Nairobi County Governor Sakaja Johnson turned the tables on national government agencies, presenting Nairobi not as a habitual underperformer but as a county systematically short-changed by an unfair revenue-sharing formula.
The headline figure was stark: City Hall inherited Sh118 billion in pending bills in 2022, a debt mountain, Sakaja reminded senators, inflated by Sh16 billion left by the defunct Nairobi Metropolitan Services despite NMS receiving Sh27 billion in development funds.
Three years on, the county has whittled that burden down to Sh86 billion while simultaneously posting record own-source revenue of Sh13.8 billion, the highest since devolution began.
Yet the governor’s core message was less about self-congratulation than systemic grievance. Nairobi, the economic engine that generates nearly 60 per cent of Kenya’s GDP, remains shackled by funding models designed for rural counties. Two examples drew audible gasps from senators.
First, electricity levies. City residents pay Sh8 billion annually in power bills, a portion of which is siphoned off as the Rural Electrification Programme Levy despite Nairobi having no rural areas. Sakaja has opened negotiations to redirect part of that money back into urban street lighting, arguing that the current arrangement amounts to an invisible tax on the capital.
Second, and more explosive, roads. Counties control roughly 70 per cent of the national road network yet receive only Sh3 billion of the Sh119 billion annual roads budget. “If we maintain 70 per cent of the roads, we should get closer to 70 per cent of the money,” Sakaja declared, challenging senators to rewrite the allocation formula that leaves urban infrastructure starved.
The governor’s broader point was blunt: Nairobi’s fiscal headaches are not solely the product of local mismanagement but of a deliberate national policy that treats the capital as a cash cow rather than a partner. While markets, ECDE centres and stadiums rise across the city’s 85 wards, the pace of transformation, he insisted, is throttled by structural inequity rather than political will.
Senators left the session visibly unsettled. With Nairobi’s grievances now on official record, Sakaja has effectively dared the Senate to choose between defending an outdated formula and championing genuine equity for the country’s most important county.
