Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has been ranked the best performing governor in the history of devolution in Nairobi by a report released by the Nairobi City County Social Audit Network based on performance and social impact for the year 2022/2023.
According to the report, Sakaja, who inherited a county which had no system of efficient service delivery, had decayed in heaps of garbage, county health facilities were in shambolic state, a demoralized county staff due to delayed monthly salaries which were the order of the day, traffic congestion, poor roads network within the estates, clogged drainage systems, a disorganized hawking system, insecurity, rampant water scarcity among other challenges.
The report notes that since Governor Sakaja too over 10 months ago, he his performance has seen hip perch on top of his predecessors since the inception of devolution in 2013.
The report notes that top on the list among the achievement of the Sakaja administration is the digitization of systems and best practice in payments, revenue collection, disbursement of salaries, improvement of County health facilities and improvement of mobility within the county.
Under Sakaja, the county has a gender balanced cabinet, best intergovernmental relations since inception. In terms of the social impact and public participation, Nairobi has been ranked as the best country wide while inclusivity is at its best complete with a ministerial department.
The County has been ranked top for improved health facilities and streamlined provision of health services. For the first time ever at a public county hospital the Sakaja administration has installed an ICU facility at Mama Lucy Kibaki Hospital, Renal facility, upgrade at Pumwani maternity, Ksh 324M paid to KEMSA, 118 health facility supplied with medical supplies including nonpharmaceuticals, CT Scan procured for Mama Lucy Hospital, water purifiers installed in five health centers, 223 computers, bio-metric equipments and fingerprints scanners procured for the digitization of health care services among other milestones only in 10 months.
In the education sector, the county government has been hailed globally with the unrolling of the Dishi na County School Feeding Program which has been mentioned as a key project that will deal with climate change effects and at the same time deal with SDGs on eradicating Hunger and protection of children.
When he took over the reins of City Hall, a lot of questions were raised as to whether Sakaja would cope with the quagmire of confusion that characterized the running of Nairobi City County, his election came in the back drop of chaos involving cases in which his predecessor was accused of poor service delivery and financial mismanagement.
According to the report 10 months later into Sakaja administration, there is growing hope that the city under the sun will be great again. The street lighting program, the ongoing road projects, waste collection, reforms in the health sector and the massive investment in service delivery have all curved him as a man who is out to fix the mess that has been Nairobi.
Nairobi County Social Audit Network is founded on the Principle of Public Participation and Inclusion by creating awareness among beneficiaries and providers of local social and productive services.
NCCSAN promotes citizen participation that focuses on government performance and accountability. It is qualitatively different from other forms of audit and citizen participation, whose main purpose is to express citizen’s voice and promote a more inclusive government, such as public demonstrations, advocacy and lobbying and/or public hearing initiatives.
The central objective of NCCSAN is to monitor, track, analyze, and evaluate government performance, thus making public officials accountable for their actions and decisions. As an evaluation of government performance, a social audit exercise can be considered a mechanism of social oversight: that is, the control that citizens can exert on their government officials to ensure that they act transparently, responsibly and effectively.
