This past week and in general the whole of 2018 has been all about the drama surrounding City Hall in Nairobi which is the seat of the country's largest city.
Since the resignation of the then Deputy Governor Polycarp Igathe who has since moved on to Equity Bank, there has been a lot of complaints from the sitting Governor, Mike Sonko, of interference by the national government.
Many may argue that this is just a one of its kind type of conflict to ever be witnessed in the country but the truth of the matter is that it is not. We take a walk back memory lane to 1983. At this point in time, the city under the sun was the title that best described Nairobi but that was quickly fading away. Corruption and poor service delivery were the order of the day at City Hall, Nairobi.
The capital city that we know now may not have been had the national government not intervened to put a check on the menace. Huge piles of garbage went uncollected for months and most of the residents could no longer rely on the city council to supply them with clean, safe drinking water.
Then minister for Local Government, Moses Musalia under the directive of the president went ahead to disband the entire city council after it was identified that a 17000 workforce that did nothing to deliver, was pocketing around 30 million in salaries and another 21 million in overtime fees. It is said that the president termed those numbers outrageous when compared to the value that Nairobians were getting in return for their taxes.
This angered the president who then directed Mr. Mudavadi to disband the entire city council and suspend the mayor and his deputy. The city council was then placed under a committee that was now given the mandate to run the city council.
Fast forward to 2018 and you agree with me that the national government is not pressuring the Nairobi governor in any way and may have just spotted a problem that they are best suited to solve.