BY Kajiado County GPS
Since devolution set in, there are counties that always featured on the top Ten whenever surveys were conducted.
Others were always on the Bottom five during such surveys.
Before 2017, Kajiado always featured in the Bottom list.
But two years down the line in Governor Lenku’s reign, this reputation is no longer there.
First it was Inclusivity in government where the Governor brought people from different communities to his Cabinet, unlike in the previous regime where Cabinet meetings were held in vernacular.
He also surprised other Counties when he employed all the county’s 600 ECD teachers on permanent basis.
Then he brought the most genius strategy of Universal Health Care where he introduced Mbuzi Moja Afya Bora initiative.
The initiative saw Maasai families give one goat to the county to sell in a public auction.
The proceeds pay the NHIF cover for the families.
The GIS Lab at the Lands department has become a benchmarking center for anti- land fraud by making it a land data center.
The World Bank has several projects running in the county due to improved investor confidence.
But it is the latest surveys that have caught monitors of devolution by surprise.
The London-based All Africa Advisers pollster has ranked Governor Lenku the 9th best performing Governor and the third best among first time governors.
This is a sharp improvement from position 42 given to former Governor David Nkedianye in 2017.
This week, Lenku’s devolution performance continued to soar.
The Consortium of Researchers on Governance, (CRoG), analyzed own revenue data held by the Controller of Budget and the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA).
Kajiado emerged the 7th most improved County after increasing its revenues by 70 per cent. When Lenku came into office in 2017, the County had collected Sh 557 Million.
Two years into office, the County collected Sh 1.2 Billion in the 2018/2019 financial year.
It seems the Lenku magical touch in Kajiado heralds a better future for a county highly regarded as the Bedroom of Nairobi.
In 2016/2017, the last year of the first term, Kajiado County had easily become one of the examples of “The Limping counties” with nothing tangible for anyone especially outside Kajiado to see.
World Bank projects and those by National Government met a hostile county government that thrived on the illusion that their national government share was all they needed to avail devolution goodies to citizens.
They were wrong. Dead wrong. Investor confidence was at its lowest.
But this narrative is beginning to change in the most astonishing speed.
Just two years into government, Governor Joseph Ole Lenku is steering a county into heights that have caught monitors of devolution unawares.
In December 2017, Kajiado employed its 600 ECD teachers on Permanent and Pensionable terms.
Many other counties are still grappling with where this money came from.
Lenku further boosted early childhood education with provision of fortified porridge to all ECD children, a programme that continues to date.
Kajiado hospitals were rated by the Ministry of Health as the County with the highest positive perception by patients after recording the highest increase in patient in public hospitals.
Kajiado also scored highly in land reforms when it installed a state-of-the-art GIS Lab that is a digital land data bank to solve ownership wrangles.
Kajiado was always in Position 40s in whatever was surveyed on devolution.