DCP’s Peter Mbae raises concerns over governance, spending priorities in counties
By Emmanuel Rono, March 31, 2026Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP) Secretary for Planning and Economic Affairs, Peter Mbae, has warned that Kenya’s counties are rapidly deteriorating into consumption centres where governance has been traded for personal enrichment and systemic nepotism.
According to Mbae, the original vision for devolution was to transform counties into centres of production where different regions would compete to generate wealth.
Speaking during a morning talk show on a local radio station on Tuesday, March 31, 2026, Mbae asserted that many governors now view their positions as opportunities to find places they can steal more and populate the public payroll with their own loyalists, regardless of the impact on the national wage bill.
“What’s happening is that counties are now consumption centres where every governor comes in asking, ‘ Where can I steal more. The other one does three or four buildings in some centre, and now asking where to do it five buildings,” Mbae said.
Crisis of leadership capacity
Mbae further clarified that the primary failure does not lie within the counties’ technical staff, such as engineers, educators, and water experts, but rather with the governors themselves, who often lack the capacity to govern.
He argued that these leaders hold executive power, but they frequently lack the virtue and understanding of systems, structures, and institutions required for effective leadership.
“There are people who have no idea. They just thought that becoming governor is very nice, but let me tell you what happens; for you to become a governor, you must understand something called systems, structures, and institutions,” Mbae said.
“We have a lot of elected leaders, I think 70% to 80%, who are business merchants,” Mbae stated, adding that these individuals prioritize personal profit over public service.
He said that this “merchant” mentality often manifests in a refusal to pay small-scale contractors unless they provide 20% to 30% kickbacks, further crippling the local economy.