My vision for Kisumu County is a prosperous county where every citizen enjoys a decent life and holds the hope of a bright future for the current generation and generations to come. When I took office as the second governor in 2017, we found a county in tatters. This great county, home to Kenya’s third largest city left a lot to be desired as a growing modern city. The city was dirty with uncollected garbage. The Kachock dumpsite had become a stinking and a nauseating mountain of garbage, a health hazard and a monumental shame. The city lacked many facilities needed by its fast-growing population and enterprising citizens. Potential national and international development partners had taken a back-seat and adopted a wait-and -see attitude. Something had to be done. I observed that Kisumu was a county of great potential but a disappointing underachiever. My vision, however was to build a city that would stop walking with the chicken and start flying with the eagles. At the beginning of our first five years in office, we recognized that our first task was to BUILD BACK BETTER, that is, restore the County’s institutions and goals back to stability on the development path. My Manifesto in the first five years has been about awakening a sleeping giant by solving some of the immediate problems while laying the foundation for sustainable development in the long-term. The Manifesto outlined a ten (10)-point development agenda, ‘ten things’ to be achieved in the short-term and specific legacy projects. The implementation of these “ten things” provides the basis upon which our performance can be judged. This is a re-election Manifesto. As such, the first part is an accountability statement or a scorecard of our first term in office, going through the ten-point agenda, the ‘ten things’ and the legacy projects. In our view, notwithstanding the Covid-19 pandemic, we have done all that we promised to do and much more. We have restored the County on a development trajectory. For five years, we have been BUILDING BACK BETTER. Now that we have taken off, in the next five years, we are focused on BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE by consolidating the gains made and initiating new programmes and projects as elaborated in the second part of this Manifesto. We are giving an account of our achievements in the first term (Wasetimo) and our programmes for the next five years when the people of Kisumu County renew our mandate (Wadoktimo).
As always, there is work to be done. Let us do it!