By Abdullahi Jamaa
December 2017 I went for a holiday to Wajir, a promising town but one that has suffered from so many years of state neglect and underdevelopment. The pastoral county had just completed the first phase of devolution and it is pregnant with full of expectations.
During one of my outing occasions, to be precise on 27th December, I made a particular visit to the county headquarters, a huge building that houses most of the county’s executive and other core administrative units.
I walked through an open metallic gate manned by a skinny watchman who never bothered to ask me where I was going. Past the main entrance, a seemingly malfunctioned security scanner rested on the sullied wall. It had all the hallmarks of negligence at the grimy and uninviting lobby area that doesn’t exist.
There wasn’t a reception or receptionist at the entrance, it was sordidly empty with nobody manning. Although it was a holiday season, it was also an official working day. The public participation office was where I would like to visit to get some information about county integrated development plan.
I stood for a minute, expecting somebody would pass by to give me directions to my destination. One man walked in, carrying a green folder in his right hand, without returning my Islamic greeting he ran into the staircase.
I understood from the appearance that he was a ghastly county staff. He was one of the only two workers that I have seen that day. I said to myself, although he did not greet me, he is better than many who did not turn up for work.
Right from the entrance, a few steps from the building’s threshold is a narrow staircase that led me up to humdrum partitions with unbearably staid porticos. Without a reception at the front office, I had to find my way up, frequently greeted by empty offices and desks.
After about 15 minutes I found the office I was looking for. One dedicated middle-aged man is sitting alone in a small office that has two big desks facing each other. I had no any appointment with him and he was busy with heaps of documents seemingly working on a tight deadline. It was round 4.30pm. He was making some tea for himself when I walked in.
“Welcome my friend, my name is ……’ he said. He pulled a chair towards me politely asking me to sit down. He is welcoming, very concerned about his visitor, he is a rare gem in this part of the world.
“Have some tea here” he said.
I just had a cup of tea at Espresso Royale, one of the few modern coffee shops in Wajir town. But I did not want to disappoint him, I wanted to appreciate his efforts, from the beginning, I liked the way he treated me. I knew then, from the back of my mind that the only way to value his effort is to take this special tea. I did it.
When I worked as a young reporter in Wajir as a correspondent for Daily Nation and Star FM, I built a great passion for community service. I encountered face to face with realities of clan conflicts, diseases, and droughts in Wajir.
This firsthand experience that sometimes traumatized my psyche evolved into some resentment with public servants who did not do their duties to serve their people. I hated public servants who stole from the poor especially during emergency situations. If I can’t report on them, I used to curse them- The situation of the people they were stealing from made me cry sometimes.
During the severe drought of 2006/2007, I can vividly recall reporting about the harrowing situation of death and destruction, yet still, some departmental directors were mismanaging relief aids and selling fodders meant for emaciated livestock.
My encounter with this dedicated public servant, a man who sat in the office alone when his colleagues were holiday-making in Nairobi and elsewhere in the county gave me some hope for the future of Wajir. I said to myself if we can only get a handful of dedicated public servants who have nationalistic fervors like this man, we would be making great headways.
However, the reality is that many people from the county, especially many county employees do not know where we are coming from; they don’t know where we are going either. They have mastered the art of stealing from the public in cash, in kind and in time. They should learn a lot from my host at the public participation office.
By the way, this was one of the five public facilities I toured then. From the exterior the building that houses the governor is maximal. Built on a larger tract of land that originally belonged to the district water department the colossal structure (to the standards of Wajir) gives an elegant impression of a promising county headquarters.
It is a sardonic legacy of the former governor, a man many residents believe to have laid the foundation for devolution at a time when the county was emerging from the age of an abyss. This legacy, however, seems to be an axiomatic failure if my visit is anything to go by.
From outside as I said, the building looks great but from inside it is an empty shell, a cosmos of boring partitions and a manifestation of hollowness that indicates an unctuous waste of resources. It is just one case of non-prioritized, innovation-less schemes.
What seems to be an iconic headquarters is really a dead-stone work of masonry similar to a historical archetype from the 18th century or rather a ruined castle. It rested on an unkempt compound with all the hallmark of unregimented environmental arrangement.
Barely three years after its construction it is shedding off and cracking at an alarming rate. Many people would not wish to believe this but Wajir county headquarters looks like an old-school administrations bloc perhaps constructed some decades ago.
I believe this has emanated from a shoddy work during the initial construction and later from an unabated destruction by some careless county staff. Those types that care more about salaries and perks and stealing from the public.
A lot of its washrooms have already malfunctioned with broken washbasins and cisterns forcing many of the staff especially women to suffer in silence. Offices and office equipment have been destroyed to a large extent by employees who don’t respect their bosses because they are backed by patrilineal clan elders.
“Our kinsmen, right or wrong is seemingly the basic motto of operation’ as legendary British anthropologist, I.M. Lewis said decades ago. Just like other county assets and buildings, the county headquarters of Wajir is owned by nobody, there is no caretaker either of this public property and nobody is seemingly concerned with this scale of destruction.
It seemed the former regime had not initiated a proper and accountable transfer of county assets including vehicles and buildings. There wasn’t any indication that there is a department of asset management; if it was there, then it only existed by name.
While the former administration has to shoulder the blame of shoddy work, the current government must take remedial measures to protect not only the headquarters but also other county properties and assets. Incipient localization of clannism at work environments must not be allowed to destroy properties that belong to the public. They must be protected to serve generations and generations of residents.
