Ascendant recentralisation: the politics of urban governance and institutional configurations in Nairobi

ABSTRACT

This paper draws from two experiences with decentralisation in Kenya to illustrate the different ways through which the central government has sought to bolster its power at the expense of the local government in the country’s capital, Nairobi during periods of vertically-unified authority. In the first instance, it examines the years between 1983 and 1992 during which the central government appointed a Commission to replace the elected Nairobi City Council. The second period that is examined is between 2017 and 2022 when certain devolved functions were transferred from the elected Nairobi City County Government to a newly established institution appointed by the President, the Nairobi Metropolitan Service. During both periods authority was vertically unified with the ruling parties also being in control of the city. Drawing on a series of interviews with various stakeholders and inhabitants of informal settlements, the paper argues that contrary to what much literature suggests, recentralisation of urban governance not only occurs in situations of vertically-divided authority but can also occur where authority is unified. Some of the conditions that enabled these power consolidation moves together with the outcomes that these generated are also examined.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban governance
• decentralisation
• Kenya
• Nairobi Metropolitan Service
• managerialism

Institutions of urban governance have become important loci for reform initiatives that have as their goal the strengthening of formal governance systems in the city. One reason for this is that institutions are primarily the vehicle through which elites drive their visions. They are also the arena upon which the various strategies that elites employ to gain power and profit play out.¹ But reforming institutions of urban governance is often a contested political process. We see such contests playing out in specific ways whenever there is a goal of redistributing political power, fiscal authority, and administrative authority through modalities like decentralisation.² Decentralisation is an intrinsically political process.³ When pursued as a strategy for power redistribution, decentralisation can expose the fissures that often underlie urban governance and politics. Decentralisation unsettles institutionalised logics and practices and can stimulate a ‘new culture of local governance’.⁴ There is a growing acknowledgment within development studies that decentralisation, in its various forms, is not contest free. For instance, Resnick observes that in instances where opposition parties control cities and municipalities, contests are prevalent as the ruling party may employ ‘strategies of subversion’ that are aimed at reducing the autonomy of opposition-controlled local governments.⁵ She terms these situations as ‘vertically-divided authority’.⁶

Similarly, Guma examines the elaboration of dynamics that come to play whenever power redistribution is pursued at the city scale in the East African cities of Kampala, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam. In exploring the realities that shape urban governance in these cities Guma concludes that the pressing dilemma in the three postcolonial cityscapes regards the overlapping and contradictory forms of urban governance that have been adopted.⁷ In Kampala, Guma observes that this has seen the central government’s expansion into the realm of decentralised authorities.⁸ Practices that are inimical with what decentralisation should achieve are also examined in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Obeng-Odoom observes that actors like local chiefs drive the amendment of legislation to further strengthen their positions.⁹ Legislation is a common tool that central governments employ to strengthen their position at the expense of that of decentralised units. Goodfellow and Jackman observe this trend in cities of the Global South which are opposition-controlled.¹⁰ Through legislative acts, the central government may seek to shift the balance of power in its favour particularly in instance where it seeks to contain opposition both internally in its party ranks and externally.

Focus on the powerplays in vertically-divided contexts have left little room for considering how authority is exercised and contested in contexts where authority is vertically unified, that is where the ruling party controls both the central government and local authorities. This is an important question that needs attention to establish whether similar dynamics of power consolidation feature where authority is not vertically-divided, particularly in capital cities which are often also the seat of national governments. There is a tendency to presume that relations in contexts where actors from both central and decentralised units are drawn from the same political party will be devoid of inclinations by the central government to appropriate power for itself. It is sometimes supposed that where the central and local governments are in the hands of the same political party, then the central government would be more inclined to facilitate and encourage better service delivery at the local level.¹¹ Obeng-Odoom estimates that tensions will be much attenuated in situations where both the president and the mayors are from the same political party, or where they share the same ideology and have similar interests.

However, even where authority is vertically unified, there will likely be divisions within the ruling party along different lines like class, ethnicity, ideology, among others which can foment internal tensions and escalate quests for domination of the weaker faction by powerful elements within the party. Moreover, elite interests do not always align particularly where rents accumulation and modalities for delivering public services are concerned, which may lead to the emergence of schisms within elite groups. Intra-party divisions may persuade dominant elites in the ruling party to make moves to consolidate their hold on power especially in the presence of an assertive opposition which is likely to exploit the divisions to ascend to power. Powerful actors in the ruling party will engage in a repertoire of acts to consolidate their power and limit the space for local autonomy in an attempt to strengthen the party.¹² Coercion and co-optation may be employed in these cases to weaken the capacities of their own local authorities to deliver services which makes it easier for actors in the central government to extend their authority in the decentralised entities. For this to be viable, the assertive opposition party must have been effectively neutered or co-opted by the ruling party. Under these conditions, the central government will be able to artfully exploit both political and legal openings to shift the balance of power in its favour and to the detriment of decentralised units. Such inclinations may also feature in cases where the ruling party feels threatened by the opposition and does not trust its local cadres to deliver success.

To illustrate the above proposition, this this paper will focus on two defining moments in Kenya’s history with decentralisation. It uses these moments to outline how the central government has bolstered its power at the expense of the local government in the capital, Nairobi. The first period that is examined is the years between 1983 and 1992 during which centralist traditions became embedded in virtually all segments of governance. During this period, the ruling Kenya African National Union’s (KANU) authority was weakened in Nairobi against the backdrop of a turbulent economic period and the aggressive pursuit of decentralisation in Africa in the 1980s. The then President Daniel Moi had, following the introduction of de jure single-party rule, embarked on a programme to expunge the civil service and local government in Nairobi of the Kikuyu-centred state that had been fabricated by the first president, Jomo Kenyatta.¹³ At the same time, the country was recovering from an attempted coup in 1982 whose aftermath was the consolidation of power by the ruling KANU regime. Moi readily neutered opposition in spaces that were perceived vulnerable to subversive interests. His administration employed coercive and co-optative measures which effectively paralysed local authorities that were deemed vulnerable to opposition influence. The Nairobi City Council whose mayor was a member of the ruling party was dissolved and an appointive Commission established in its place. The second period that is examined is the period between 2017 and 2022. During this period, control of both the central government and the devolved Nairobi City County Government (NCCG) also rested with the same party, The Jubilee Party. This, however, did not stop the then president, Uhuru Kenyatta, from employing legal manoeuvres whose outcome was the trimming of powers from the NCCG and vesting of these to the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) an entity established in 2020 under the Office of the President. The motivations behind these two administrations’ actions to consolidate power, the legal manoeuvres employed, and the outcomes generated are examined through a review of relevant literature, including media reports.

Discussions in this paper also draw from a series of interviews with stakeholders from the State Department for Housing and Urban Development, Nairobi Metropolitan Services, representatives of NGOs, and ten inhabitants of Mukuru informal settlements in the months of August and September 2022. The inhabitants of Mukuru were particularly targeted considering the NMS’s visible presence in the settlements during the Covid-19 pandemic. The author has also been extensively involved in research in Mukuru. A large majority of the projects that were initiated by the NMS during its tenure focused on informal settlements. Purposive sampling was employed to gain access to respondents based on their knowledge of the activities that NMS was carrying out in Mukuru. Accounts from residents provided useful insights on how low-income urban residents experience governance changes in the city. For the key informants, the study targeted institutional actors that engage with matters on urban governance and who maintain a presence in Nairobi’s informal settlements. Some of the NGO and social movement actors that were targeted had engaged with NMS in various capacities and had established opinions about the institution based on these interactions. The Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations (KARA) one of the NGOs that was targeted draws its membership from various parts of the country and from different neighbourhoods in the city.

Struggle for urban dominance

In many capital cities, shifts in political dominance are part of the mechanisms through which power is distributed among various actors. Capital cities in postcolonial settings are sites of intriguing powerplays especially in cases where there exists a strong ruling party at the national level and an assertive opposition party. Within these contexts, it is often the case that governance will oscillate between some forms of decentralisation and recentralisation depending on which party is in control. The early periods that followed the end of settler colonialism in Africa were particularly rife with what can be described as backtracking on decentralisation by nationalist leaders who viewed local governments as a threat to their authority.¹⁴ As a counter to the increased calls for local government autonomy, many obstacles were erected, and loopholes in legislation exploited, with the ultimate goal being the consolidation of power by the ruling regimes.¹⁵ In Nigeria for instance, the preeminent role played by the national government during budgeting and resource disbursement in the 1980s meant that the ruling regime could instrumentalize erratic and unreliable cashflows as a tool to control local governments.¹⁶ In certain cases, material incentives were extended to some local authorities to buy their cooperation with this playing a key role in building deep networks of patronage. More recently, as is the case with Addis Ababa, the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) employed what Gebremariam refers to as a ‘legitimizing discourse of developmentalism’ to generate acquiescence among low-income urban communities in order to dominate and govern the city.¹⁷ The desire by actors in the central government to stay in power has been cited as the overriding reason for deploying such tactics to dismantle local government.¹⁸

Regarding the interventions that are usually fronted by the elite in the central government to limit the autonomy of sub-national units, various views have emerged which try to explain how consolidation of power will occur. Practices that are employed by central governments may range between coercive, cooperative and co-optative. The former, according to Resnick will be more prevalent in contexts in which authority is vertically divided. In such contexts, Resnick suggests that the central government may employ a range of measures that weaken the capacities of local authorities to deliver services to their residents. This in turn makes these authorities culpable for poor service delivery which draws in the intervention of the central government that is ostensibly driven by the desire to improve service delivery. These tactics may be deployed in the fiscal, administrative, and political domains and are observed in certain local governments that are controlled by opposition parties.¹⁹ Opposition-controlled local governments that find themselves in this situation will often be inclined to improve service delivery to safeguard their electoral success and to safeguard their authority and may mobilise resources for this through interventions like increased taxation.²⁰

Drawing on experiences with decentralisation in Senegal, Resnick points out what she refers to as strategies of subversion which elected officials resorted to during what she describes as a period of vertically-divided authority in the country. According to Resnick, the central government engaged several tactics to undermine the authority of local units. Some of the tactics that she identifies include: backtracking on political decentralisation, undermining of fiscal decentralisation, and increasing administrative ambiguity (which can take the form of granting institutions overlapping administrative responsibilities).²¹ In Kampala, Lambright observes that the breakdown of service provision has been occasioned by the acts of subversion that the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) has in the past employed against the opposition-led city government.²² To justify its takeover of Kampala, NRM stifled access to financial resources by the Kampala City Council (KCC) by starving it of cash disbursements and undermining KCC’s revenue-generation capacities.²³ The constrains that arose from repeated interference by the central government eventually paved way for the institutional transformation of Kampala’s governance structures. A corporate authority, the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), was then established through an Act of Parliament with executive authority being bestowed on its Executive Director who was appointed by and accountable to the President.²⁴ With this, Uganda’s future with decentralisation became more uncertain.²⁵

Interventions by the central government to extend its dominance do not always take the form of coercive measures. Goodfellow and Jackman have identified a diverse set of tools such as co-optation, surveillance, clientelism and legal changes as some of the ‘softer strategies’ that can be used to placate potential opposition.²⁶ Co-optation has been used in Uganda by the ruling NRM to court potential challenge from the opposition. This often sows discord and suspicions in the opposition at the benefit of the ruling regime. In Uganda, NRM’s strategy for domination alternates between an approach which Muwanga et al. define as ‘carrots and sticks’ whose viability is only possible within the context of the repressive state which the NRM has crafted.²⁷ Co-optation as a tool can be particularly attractive in situations where the ruling elite is averse to violence that may be occasioned from challenging the domain of a sub-national entity, particularly where actors in the latter are powerful and in an equal position to mobilise resistance or violence. It is common for national and local elites in such cases to enter pacts or what Kelsall et al. refer to as political settlements to avert violence.²⁸

Legislative strategies have been enlisted to shift the balance of power in favour of the ruling party in cities like Kampala, Freetown or Addis Ababa. The law and legal institutions are accepted as arenas within which domination can be systematically produced. However, what makes the law an attractive tool for extending control, and exactly how the law is instrumentalised to extend the ruling party’s control of local authorities requires some unpacking. On the one hand, the law in many postcolonial contexts confers upon individuals and institutions powers, rights, and duties which they may ostensibly access and enjoy. On the other hand, the law will often fail to acknowledge and dismantle the very conditions and material power relations that create unequal access to the rights and powers.²⁹ Failure to acknowledge the material conditions and contextual realities in the spaces in which it operates effectively makes the law more and more palatable to manipulation by dominant actors. Indeed, in many postcolonial contexts, calls for governance by the law, or ‘rule of law’, have permeated development and institutional reform discourses. Constraints on the governing elites’ conduct have in effect been decreed through legal instruments and aid conditionalities.³⁰ Within these contexts, the law has already been elevated to a hegemonic position with acts that are executed in its name being ascribed with normative superiority.

As if taking a cue from the deferential treatment that is accorded to the law, elites in the central government have employed logics of domination which are carefully fitted to work within the legal apparatus. They have instrumentalised the rule of law as a legitimising canon.³¹ Legislative reforms have been used to reconstitute the social and political order with the outcome being centralisation of formal coercive powers within the ruling class which helps sustain their patronage networks.³² Legislative manoeuvres are especially prevalent in cases where the ruling party is also the majority party in the legislature. In Zimbabwe, section 314 of the Urban Councils Act (recently declared unconstitutional by the High Court) vested wide powers to the Minister of Local Government. These were abused with the view of tilting power in favour of the ruling ZANU-PF in opposition-controlled local authorities like the City of Bulawayo.³³ In Kampala the removal of administrative and decision-making authority from an elected council and mayor and its replacement with a technocratic administration which owed its loyalty to the president was meant to consolidate NRM’s control of the city.³⁴ Cities like Freetown have also seen chiefs play roles in instituting amendments to legislation to strengthen their position at the expense of local authorities.³⁵ Amendments of legislation or the introduction of new laws altogether can sometimes result in administrative ambiguities which can be exploited by the central government to extend its authority over matters that should be decentralised.

Controlling Nairobi: strategies and tactics

Being the capital of Kenya, Nairobi has always been the epicentre of Kenya’s economic activities and its fledgling democracy. As the seat of the national government and Kenya’s parliament, Nairobi has been the place where national politics convenes and where antagonisms are visibly elaborated. The city draws a range of actors, both domestic and international, who wield power in a variety of ways and who form different configurations to maintain or expand their power, access resources or extract rents. It explains why control of the city has been maintained as an objective by the different political formations that have emerged in the city which build patronage networks that fundamentally influence various outcomes in the city. In what ways, therefore, have ruling parties employed the coercive power of the law to legalised and perpetuated domination of decentralised and devolved units? An attempt to answer this is made in this section by examining two case studies of the Nairobi City Commission (“the Commission”) and the Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS).

Founded as a colonial railway outpost, Nairobi emerged as an ‘accidental capital’ during the colonial era as the colonial administration progressively established a permanent foothold in the town which was considered to be more central compared to its rival Mombasa. The city was first incorporated in 1900 as a township and was elevated to a Municipal Council in 1919 and a city in 1950. From its very founding as a colonial administrative centre, there was a colonial preoccupation with controlling the city’s racial outlook by limiting the number of Africans that were allowed into the town.³⁶ Space then became a tool for social control as the colonial administration took to confining Africans in the city to predetermined localities. This intensified during the Mau Mau freedom fighters uprising in 1952, where control of native movement into the city became highly regulated and brutal. The periods after Kenya’s attainment of independence saw a continuation with the colonial practices of control as the city was viewed as a reservoir for resistance especially in the wake of the authoritarian rule which defined Kenya’s formative years.

The periods following Kenya’s independence witnessed an increasing tendency by the KANU administration to consolidate its powers through a rejection of constitutionalism. A power struggle ensued between the central government and regional units with the latter seeking to preserve their autonomy. Local governments in the country increasingly found themselves under strong central government control and under the stewardship of the Ministry of Local Government whose expansive powers were outlined under the Local Government Act, 1963. During this period, Oyugi observes that conduct by local governments in the country were informed by ministerial directives which usually carried the weight of law.³⁷ This effectively introduced a dualistic administrative structure in the governance of local authorities. Resistance by councillors and mayors to this interloping by the Minister was often easily subdued or contained which was made possible by the transformation of the country to a one-party state in 1982. The assumption of appointive and dismissal authority of local government employees by the Minister and subjection of political appointees to strict party sponsorship offered the KANU administration a conducive space to control local politics.³⁸ Additionally, the Local Government Act gave the Minister the power to dissolve a local council and replace it with an appointed commission to run the affairs of the dissolved local authority for a period of two years which was subject to an extension by the Minister, a power that came to be abused by the Minister.³⁹

Another goal that the KANU administration sought to achieve from its consolidation of power was the restructuring the social base of what was perceived to be a Kikuyu-dominated state that the-then president, Daniel Moi, had inherited from his predecessor Jomo Kenyatta.⁴⁰ To realise this, Moi’s administration embarked on a combination of coercion and manipulation and effectively paralysed local authorities that were not amenable to his power consolidation manoeuvres.⁴¹ Moi’s actions should be further understood within the context of a military coup that was attempted against his government in August 1982. Just two months before this, the KANU-controlled National Assembly had amended the constitution, making Kenya an official one-party state. This was the high noon of one-party politics in Kenya. Moi’s core objective was to neuter the opposition both within and outside KANU. His perfunctory pretence of a commitment to the rule of law and democratisation had now been completely discarded. Instead, he began perfecting the art of applying the coercive attributes of the law and state institutions against perceived competitors.⁴²

The Nairobi City Commission: 1983–1992

Moi’s playbook in his quest to consolidate power was to first delegitimise the institutions whose authority he sought to weaken. This was followed by the manufacturing or taking advantage of turbulent economic conditions that the local authorities were faced with to further drive the narrative that they were incompetent. The coup de grâce would ultimately be delivered through legislative and administrative interventions transferring power from the decentralised units to the central government. In Nairobi, the administration of the Nairobi City Council had on numerous occasions been labelled as ineffective by the central government. The Council was also accused of being corrupt and Kikuyu-dominated. Its inability to collect revenue and meet its expenditure needs further made it susceptible to attacks from the central government and other stakeholders in the city. In calling for the Council’s dissolution, the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry charged that the Council had no founded basis to charge fees and levy rates when service provision in the city was poor and the Council inefficient.⁴³ Paradoxically, the council’s inability to raise enough revenue was partly attributed to the debts that the central government and other public sector institutions owed to it.⁴⁴

As a result, the Minister for Local government appointed a taskforce in 1982 to investigate the affairs of the City Council. The Taskforce was mainly constituted of individuals drawn from the Office of the President. Even before the Taskforce had completed its work, the Minister for Local Government intervened by dissolving the Council and appointing a Commission to handle the former’s affairs for an initial 2 years. The Minister stated that he was acting in accordance with section 252 of the Local Government Act, Chapter 265 of the Laws of Kenya (repealed). According to him, dissolution of the Council was prompted by activities that had led to the gross mismanagement of the Council’s funds and poor services to the residents.⁴⁵ It is worth noting that the Taskforce report was never made public despite the significant implications which its recommendations would make on governance in the city. It is also notable that the decision to dissolve the Council had immense support amongst the public which perhaps arose from their inability to access basic services in the city and the rife practice within the Council of issuing public land to well-connected individuals at the expense of ordinary citizens.⁴⁶

Soon after its establishment the Commission embarked on an aggressive debt-collection undertaking and an attempt to remedy the shortfalls in service provision, but this only lasted for a year after which things went back to where they had been when the Council was in place.⁴⁷ It appeared that the Commission was more concerned with revenue-generation than with service delivery to the city inhabitants. With the Commission firmly in place, challenges continued unabated. The Commission would be hounded by scandal after scandal for the next nine years that it was in place key of which was its callousness and complicity in the unlawful allocation of public land.⁴⁸ With the adoption of the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in the 1980s, the ruling KANU regime lacked access to traditional sources of patronage. It then turned to public land, which was easily accessible, to sustain its patron-client networks.⁴⁹ This situation was only made possible with the complicity of unaccountable public institutions. During the Commission’s tenure, public land became an easy target for corruption and state-sanctioned patronage. Its unaccountable structure created a conducive ecology for the existence of what Manji has described as the ‘perversion of the public interest.’⁵⁰

The Commission’s term would be extended on numerous accounts and various chairs appointed to head it in what Ogot and Ogot have termed as ‘an endless game of musical chairs.’⁵¹ Before its dissolution in 1992, the Commission had seven different chairpersons. During its existence, competing visions on urban governance emerged. On one hand, it was estimated that the command system that was personified by the Commission would facilitate better provision of services and accountability to its appointing authority. This perhaps explains Moi’s frustrations with the Commission’s inability to deliver on its mandate and his avowal to ‘prune’ the Commission which he accused of being loyal to ‘people outside the system.’⁵² On the other hand, there was a wide feeling of dissatisfaction by members of the public who felt that an appointed Commission would be undemocratic given that it would be insulated from public scrutiny.⁵³ Kenya’s parliament was the venue for heated debates over the future of the Commission and what its existence portended for the state of democracy in the city and in the country with one member arguing that its existence denied city residents their right to elect councillors to represent them.⁵⁴ The Commission’s dissolution in 1992 did not therefore come as a surprise as its tenure had been defined by inefficiency, corruption and incessant squabbling.⁵⁵ The Nairobi City Council was reconstituted in 1992 following Kenya’s return to multiparty politics.

Even in periods of vertically-divided authority following the reintroduction of multi-party democracy, the politics of control of the city continued to feature given the significance that the city holds for rents accumulation and as a source of legitimacy for the ruling party. Nairobi has largely voted opposition since the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1992.⁵⁶ With the return of multiparty politics, there still existed a profoundly unbalanced structure of powers which enabled the survival of the ruling KANU party.⁵⁷ The Moi administration during this period continued to favour measures that acted to weaken other centres of power not in KANU’s control. KANU’s appetite for centralisation was apparent from its overemphasis of the place of the provincial administration which was used to exert coercion on the opposition. In the 1990s Moi intentionally posted provincial administration officers from the Kalenjin ethnic block to regulate local politics in places like Nairobi where the ruling party’s influence was weak.⁵⁸ The Nairobi City Council continued to exist until 2013 following the election of a county government under the newly established devolved structure put in place by the 2010 Constitution.

The Nairobi Metropolitan Service: 2020–2022

The decentralised system of governance that had been in existence since Kenya’ attainment of independence was after 2010 replaced with a devolved system following the enactment of a new constitution. Under the 2010 constitution, functions and powers are shared between the national government and devolved units with the county being the primary unit for devolution. Nairobi elected its first governor under the devolved system in 2013. The opposition-elected governor served until 2017 when he lost the elections to Mbuvi Sonko, a youthful and populist former member of parliament with a penchant for drama. During the period in which Nairobi was controlled by the opposition, a section of the ruling Jubilee Party proposed constitutional amendments to have the capital city run by the central government in what commentators interpreted as a dubious ‘attempt to wrestle the city out of the control of the opposition’.⁵⁹ But, with Sonko’s election as governor, the ruling Jubilee party was now in control of both the national government and the Nairobi City County Government (NCCG). Sonko’s tenure came to be defined by maladministration and a breakdown in service provision, problems which were largely of his own making. His cabinet was the subject of endemic instability occasioned from constant reshuffles and firing of committee members. For instance, within a span of one year, the County’s finance department had been headed by four different County Executive Committee (CEC) members.⁶⁰ According to a member of a leading social movement in Nairobi, service provision during Sonko’s tenure putatively came as an afterthought, secondary to his habitual revels.⁶¹ The ecology of inefficiency which Sonko’s administration had fostered presaged his downfall which would soon be orchestrated by the ruling party of which he was a member.

On 25 February 2020, at a function at State House in Nairobi, the NCCG Governor signed an agreement whose objective was to hand over certain devolved functions of NCCG to the national government pursuant to Article 187 of the Constitution. Effectively, a new entity, the NMS, was created and a serving military officer was handpicked by the president as the director general to head it and oversee the delivery of the functions that were transferred from NCCG. The argument that was advanced to justify this transfer was that service delivery in the city had been ground to a halt and thus the intervention of the national government would ensure that city residents received services efficiently.⁶² This transfer was however challenged in court by a host of civil society actors who cited the creation of the NMS as unlawful and invalid. But the national government through the Attorney General argued that the transfer of functions had been necessitated by the need to ensure effective and efficient performance of government functions. The ousted NCCG Governor on the other hand challenged the transfer arguing that NMS had no constitutional mandate to take over Nairobi County despite the fact that the transfer agreement was signed.⁶³ The court ultimately found that NMS had been unprocedurally established but issued a grace period of 90 days for this to be rectified, which meant that the NMS could continue functioning as an institution.

During the 2022 Nairobi County gubernatorial debates, in an unusual admission, the leading candidate, Johnson Sakaja, stated that the establishment of NMS was to counteract the then governor who was deemed by the national government to be too powerful to impeach.⁶⁴ Sakaja, who had in 2017 been elected as Nairobi’s Senator through the Jubilee party, had previously maintained a studious silence regarding the woes that were afflicting NCCG. He only became vocal on these after declaring his intention to seek the gubernatorial position during which he defected from the Kenyatta faction of the Jubilee party to that led by the then deputy president, William Ruto. Sakaja promised to revert the functions that had transferred to the NMS back to NCCG if he was elected as the next Governor. The William Ruto led faction subsequently won both the presidency and leadership of the NCCG. Once elected, Governor Sakaja, with the backing of a new president keen on consolidating his party’s authority, witnessed the transfer of the functions back to NCCG from the NMS on 30 September 2022.⁶⁵ Despite previously being its staunch critic, the Governor was now full of praise for the NMS. In his view, the NMS had done ‘a good job despite the challenges.’⁶⁶ With this transfer, the NCCG resumed full control of the functions that falls within its constitutional purview. The outcomes of the institutional interventions through the NMS and the Nairobi City Commission are examined below.

The road to recentralisation: implications for urban governance

Local and devolved government institutions in Kenya have been the loci for animated struggles for dominance which play out in various ways. What is perhaps unique, and as illustrated by the two examples in the preceding section, is that the governance interventions with the most far-reaching implications have been elaborated during periods in which authority was unitary. Domination during these periods became possible with the following conditions in place. Firstly, there was considerable weaking of rule of law in both contexts which was partly driven by the desire by the elites in the ruling party to discipline local politics, entrench their interests and extend their patronage networks. Kenya’s abortive coup in 1982 presented a pathway for President Moi to “opt out” of the then-existing constitutional order and reconstitute the state and its political organs. Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration on the other hand was well-known for its disregard for court orders. His administration instrumentalised prosecutorial agencies to coerce dissenting voices, particularly in his Jubilee Party, into siding with his faction.⁶⁷ Dysfunction within local authorities was another factor that created an appropriate groundswell for such interventions with the national government in both instances asserting itself as the protector of the city residents’ welfare.

Legality would then be woven into these enterprises in various ways such as the extension of the mandates of the institutions and transfer of functions like revenue collection to sustain their operations. Ethnic politics also featured during the two periods of recentralisation. In the first case, Moi sought to temper the perceived Kikuyu-dominance in the city by weakening the authority of the then elected mayor who was of Kikuyu ethnicity. During Kenyatta’s tenure, the powerful Kikuyu business interests were wary of Sonko’s ‘outsider’ identity, and he was viewed as a threat to their dominance in the city.⁶⁸ Factional splits in the Jubilee Party between Kenyatta and his deputy might have also informed his attempts at consolidating control of the party. The opposition had at this point also been co-opted by the ruling party following the political truce that was declared by President Kenyatta and the longstanding opposition leader Raila Odinga. Implications of these power consolidation moves are discussed below.

Legal legitimation of political domination

Both KANU and Jubilee administrations understood the efficacy and utility of the law in destabilising the existing power arrangements and enacting new power configurations. For instance, in dissolving the Nairobi City Council and replacing it with a Commission in 1983, the central government relied on provisions of the Local Government Act which was in place at the time. Similarly, the national government relied on the constitution to justify the transfer of functions from NCCG to the NMS in 2020. Indeed, consolidation of power by the national government following the establishment of NMS was bolstered by the refusal of the judge in Okiya Omtatah Okoiti v Nairobi Metropolitan Service & 3 Others; Mohamed Abdala Badi & 9 Others to declare the NMS an illegal entity despite having found that the institution was unprocedurally established. The judge granted the national government a 90-day reprieve to correct the violations of the procedures that are stipulated by law while maintaining the status quo. Here, we see the law as navigated through the courts playing what has been described as a legitimising role.⁶⁹ By failing to declare that the NMS is an illegal entity, the judge bequeathed it legitimacy which fulfilled the objectives of President Kenyatta. These kinds of legitimising enterprises are particularly palpable within contexts that are steeped in the positivist legal traditions. The law and legislative interventions will in these cases be used to make binding what was, before that act, in no way binding.⁷⁰ So, the NMS, an entity that is previously unknown to the law is made a fully legitimate juridical body following the court’s pronouncement.

Nonetheless, these institutions encounter a legitimacy crisis when they enter the public realm of urban governance and service delivery. Hardly a year after it was established, the Nairobi City Commission had come to be viewed as corrupt and ineffective.⁷¹ It would then be caught up in numerous corruption scandals.⁷² This legitimacy crisis perhaps explains why the Commission was on several occasions dissolved and replaced with a new one, each with a false promise of improved service delivery. The NMS on the other hand also grappled with the question of its legitimacy especially in the periods after its one hundred days of operation. During his first hundred days in office, the NMS Director General, often donning camouflage military fatigues, was a frequent visitor to many of Nairobi’s neighbourhoods where he inspected ongoing infrastructure projects that had been rolled out by the institution. The institution then caught people’s imaginations given its interventions to address the various challenges that the city residents were facing.⁷³ This was however short-lived when the Director General retreated to his office now that public scrutiny and political temperatures had waned with the NMS fully in place. Such a retreat could also have been occasioned by the impending general elections in the country in which the NMS was a constant subject for discussion by the leading gubernatorial candidates who both promised to abolish the institution once elected.⁷⁴

Courting managerialism

Upon their establishment, both the Commission and NMS were constituted of unelected bureaucratic officials that were drawn from different professions. Before this, Nairobi was headed by elected officials that were answerable to the electorate. The dissolution of the City Council was more consequential as the entire council was disbanded meaning that elected councillors could no longer continue holding their positions. With the establishment of the NMS, NCCG and its structures continued to exist, albeit with truncated responsibilities. The establishment of these two institutions marked the arrival of a new spatial order in Nairobi premised on the managerial delivery of results.⁷⁵ It also marked the emergence of authoritarian systems and institutions implicated in the production of space. The outcome in both cases was the establishment of systems that are devoid of democratic safeguards. Indeed, by issuing reprimands to the Commission, Moi was signalling to the commissioners that they were only to be answerable to him. The NMS Director General was on the other hand more unequivocal when it came to who the institution was accountable to. He on numerous occasions scoffed at calls for accountability, quipping that he was only answerable to the President.⁷⁶

The appointment of unelected officials to run the affairs of the city and the sidelining of democratic institutions is a harbinger of a systematic establishment of the logics of managerialism in urban governance. Indeed, as Klikauer suggests, ‘ … for managerialism, politics and democracy are simply a hinderance on the way to efficiency and competitive advantage’.⁷⁷ For Dillow, managerialism will often employ action as a substitute for thought or contemplation.⁷⁸ On its official website, NMS described itself as ‘a citizen-centric public service’ with its motto being ‘Where efficiency meets effectiveness’.⁷⁹ Its Director General was of the view that ‘managing the city is just like managing the military’ and that serving in the military placed him at a vantage point when dealing with the city’s numerous challenges, particularly the issue of cartels since ‘dealing with enemies is part of my [the Director’s] training … ’.⁸⁰ Here, managerialism is employed by the Director General as an accountability-evading tactic which alienates the city’s inhabitants from critical decision-making processes.

For both the Commission and NMS, the rhetoric of efficiency is deployed in their legitimising endeavours as the guiding ideology. This ideology is particularly effective within the backdrop of poor service delivery and overstretched capacities that was used to justify their establishment. During the Commission’s establishment, poor service delivery had on numerous accounts been decried by both the inhabitants of the city and private sector actors. Moi seized this opportunity to rein in the City Council as part of his wider scheme to temper Kikuyu-dominance in the city. Similarly, the NMS was established at a time when the prevailing sentiments in the city were unfavourable towards the NCCG and the then governor Sonko (a non-Kikuyu). Sonko was perceived to be a hinderance by the Kikuyu-majority business community who had earlier sought to push him out of office and install a pliable individual.⁸¹ This then explains why it was easy to capture the city residents’ imaginations with the promise of a more efficient institution, however undemocratic. Indeed, the establishment of NMS saw the emergence of varying opinions on suitability of the institution. For some, the NMS was delivering on critical infrastructure and services that were previously missing in their neighbourhoods without the usual bureaucratic and procedural fetters associated with doing this by an elected county government.⁸² According to the chief executive of the Kenya Alliance of Resident Associations (KARA), NMS was a timely intervention as service delivery in the city had ground to a halt and NMS was promising to undo what he termed as the ‘ruinous legacy’ of the then-governor.⁸³ This sentiment was repeated by a former Director of the NMS Urban Planning and Development Directorate.⁸⁴ The Director was also of the view that NMS was properly established and that its adoption of technical approaches had been necessitated by the fact that the institution’s mandate would only continue for a limited time.⁸⁵

Engendering unaccountable spatial governance practices

Another potentially destructive outcome of such institutional interventions that are discussed here is the reinvention of passivity in spatial governance by the inhabitants of the city. Power consolidation by the central government is in some cases prompted by the need of certain actors to circumvent the difficulties with making decisions and acting on them within contexts of dispersed power. Such interventions can however accelerate democracy deficits in the city. Eradication of deliberative structures in the city by the Moi administration instituted limits to popular participation by the city’s inhabitants.⁸⁶ It created room for the regime’s heavy-handedness which became more visible with the destruction of informal settlements like Muoroto in 1990.⁸⁷ Having effectively contained the opposition, the Moi administration shifted attention to informal settlements across the city which were considered to be the bedrock of resistance and opposition politics, with an estimated 45,000 people being rendered homeless following the KANU-orchestrated evictions.⁸⁸ Such actions increased the sentiments that the unelected Commission was out of touch with the needs of the city’s residents.⁸⁹ Similarly, with the establishment of the NMS, there were no corresponding platforms established to facilitate public engagement. The institution only held consultative sessions ‘on a needs basis’ with actors like KARA who actively pushed to have channels of engagement established between itself and the NMS.⁹⁰ Even with this, there were gaps in in the ways that NMS conveyed feedback to the institutions that it engaged with.⁹¹

Inhabitants of informal settlements in the city on the other hand were at a disadvantage as there were no attempts to engage them regarding the various initiatives that NMS was pursuing in their neighbourhoods. A resident of Mukuru informal settlements cited this as a problem and plainly stated that there were no possible ways that someone in her place could raise complaints with the military.⁹² Concerns around the undemocratic spatial governance practices that the NMS had reintroduced were raised by a member of a social movement. According to him, the version of spatial governance that the NMS appeared to favour was one which employed the services of paid consultants or experts who would develop spatial plans on its behalf without being encumbered by the legal requirements on public participation.⁹³ He also argued that public-private partnerships (PPS) had become attractive to the NMS with very minimal information being provided on the beneficial interests behind the private companies that NMS was engaging. These kinds of practices are structured to exclude. The outcome will be the silencing of marginalised groups and resubordinating them by abstracting their agency. Indeed, the opacity with which NMS was operating created the conditions for rampant evictions in the city with the inhabitants of informal settlements like Mukuru being heavily affected.⁹⁴

Absence of accountability mechanisms for institutions like the Commission and NMS also makes them important conduits for elite accumulation. The Nairobi City Commission was only accountable to the Minister and President. Incidences of corruption and irregular allocation of land were endemic during its term. Even the Minister for Local Government lamented about the rampant cases of corruption and embezzlement of funds within the Commission.⁹⁵ With the NMS, certain actors have viewed it as a special purpose vehicle that was established to facilitate accumulation by the elites in the Jubilee Party.⁹⁶ Questions have for instance emerged regarding budgetary allocations that were made to it and the revenue that it collected. These have been triggered by the fact that NMS’s accounts were not subjected to any audit during its tenure. It has also emerged that during its term, the institution’s revenue and budget was administered from the Office of the President with no clear indication on who the accounting officer was.⁹⁷ There have also been speculation that some of the instigators of informal settlements evictions were senior leaders at the NMS who are said to have been beneficiaries of unprocedural and allocations in informal settlements.⁹⁸

Erasing politics from development

The single-party regime in place between 1982 and 1992 provided a conducive ecology for Moi’s elimination of the principal institution for democratic deliberation in the city, that is, the Nairobi City Council. This was a precursor to the establishment of a fully appointive Commission that was only answerable to the Minister for Local Government and the President. Elected councillors had often been faulted by the Moi administration as being poorly educated to consider ‘technical matters’, and that they were too prone to ‘import politics’ into local matters that should remain apolitical.⁹⁹ Similarly, the establishment of NMS and its failure to incorporate channels for deliberation shielded it from political accountability as it appeared to be only answerable to the president. This position was however disputed by the former Director of the NMS Urban Planning and Development Directorate who retorted that NMS could still be held accountable by the County Assembly, which was still in place.¹⁰⁰ Nevertheless, through a press statement, a Member of County Assembly for one of the wards in Nairobi complained that NMS had refused to furnish the County Assembly with reports on the funds that had been allocated to it on the basis that it was only accountable to the Office of the President.¹⁰¹

Indeed, through assertions such as ‘I am uninterested in politics’,¹⁰² the NMS Director General was explicit that he would not be answerable to political institutions. By making such pronouncements, the Director General viewed the urban challenges in Nairobi as requiring technical fixes which are to be conjured up by the bureaucratic institutions like NMS. To him, politics unnecessarily forestalls development.¹⁰³ A potential outcome of this systematic erasure of politics from development will be that claims by inhabitants in the city will become less radical as they are navigated through the bureaucratic channels which these self-styled “apolitical” institutions establish. The reality however is that the said ‘technical matters’ are deeply political given the outcomes that they generate in informal settlements contexts and the fact that there will always be vested political interests that will be implicated in their delivery. Ultimately, ruling elites’ inclination to adopt these ‘apolitical approaches’ effectively forestalls the democratisation of spatial governance in the city as a government of entrenched elites becomes the primary instrument for empowering low-income groups.¹⁰⁴

Conclusion

By locating the two institutional case studies that are examined in this paper within the diverse range of interventions that central governments may adopt to bolster their powers, the paper hopes to make a meaningful contribution to discussions on the contested nature of urban governance. It was the goal of this paper to illustrate that power consolidation by the central government at the expense of a local government can still occur in situations of vertically-unified authority. The paper elaborated the range of coercive and non-coercive measures that central governments have deployed to extend their dominance. It also highlighted the role of the law as a “soft tool” that has been used to shift the balance of power in favour of the central government. It in this case attests to the role of the law and legal institutions as arenas in which domination is systematically produced. The outcomes of the power consolidation moves have also been explored with managerialism and unaccountability in urban governance being cited as some of the visible products of such interventions. Ultimately, there is need for a calculated cynicism over these moves that are ostensibly framed as legal transfers from one level of government to another. Their goal will often be to aid recentralisation by the central government and the systematic erasure of politics from development initiatives leading to the entrenchment of unelected elites in the sphere of urban governance.

Acknowledgements

This paper draws on research conducted as part of my postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Manchester. I would like to thank Diana Mitlin, Sam Hickey, Tim Kelsall and Ambreena Manji for their very constructive comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. Special thanks to Tom Goodfellow, Jacob Macdonald, Neil Mitchell, and Maria Jose Ayala for convening seminars where I presented findings from this work. I am very grateful to all the respondents for their invaluable contributions. Thank you to the two anonymous reviewers and editors for their thoughtful and constructive feedback on this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible by funding from the African Cities Research Consortium, with support from UK International Development.

Notes

1 Goodfellow, Politics and the Urban Frontier.

2 Cirolia, “Fractured Fiscal Authority,” 1–8.

3 Eaton et al., The Political Economy of Decentralization Reforms.

4 Stren, “Cities and Politics in the Developing World,” 567–89.

5 Resnick, “Strategies of Subversion.”

6 Ibid.

7 Guma, “The Governance and Politics of Urban Space in the Postcolonial City.”

8 Ibid.

9 Obeng-Odom, “Urban Governance in Africa Today.”

10 Goodfellow and Jackman, “Control the Capital.”

11 Resnick, “Urban Governance and Service Delivery in African Cities.”

12 Poteete and Ribot, “Repertoires of Domination.”

13 Tordoff, “Decentralisation.”

14 Eyoh and Stren, Decentralization and the Politics of Urban Development in West Africa.

15 Wunsch “Decentralisation.”

16 Ibid.

17 Gebremariam, “The Politics of Dominating Addis Ababa, 2005–2018.”

18 Kasfir, “Designs and Dilemmas.”

19 Resnick, “Strategies of Subversion.”

20 Jibao and Prichard, “The Political Economy of Property Tax in Africa”; Cheeseman and De Gramont, “Managing a Mega-City.”

21 Resnick, “Strategies of Subversion.”

22 Lambright, “Opposition Politics and Urban Service Delivery in Kampala, Uganda.”

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 Guma, “The Governance and Politics of Urban Space in the Postcolonial City.”

26 Goodfellow and Jackman, “Control the Capital.”

27 Muwanga et al., “Carrot, Stick and Statute.”

28 Kelsal et al., Political Settlements & Development.

29 Brown, States of Injury.

30 Dawson and Swiss, “Foreign Aid and the Rule of Law.”

31 Palombella, “The Abuse of the Rule of Law.”

32 Sesay, “Promoting the Rule of Law.”

33 Dibaba, “Central Government Interference.”

34 Muwanga et al., “Carrot, Stick and Statute.”

35 Martinez-Vazquez and Vaillancourt, Decentralization in Developing Countries.

36 Murunga, “Inherently Unhygienic Races.”

37 Oyugi, “Local Government in Kenya.”

38 Okoth-Ogendo, “Constitutions Without Constitutionalism.”

39 Ibid., 133.

40 Tordoff, “Decentralisation.”

41 Lee-Smith and Lamba, “Social Transformation in a Postcolonial City.”

42 Nyong’o, “State and Society in Kenya.”

43 Ogot and Ogot, History of Nairobi 1899–2022.

44 Ibid.

45 R. Irungu, “City Council Suspended.” Daily Nation, March 4, 1983.

46 Hirst and Lamba, The struggle for Nairobi.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Klopp, “Pilfering the Public.”

50 Manji, “The Grabbed State.”

51 Ogot and Ogot, History of Nairobi 1899–2022.

52 M. Njau, “Moi Vows to Prune City Commission.” Daily Nation, January 12, 1989.

53 Hirst and Lamba, The Struggle for Nairobi.

54 P. Nyamora, “City Commission Gets Another Term.” Daily Nation, December 23, 1987.

55 N. Wa Mbugua, “Looking Back on 10 Bad Years of City Omissions.” Sunday Nation, November 15, 1992.

56 The East African, “The Battle for Nairobi Governor Seat.” January 23, 2017. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/the-battle-for-nairobi-governor-seat-1360810.

57 Branch and Cheeseman, “The Politics of Control in Kenya.”

58 Hassan, “The Strategic Shuffle.”

59 The East African, “Abolishing Nairobi County: The Lessons from Kampala.” December 12, 2016. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/news/east-africa/abolishing-nairobi-county-the-lessons-from-kampala-1359104.

60 M. Kinyanjui, “Sonko Reshuffles Cabinet, Again.” The Star, March 31, 2019. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2019-03-31-confusion-as-sonko-makes-another-cabinet-reshuffle/.

61 Interview with a representative from a Nairobi-based social movement, September 9, 2022.

62 Office of the Spokesperson, State House, Nairobi, “Press Statement.” February 25, 2020. https://www.president.go.ke/2020/02/25/functions-of-nairobi-county-government-handed-over-to-the-national-government-pursuant-to-article-187-of-the-constitution/.

63 Ibid., para. 35.

64 NTV Kenya, “Gloves Off as Sakaja and Igathe Face Off.” Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzQfKiNSPBg&ab_channel=NTVKenya.

65 N. Moturi, “Badi Hands Over All NMS Functions to Governor Sakaja.” Nation, September 30, 2022.

66 Citizen Digital, “NMS Officially Hands Back Nairobi County Functions to Governor Sakaja.” September 30, 2022. https://www.citizen.digital/news/nms-hands-over-functions-to-sakaja-n306583.

67 C. Waitara, “Kenya’s War on Graft: Reasons to Be Wary.” The Elephant, December 5, 2019. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.theelephant.info/features/2019/12/05/kenyas-war-on-graft-reasons-to-be-wary/.

68 Kahura, “The Sonkonization of Nairobi: How Mike Sonko is Reshaping City Politics.” The Elephant, August 7, 2017. https://www.theelephant.info/features/2017/08/07/the-sonkonization-of-nairobi-how-mike-sonko-is-reshaping-city-politics/.

69 Weber, Economy and Society.

70 Finnis, “On ‘Positivism’ and ‘Legal Rational Authority’.”

71 Hirst and Lamba, The Struggle for Nairobi.

72 N. Wa Mbugua, “Looking Back on 10 Bad Years of City Omissions.” Sunday Nation, November 15, 1992.

73 Interview with KARA CEO, August 26, 2022.

74 G. Ng’ang’a, “Sakaja, Igathe Face Off at the Nairobi Debate.” The Standard, July 12, 2022. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/amp/politics/2001450120/sakaja-igathe-face-off-at-the-nairobi-debate.

75 Ouma, “Inclusive Urban Planning.”

76 The Daily Kenyan Post, “I Only Take Orders from My Commander in Chief Uhuru Kenyatta, Not from Courts or Silly MCAs- Major General Mohamed Badi Tells Sonko.” July 30, 2020. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://kenyan-post.com/2020/07/i-only-take-orders-from-my-commander-in-chief-uhuru-kenyatta-not-from-courts-or-silly-mcas-major-general-mohamed-badi-tells-sonko/.

77 Klikauer, Managerialism, 5.

78 Dillow, The End of Politics.

79 See Accessed July 20, 2021. https://nms.go.ke/14-2/.

80 Star Reporter, “How I Deal with Sonko: Major General Badi Speaks.” The Star, October 28, 2020. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2020-10-28-how-i-deal-with-sonko-major-general-badi-speaks/.

81 I. Amuke, “The Rise and Fall of Mike Sonko – Nairobi’s Matatu King.” Mail & Guardian, August 13, 2021. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://mg.co.za/africa/2021-08-13-the-rise-and-fall-of-mike-sonko-nairobis-matatu-king/.

82 Interview with an inhabitant of Mukuru kwa Reuben, September 13, 2022.

83 Interview with KARA CEO, August 26, 2022.

84 Interview with Director Urban Planning and Development, NMS, August 23, 2022.

85 Ibid.

86 Southall and Wood, “Local Government and the Return to Multi-Partyism in Kenya.”

87 Klopp, “Remembering the Destruction of Muoroto.”

88 Ogot and Ogot, History of Nairobi 1899–2022.

89 Ibid., 572.

90 Interview with KARA CEO, August 26, 2022.

91 Ibid.

92 Interview with an inhabitant of Mukuru kwa Reuben, September 13, 2022.

93 Interview with a representative from a Nairobi-based social movement, September 9, 2022.

94 Interview with an inhabitant of Mukuru kwa Reuben, September 13, 2022.

95 Ogot and Ogot, History of Nairobi 1899–2022.

96 Interview with a representative from a Nairobi-based social movement, September 9, 2022.

97 Interview with KARA CEO, August 26, 2022.

98 Interview with a representative from a Nairobi-based social movement, September 9, 2022.

99 Southall and Wood, “Local Government and the Return to Multi-Partyism in Kenya.”

100 Interview with Director Urban Planning and Development, NMS, August 23, 2022.

101 E. Obuya, “Love Gone Sour? Nairobi MCAs Turn the Heat on NMS Boss Badi.” Citizen Digital, April 13, 2021. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.citizen.digital/news/love-gone-sour-nairobi-mcas-turn-the-heat-on-nms-boss-badi-10070493.

102 Star Reporter. “How I Deal with Sonko: Major General Badi Speaks.” The Star, October 28, 2020. Accessed September 29, 2023. https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2020-10-28-how-i-deal-with-sonko-major-general-badi-speaks/.

103 Ibid.

104 Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine.