BONYO'S BONE: Governors san frontiers...

Over the last two months, Kenya’s Council of Governors (CoG) has been on a warpath. The 47 county chiefs, emboldened by ongoing debates around the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NG-CDF), have sensed an opportunity—and they want more.

At the heart of their push is a demand for increased allocations: not a shilling less than Ksh.450 billion of the national budget. That’s not all, the Governors now have their eyes on the Roads Maintenance Levy Fund and are circling allocations meant for the Kenya Urban Roads Authority (KURA) and Kenya Rural Roads Authority (KeRRA).

But here’s the problem, despite the billions of shillings counties receive annually, there's little to show on the ground. The Auditor General reports are awash with uncompleted projects, ghost procurements, ballooning wage bills and more recently fictitious pending bills.

Public frustration with devolved units is quietly but steadily rising.

At Delta House in Westlands, Nairobi, the nerve centre of the council, the collegiality in canvasing for additional funds or attacking anyone that they deemed an enemy only rivals the conclave in the Sistine Chapel.

But once back in their counties or in the corridors of national power, a different picture emerges.

Where they hit hard at the council, they sing hosanna and hallelujah to the same national government they collectively accuse of starving counties of funds.

From firebrands to flatterers, they trade collective strength for personal deals. They come out perfectly as the closet hero worshipers before the exchequer and other national offices, begging for projects, favours, and direct fund releases.

This duplicity turns the governors' united front into a farce. The powerful collective chant of “money follows functions” gets drowned out by solo choruses of “help my county first.”

This hypocrisy is not just disappointing, it is dangerous.

At the start of devolution, Kenyans rallied behind one hope: that money and services would finally reach the grassroots. That after decades of centralised neglect, counties would bring governance closer to the people. That 47 counties would strengthen the one nation.
But now, many governors are behaving like territorial alley cats—each one clawing for personal gains, losing sight of the greater goal of equitable development.

This fragmented approach weakens devolution. It emboldens national bureaucrats to ignore counties. It turns the noble ideal of decentralisation into a transactional, individualistic pursuit.

Tonight, I want to remind the governors of an old truth: you must hunt like a pack, or be hanged separately in the court of public opinion.