Counties clash with national government on bursary order

County governments are on a collision course with the national government over disbursement of bursaries to needy students.

This is after Controller of Budget (CoB) Margaret Nyakang’o, in a circular dated January 14, 2025 to all County Executive Committee Members for Finance, warned that the involvement of the devolved units in providing bursaries is unconstitutional and should stop.

According to Dr Nyakang’o, county governments are supporting projects that belong to national government without ensuring that agreement between them and national government is in place.

Nyakang’o in her circular argued that for counties to provide bursaries to students, it must have an agreement between them and the national government of the transfer of such function.

She reminded counties that the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution distributes function between the national government and county government which designates universities, tertiary education institutions, primary schools, secondary schools and special education as functions of national government.

“Conversely part two of the Fourth schedule under Section 9 assigns pre-primary education, village polytechnics, homecraft centres and childcare facilities to county governments,” said Nyakang’o in the circular.

She further argued that, there is a need to transfer the function in accordance with Article 187 of the Constitution.

“For a county government to offer educational support towards functions classified under part one of the Fourth Schedule, there must be transfer of the function according to the Constitution,” she said.

Some county governments are irregularly supporting learners in secondary schools, Tvets, universities while others like Nairobi under Johnson Sakaja have irregularly introduced school meals programme .

Undermine governors
But the Council of Governors (CoG) immediately fired back, accusing Nyakang’o of allowing herself to be misused by politicians over the issue mainly to undermine governors.

CoG Vice Chairman Mutahi Kahiga, who is also Nyeri governor, said the Fourth Schedule which Nyakang’o was basing her directive on does not give any of the two levels of government exclusive mandate to provide bursaries.

“Who is the Controller of Budget to annul a process that is usually passed by respective county assemblies in their annual budgets? The Controller of Budget has some ill motives against governors through her directive,” Kahiga told the People Daily.

The Nyeri governor who disclosed that the COG’s Education Committee is set to convene a meeting next week to take a common stand, questioned why the Controller of Budget continued to approve the budget for the National Government-Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF) despite the court having outlawed it.

He said that bursaries are disbursed by counties under Article 43 of the Constitution, that deals with Social Rights.

Kahiga said education, under which bursaries fall, is a social right that must remain accessible to all Kenyans.

“She must stop this double standards and undertake her mandate professionally. As governors, I don’t think we are ready to relinquish the disbursement of bursaries,” Kahiga said.

According to Nyakang’o, the process requires the formulation of an intergovernmental agreement, which must be executed by an authorized person and published in the Kenya Gazette as outlined in Article 187 of the Constitution and read together with section 26 of the Intergovernmental Relations Act.

“Any requisition for withdrawal of funds to perform functions categorized as national government functions under part one of the Fourth Schedule must be accompanied by the requisite intergovernmental agreement as prescribed by the law,” reads part of the circular.

The development comes after a Senate committee tabled a report in the house fingering County governments for providing salaries to needy students without having a legal backing.

The Senate County Public Investments and Special Funds Committee chaired by Vihiga lawmaker Godfrey Osotsi tabled a damning report after the scrutiny of the audit report for county bursary funds for the 2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years.

In the report, the committee fingered Tana River, Trans Nzoia, West Pokot, Bungoma, Machakos, Elgeyo Marakwet, Nandi, Garissa, Kericho, Kajiado, Vihiga Lamu, Bomet, Murang’a and Kirinyaga counties for what they termed as ‘misappropriation’ of public funds.

During the probe by the committee, it was discovered that some counties disbursed funds to students with duplicate admission numbers while in some cases there was no list of beneficiaries.
Bouncing cheques

In addition, the committee observed that there were various inaccuracies and errors in the financial statements of nearly all Bursary Funds, raising concerns about incompetence, potentially geared towards fraudulent activities.

Further, the lawmakers in their report established that most counties were issuing bouncing cheques, could not also confirm that the money reached the intended beneficiaries while others lack documentation to support the disbursements.

In the report, the committee recommended that the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) to pitch tent in the 15 Counties and recover millions of shillings that was spent on students outside the law.

People Daily has now established that Council of Governors Education Committee chaired by the Nyeri County chief will meet next week and respond to Nyakang’o’s circular.