Almost Sh46 billion annual funding two years later, Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja has thrown his hands in the air in the face of massive flooding in the city whenever it rains.
The governor now says the drainage was not designed to handle heavy rains. The city has been experiencing flooding after the recent days’ rain, turning major roads into pools, hampering transport and risking lives.
The governor now says his city cleaning exercise unclogged much of blocked drainages but that was not enough to avert the problem.
It is the capacity of the drainage that is the problem. He says the drainage of the city was not designed with excess water in mind, shifting the blame to climate change.
“The problem with drainage is not blockage as much right now. It’s mainly just a capacity issue. The rains we have are extremely higher than before, but of course we need to expand the infrastructure,” Sakaja said during a radio interview appearance.
“We have already cleared most drainages which were done by the Green Army, but when you pour excess water, it will flood but it will settle. However, to solve the flooding situation, we need to invest in the expansion of drainage,” he added.
His administration is planning to expand the limited capacity of the drainage system to deal with the infamous city flooding, he said. “... we are raising the capacity [of the drainage system], we are changing some of the inspectorate officers working in the CBD as some of them got acquainted with the hawkers.”
His critics complain that he likes shifting blame and ducking responsibility as he has had enough time and resources to map out the drainage capacity and do any corrective intervention to manage the flow of the rainwater.
The 2024 heavy rains caused similar problems in the city and damaged infrastructure. The governor’s administration has been blaming limited budgetary allocation and lack of collaboration by the national government to fix some of the city roads.
“Not to shift blame but there are roads that are under my purview while others are under the national government. Nairobi cannot get the same allocation as other counties because of its significance,” Sakaja said during the interview.
His roads and infrastructure chief Ibrahim Auma recently told the Star that being the capital and a county, Nairobi deserves to be given enhanced funding as its resources are spread too thin.
This will help to effectively discharge its mandate, including managing state of roads.
Auma said the roads docket was
not getting enough funding from
the county assembly because health
remains the priority of the devolved
administration, gobbling upto 40 per
cent of the annual funding.
