A survey released on Tuesday revealed that three out of 10 Kenyans feel that counties are in a worse situation than they were a decade ago at the onset of devolution.

This is a downward perception trend from 68 percent in 2015 to a peak of 73 per cent in 2020, before declining to 65 per cent in 2024.

The vast majority of Kenyans who feel that devolution was not working cited corruption, mismanagement of resources, and poor services in sectors like education and health as their main reasons for the verdict.

The Constitution ushered the dispersal power and resources to regions, primarily to ease access to public goods and participation in decision-making at the county and ward levels. This was in response to the post-independence system in which both decision-making and resource allocation were centralised.

The system was for a long time the subject of political abuse that saw resource allocation skewed to certain regions, leading to the marginalisation of others. Kenyans had to make long trips to the capital or the former provincial headquarters in search of critical services, including health, education and official documentation.

At the advent of devolution, Kenyans assigned agriculture, health, education, roads and transport, energy, water management, trade and tourism, county planning and development, housing, lands and settlement, culture and sports, social services, public participation and planning to the devolved regions.

However, corruption and misuse of resources have derailed the devolution dream in many counties. Counties have been turned into playgrounds for juvenile wars among governors and their successors on the execution of development programmes.

There have been cases in which governors have abandoned projects initiated by their predecessors, leading to wastage of public funds as dead capital.

“The counties at the top of the ranks are those whose governors took over from where things were left incomplete, finished them and now are starting their own flagships,” said Infortrak CEO Angela Ambitho.

Lavish spending on non-essential activities such as foreign travel, allowances and entertainment now override resources allocated to the core functions. A lot of resources are spent on foreign “bench-marking” trips when officials could tap into local success stories and best practices.