Remember the hit-song "Narudi Ocha"? The song was amusing as much as it was revealing. Released at a time when Kenya was hard-gripped by a severe economic crisis this popular hip-hop tune exhorted city-dwellers hard-pressed by the crisis to flee back to their rural homes-ocha.
Unfortunately even ocha didn't offer any respite. The country side was as dry as the city was hot.
But with the promulgation of the new constitution there may be some incentives for city wretches to march back to their ancestral homes in droves. Should the county governments be well managed as envisioned by the new constitution then falling back to ocha is no longer going to be funny.
The counties are going to be miniature governments entrusted with the kind of responsibilities that since Kenya's independence in 1963 has been exclusively the central government's in Nairobi.
The county governments, in the words of veteran Kenyan journalist Kwamchetsi Makokha, are going to have exclusive power to run fisheries, crop and animal husbandry, livestock sale yards, county abattoirs, and to manage plant and animal diseases.
And that is not all. County governments are also going to run nurseries, polytechnics, home care centres and child care facilities. They are going to be in charge of licensing of such things as pets and sale of food to the public, water sanitation and a host of others.
Nairobi, for instance, is flooded with desperate job seekers. Most of them migrated from their rural homes in the hope of landing some greener pastures in Nairobi's plethora of industries. Now they are being offered an opportunity to rejoin their families back in the country and work over there.
Narudi...ocha... ocha...narudi ocha ....still funny?
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