Regional leaders, activists and politicians from the Northern Kenya have threatened to sue the government for using the controversial 2009 population census as a criteria of distributing resources to their counties.
Lawyers representing Garissa, Wajir and Mandera three counties have advised their county administrations of the need to urgently seek a high court injunction to forestall the use of the population projections by Kenya Bureau of Statistics, and the Commission of Revenue Allocation, and also the need to proceed to the Supreme Court.
However, for more than six months now, the counties have failed to prioritize payment of their legal fees, and consequently the lawyers could not proceed.
With this, the government now intends to use the census provisions to revise the funds allocated to the three counties for 2017/18 financial year whose budget process has been brought forward to commence in a week's time, because of next year’s elections.
There are plans to reduce the allocations for Mandera County by at least Sh1.5 billion, and that of the other two counties by Sh1billion each.
In May this year, the Court of Appeal directed that the 2009 population Census results for the three Northern counties were valid but ironically also ruled that the government agencies may use projected population of the region.
It was a confused ruling, but was understandably so because of perceived influence of the Executive. If the Court held that the Census was valid, it shouldn’t have allowed any other figures to be used.