Governors demand apology, threaten legal action over controversial poll
The Council of Governors has demanded an apology from All Africa Advisors (AAA) and threatened legal action over an opinion poll that ranked county chiefs’ performance.
In a statement released on Wednesday, Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, the council chairman, trashed the poll by the London-based firm, terming it as a political strategy to malign the country.
The county bosses said AAA encroached limits and turned a blind eye on the outlined protocols in the Statistics (Amendment) Act, 2019, which requires agencies to seek approval from the Kenya Accreditation Service, before embarking on conducting a research.
The Council further refuted claims by the pollster that it had provided a self-assessment questionnaire to each governor, as none of the governors had received them.
They claimed that the company had also listed Kenya as among seven most dangerous countries to live in globally, ignoring several other obvious war torn countries, which was evidence that the survey was ill-intentioned.
“The council is of the considered view that the company has no locus to purport to have conducted a survey in the country with Kenya’s interest at heart,” said Mr Oparanya.
WAR TORN
“We equally note that the pollsters rank Kenya as the 7th most dangerous countries to live in (in the world) whereas there are other obvious war torn countries that are not featured in the opinion poll. This shows that AAA is a company determined to destroy the image of the country and counties.”
The survey where Kenya was ranked as the 7th most dangerous country to live in was, however, conducted by InterNations.
The Council called out a section of media who had published the poll results, which it termed as ‘fake’ to attack governors.
They argued that it was impossible to apply a homogeneous criteria for measuring performance across all 47 counties, as each county was distinct with definite strengths and challenges.
The highly contentious poll ranked Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua as the top performing county boss followed by Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, Nairobi’s Mike Sonko, Makueni’s Prof. Kivutha Kibwana, and Mombasa’s Ali Hassan Joho respectively.
Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu was ranked last by the company, which claims its main focus is development and commercial projects in Africa.