How lack of functional city board, critical professionals cost Nakuru World Bank funds

New revelations indicate that Nakuru County missed out on the Kenya Urban Support Program (KUSP) II grant because it lacked a fully functional city board

These details emerged during the grilling the County Secretary Samuel Mwaura and Lands CECM, John Kihagi and CECM Finance Stephen Iribe. 

Mr Kihagi in his response to the queries raised by the MCAs admitted that the county was yet constitute a city board which was one of the requirements by the World Bank

“We did not meet the allocation criteria, this is because five city board members time in office had expired yet one of the conditions to be given the grant was to have a fully constituted city board,” he says.

Kihagi however reveals that Susan Kihika who seats in the committee of Urban Planning was able to negotiate and get funding for Gilgil.

The MCAs led by Naivasha East ward representative Stanley Karanja, however, could not buy the explanation and alleged incompetence in the entire lands docket.

“If you say that the Governor sits in the committee that allocates these funds, why was Kiambu given such a high amount, together with other counties, yet Nakuru received such small amounts, this simply means that the problem is with the department and therefore someone from that docket should carry this burden, “he said.

The Chairperson of the Lands Committee Peter Palanga, said they discovered from the grilling, that lack of a full-time professional such as architectures, surveyors and technical support to support this initiative also contributed to the loss of the grant

He cautioned that that missing out on this money will have a severe impact on the implementations of projects in the county.

“We have had to remove this money from the supplementary budget. This means it is not in the budget estimates, this is because the budget estimates must capture the sources of money and we had projects that we would have done but because of this we will not do them,” he says.

What next?

The committee says that they are looking to also summon the city board and the Naivasha and Gilgil municipal boards to also understand their reasons as to why the counties missed out on these monies.

“After interviewing those involved, we are going to write a comprehensive report and recommend action to be taken against those responsible for this mishap,” he concluded.

The grant amounted to sh. 6.7 billion shillings, allocated across 35 counties and 62 municipalities for the 2025-2026 financial year. The lion’s share of the grant was received by Kiambu County which gosh. 1.6 billion, Turkana received sh. 667 million for two municipalities and Uasin Gishu got sh. 465 million for Eldoret City.

Last year while Susan Kihika was being grilled by the Public Accounts Committee, it was revealed that the County was operating on auto pilot as it lacked key personnel in the finance docket.

It was revealed that the County did not have a county public service board (CPSB), an audit committee, a chief officer of finance or a qualified head of accounting services.