KENYA’S CAPITAL SHOULD MOVE TO ISIOLO

I concur with the UNDA Party official Migos Ogamba that Kenya’s capital should move to Isiolo. Mr. Ogamba’s presentation at a recent Political Parties’ Youth Leagues conference in Naru Moru was both exciting and original. I am of the view that this idea should be transformed into a policy discourse. The new Parliament to house the Senate and the House of Representatives and the State House should move to Isiolo. The Judiciary’s head quarters should remain in Nairobi since the legal profession is now very developed and established in Nairobi. It is our Parliament and Executive that needs overhaul.

The University of Africa to be built in Isiolo

New magnificent and four lane-wide-roads should approach Isiolo from Embu-Meru, Nakuru-Nyahururu-Nanyuki, Nairobi-Nyeri and Moyale-Marsabit.

A new international airport costing less than the Kshs. 10 bn that is about to be siphoned out through JKIA should be built at Isiolo. A local flights-airport also should be built. Modern sewerage and water systems and multi billion housing estates should also be built where the locals should be the first beneficiaries. A ultra modern road should extend through Moyale to Addis Ababa and integration with Ethiopia to end the Oromo insurgency and the Turbi-type massacres fast tracked.

A new university, the African University, Isiolo should be built to accommodate not less than 20,000 students from all over Africa specializing in IT, Business, Law, Human rights, Management & Finance, Social Sciences and Diplomacy. Africa needs political, trade and commercial Diplomacy more than anything else today. This specialization should be uniquely supported with a demand by all COMESA countries that Kiswahili be a must-know language for all foreign diplomats and officials coming to these countries.

Nairobi as Commercial Capital

This move will open up the northern frontier districts through good roads, create markets for meat and other agro based industries, inspire innovation and revolutionize economic and physical planning in Africa. The currently proposed expansion of Nairobi roads supported by the Chinese should be redirected to Isiolo. Nairobi can not expand without further escalation of deaths, costs of living and environmental damage. This is because Nairobi was never envisaged to have this kind of growth. The planning betrays those who want Nairobi to be expanded further. Nairobi should be left to the small thinkers who perennially elect the hopeless kind of MPs and Mayors they like.

Isiolo District should be made a new region and the Bomas Proposed constitution should be amended to increase the regions to seventeen. Nairobi should remain the commercial capital with a massive East African regional hub for Multi-nationals, manufacturing concerns, NGOs and other scientific and research pursuits expanding with ease. The Jo’burg-Pretoria parallel in South Africa should inspire the Nairobi-Isiolo concept.

Nairobi has no future prospects for development. It has diminished imaginative thinking and institutionalized exclusion of the rest of the country. The rate at which the poor are targeted to murder and annihilation by the surrogate elite in Nairobi has created a legacy of inequality, violence and human suffering that is unprecedented.

All Kenyan towns should then be challenged to speed up urbanization and specialization. Peasants still hoping to live with their grand children on ½ pieces of land in Kisii, Githunguri or in Vihiga should be helped to urbanize and modernize their economic ambitions.

The Northern Frontier Districts Development Commission

The strategic objectives of the moving of our political capital to Isiolo are three fold. First is to force the old or young, corrupt, conservative, unimaginative and tired business and political leadership out of the way since they can not lead such a challenging process that required bold, principle, visionary and truly national leadership to work. Secondly, is to create a new impetus for negotiating a new constitutional dispensation for Kenya. Without such a new and radical debate the need to decentralize power and resources shall not sharply be brought to focus. Thirdly this move will return the aspiration for Panafricanist solidarity and development models to the core. As a first step towards discourses on the African Continent we want as proposed by NCEC in 2001, we shall demand a Northern Frontier Districts Development Commission (NFDDC) be put in place to address the historical injustices that have been perpetrated against our fellow citizens by the various governments and fast track the modernization of the region. The Isiolo for capital Agenda should be supported by all old and young leaders in business, politics and civic and community spheres who believe that Kenya and Africa are great.

Cyprian Orina Nyamwamu
Chief Executive Officer, NCEC.
0724-226449

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