In September 2018, Nairobi County Government called for public participation on the County Annual Development Plan (ADP) 2019 in September. The public finance management laws dictate county governments should not spend any money outside of a planning framework. The ADP is one of these plans which is an annual plan. Among other things, the ADP sets out the major priorities and capital (or development) projects the county plans to undertake in the coming year and the medium term (2–3 years).
The County Treasury should table this document by the 1st of September of every year and then publicise it.
During the public participation day in Nairobi County, only a few people turned up, mostly from civil society. The public attendance was pathetic. This is despite a massive mobilization campaign the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) had undertaken to create awareness on the forum and to motivate attendance.
Discussions began to erupt among some of the CSOs on why the public attendance was so poor despite the consistent civic education and mobilization the civil society has done over the years in the county. There was a consensus that the approach the civil society adopted was not working and there was a way to rethink this strategy. However, since then, the conversations died and nothing fruitful has come out of them so far.
This whole incidence shows that there is a need for civil society to rethink their approach to public participation. It would be expected that when you train people consistently, they should own up the process and mobilize themselves to participate in governance. However, since this is not happening, it means the whole process requires a diagnosis.
There is a need to consider factors such as the political, economic and social environment that the public in a certain county operates in. More so, I have heard proposals that the county governments should not set the dates for public participation by themselves, but they should consult with the public to find a day that works for all.
The other major problem which also questions, whether the county governments care about public participation, is public communication. Going back to the Nairobi County ADP issue, the announcement to participate was made on a Thursday in the papers while the participation was to take place the coming Monday. During this time, the ADP was not even publicised and it was made available to the public via the County Assembly website on the same Thursday.
What this means is that, even if the public was aware of the forum and wanted to attend, they would not have had time to scrutinize the document and raise their issues. Public communication is something that is neglected a lot in conversations about why public participation in the counties is weak.
Public communication is also anchored in law, in the County Governments Act. It should be the catalyst for public participation because the public needs information communicated to them before they participate. However, despite the law providing diverse communication mechanisms (e.g. print and broadcast media, barazas, etc.), the county governments are notorious for only posting the public participation notices on newspapers, well knowing this medium of communication is not the closest to the citizenry.
The adverts in the newspapers are even pathetic because they are an eighth of a page and often in the middle or the back pages of the newspaper which makes them easy to ignore. When put to task on why public participation is poor, the county governments will in their defence say that they did notify the public, while we all know they did not utilize the diverse mediums of communication.
This is an indicator that county governments only use public participation to rubber-stamp their policies. They do it to meet the legal requirements but not to promote public inclusion in decision making. This kind of tokenism is also what kills public participation because the public does not think that their views make any difference because the counties rarely take them up.
It is in such a difficult environment that civil society is operating and promoting its services. Therefore, the problem per se is not the public or the clusters of the public they train and mentor, but it is circumstances within and without. Therefore, the approach they adapt to change these circumstances should not only be efficient and effective but also futuristic and perpetual.
The eventual goal of the civil society doing all they do to get the public to participate in decision making is to make the public own up the process. If the strategies are not working as they should, it is not bad to acknowledge they are not working and then work towards remedying them. In the end, if the public participates (as a whole), the civil society shall reap the fruits of its labour.
