How Nyumba Kumi can save us from bad leaders

Fellow countrymen, let us stop pretending: our electoral democracy is not working and it will never work!

We shall always get crooks, criminals, idiots and all manner of never-do-wells in our Parliament and county assemblies. As the Chinese venture capitalist, Eric Xu Li puts it, our “democracy has become a perpetual cycle of elect and regret”.

On Wednesday, the day I wrote this, two reports appeared in the media. One was about the move by Members of the National Assembly to get a total of Sh3bn as compensation for what they claim is a shorter parliamentary term. The other story is about the nominated Senator from Naivasha who threatened to shoot officials from an oil company who had come to his station to investigate reports of adulteration of fuel. These are the sort of leaders that our democracy produces every five years.

And now, as the mass voter registration exercise is going on, aspiring candidates from the local to the national level are working hard to ensure that their supporters enlist. This has become the real election; the event of August 8 will just be a formality.

I still recall what Mr Mutahi Ngunyi said in his controversial 2013 video, “The Tyranny of Numbers; “[The 2013 general] election was concluded and won on December 18, 2012 after the voter registration”. History is repeating itself before our very eyes.

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I am very uncomfortable with this state of affairs. If we continue this way, we will never get good leaders of integrity and who are in touch with the citizens. Therefore, I suggest we change our democracy.

First of all, let’s do away with general elections for national and regional leadership. They are too expensive and tend to attract only dubious characters. Suppose we only did elections at the household level only?

We have tried the Nyumba Kumi (10 Households) initiative for neighbourhood security for some time now. I suggest that we institutionalise this idea as the basic unit of leadership. From there, the hierarchy progresses as follows:

Every Nyumba Kumi elect a leader through an election. In every neighbourhood of 10 Nyuma Kumi (100 households), the 10 leaders select an elder from amongst themselves. Then; in a village of 10 neighbourhoods (1,000 households), the 10 elders choose a chief.

Next; the 10 chiefs in a location of 10 villages select a governor from amongst themselves. Then the 10 governors in a district of 10 locations choose a senator.

10 senators from 10 districts chose a minister who is now in charge of a county. Looking at our current population, there will only be about ten ministers – probably less. Finally, all the ministers, whatever their number, select the country’s President from amongst themselves.

So, the hierarchical pyramid starts from a Nyumba Kumi leader; to a neighbourhood elder; to village chief; to a location governor; to a district senator; to a county minister and the president is at the top.

The only direct election by citizens will be for the Nyumba Kumi leader. The rest of the hierarchy is selected through the in-built delegate system. Can this work? I would very much like to hear what readers have to say.