government, 14-regional governments and then under each region, counties are maintained.