Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen (second right) and other officials during the opening of the Nairobi Expressway exit plaza at Greenpark on January 20, 2024.
The Cabinet Secretary for Roads and Transport, Kipchumba Murkomen, often comes across as one of the rare bright sparks in President William Ruto’s government.
He seems hard working and efficient, and one of the few Cabinet members who actually understands the finer working of his docket. The former Elgeyo Marakwet Senator has clearly risen above village politics and taken to a national role with aplomb.
He reacts to various problems in his ministry promptly and in an open manner; helped a great deal by his being a good communicator who understands that it a critical part of his job to keep the public fully informed.
But in floating re-introduction of charges for motorists using a number of key highways around and leading out of the capital city, Murkomen is displaying the duplicitous, arrogant, tone-deaf attitude that is the hallmark of this government.
That is the uncaring, unfeeling attitude that defies all common sense, plays fast and loose with conventions, rules, regulations and laws, and ultimately leads to projects that are bound to be shot down by the courts.
And then starts that circus of adding the Judiciary to a long list of targeted enemies including media, civil society, professional organisations, independent commissions and any other institutions that do not blindly toe the straight and narrow path.
Murkomen is an intelligent fellow. He went to school and no doubt is equipped with a fair bit of history and general knowledge.
He just needs to rewind the young memory a little to recall that toll stations on major highways were abolished many years ago, and replaced with a levy on petroleum products that goes towards development and maintenance of roads.
Reintroduction of road tolls while the petroleum levy is still in place would amount to double taxation. Road tolls on existing roads would be highly unpopular, and serve only to highlight this government’s insatiable appetite for ever escalating taxes, levies, fees and other collections sinking into a bottomless hole and making life unbearable for citizens.
There is no doubt that the government needs fresh and innovative ways to raise revenue in order to fund an ambitious development agenda. Water, however, cannot be squeezed from a stone. Also, it is highly misleading for Murkomen to point to the Nairobi Expressway as a successful model of a private-public partnership projects that charges user fees.
The arrogance of power
The Expressway was a brand new, purpose-built alternative funded fully by private enterprise. Nobody is forced to use it to get from Point A to Point B because the exiting road networks to those destinations are already in place.
However, the list of roads now proposed for new tolls are all existing roads financed by taxpayers. Even if improved, widened and expanded, they will remain public roads; they will not be privatised.
It is also a big lie to state that alternative toll-free roads will remain in place for those unwilling to pay toll charges. I don’t see an option to the Bomas of Kenya-Rongai stretch, or any of the other roads on the list, unless Murkomen intends to construct panya routes along with erection of toll stations.
One can be almost certain that government plans to re-introduce toll stations are just an invitation to lawsuits that it will inevitably suffer humiliating defeat. We are merely reminded that this government does not listen to wise counsel, leave alone listen to the cries of long-suffering citizens.
President Ruto has at his disposal a surfeit of lawyers, economists, policy experts and other advisors paid handsomely from the public purse. Either he does not listen to them; or they offer no useful advice having joined the ranks of hangers-on, cheerleaders, praise singers and sycophants who dominate the corridors of power.
The biggest problem in this government is that disease called the arrogance of power happily inherited from the previous administration. President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government — which Dr Ruto served as deputy president for 10 years — treated the laws and the public good with contempt.
President Ruto’s government is doing exactly the same. It can do whatever it wants no matter what the laws say and no matter what the citizens feel.
They are taking us back to the Moi era of all-wise, all-knowing Mama na Baba government under stewardship of an infallible deity who stands above the law and cannot be questioned.
If Ruto does not want to go down in ignominy, it is time to cease governance by roadside decrees, and start listening. New road tolls are a big No! No! No!
[email protected] @MachariaGaitho
