Retrogression under Sonko: how the hell did we get here?

That the city is in the hands of an incompetent, clueless, uneducated pseudo-leader, an ex-convict with no documented management record is not in doubt.

I will be away from home for two years, possibly more and few weeks into my venture abroad I can’t help but wonder what city I will be coming back to. Recent uproar on the Kenyan social media space over inexplicable interventions by the Nairobi City County points at a worrying consequence of a failing electoral system.

Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko has lived to expectations as the ‘man of the people’ to unleash the mess that is the hawking community into city streets effectively undoing a milestone achieved by the defunct Nairobi City Council half a decade ago.

The governor, in what can only be explained as rewarding his support base has now allowed hawkers to occupy major streets in downtown Nairobi from midday to midnight to the detriment of small struggling businesses who are already hit below the belt by landlords charging the most unreasonable rates for tiny stalls.

This ill-advised move brings back memories from six years ago when I joined the list of the privileged few in my village to become city dwellers. The mighty hawkers reigned supreme in every street and with them hundreds of thugs, pickpockets who daily made a killing terrorizing innocent Nairobians hard-pressed to pay among other things the ever-monstrous rent and make ends meet. This memory of Nairobi is immortalized in the critically acclaimed Nairobi Half Life film (2012) in a scene where a city newbie is caught in the crossfire between the Kanjos and paper-chasing street vendors.

From the ridiculous, failed but nevertheless necessary attempt to kick out the over 30,000 matatus from the CBD even after all the tough-talking, the city boss is off to an embarrassing start to his five-year term at the helm of the most important city in East Africa and paradoxically, the most ‘intelligent’ city in the continent.

During his swearing-in, Sonko pledged to continue his populist approach promising to reorganize hawkers in the city and ensure they are treated humanely among other things including his pseudo-philanthropy in the form of ‘Sonko Rescue Team’. 

While his intentions might be good, they lack a solid backing of methodology and only serve the short-term purpose of ‘rewarding’ his loyal supporters who have propelled him from his wall-punching days as Makadara MP, to the Senate and now the Council of Governors. Pickpockets are now having a field day as hard-working stall owners get robbed of their livelihood slowly by the same governor they elected.

It is true, indeed, he cannot be judged too harshly this early. One might even say he’ll eventually get his footing and with the right advice, he just may become the governor Nairobi is yet to have. With this backdrop though, it is safe to say we can only look forward to a litany of poor decisions.

As one Italian diplomat once said, ‘success has many fathers, failure is an orphan’, our dear governor needs to realize his win in August set him up for failure and when the inevitable happens Nairobians will avoid his name on the ballot like the plague. The governor, however, has a chance to extend his fairytale in Kenyan politics and be the outlier he has proven to be so far and do some good if only he listens to the chatter in the public sphere.

The allure of London can be intoxicating, and I know it will take a while before Nairobi can boast of similar sophistication. I love my city, and I can only hope the people’s governor will make it better, not worse. Fellow Nairobians need to continue voicing their disapproval of retrogression.

Else in 2022, when he’s back in the campaign mode, the only question we’ll be asking is; how the hell did we get here?