HOMA BAY’S BILLIONS, THE DUSTY ROADS AND THE DEVOLUTION TEST: WHAT THE LINDA MWANANCHI TOUR EXPOSED
CIVICLENS GAZETTE
Tuesday, 18 August 2026
From Sifuna’s road videos to billions in county resources, Homa Bay’s infrastructure debate has moved beyond politics — and into the harder question of value for money.
By Civiclens Investigative Desk
The dust rising from roads in parts of Homa Bay County this week has become more than an image circulating on social media.
It has become a question.
A political question.
A development question.
And, above all, an accountability question.
On Sunday, August 16, 2026, the Edwin Sifuna-led Linda Mwananchi movement toured parts of Homa Bay, where images and videos of rough, dusty and poorly graded roads attracted national attention. The convoy encountered difficult road conditions after leaving major highways to reach some of its destinations, bringing renewed public scrutiny to the state of infrastructure in the county.
The images travelled quickly.
Across television, digital news platforms and social media, Kenyans began asking a deceptively simple question:
After 13 years of devolution, why do some communities in Homa Bay still struggle with roads that appear to offer little more than dust, potholes and difficult access?
The question is uncomfortable because Homa Bay is not a county without money.
According to National Treasury payment records examined by Civiclens, Homa Bay received approximately KSh85.79 billion in equitable-share payments between FY2013/14 and FY2024/25.
And in the current financial year, FY2026/27, Parliament has allocated Homa Bay approximately KSh8.914 billion in equitable share alone.
That does not represent every shilling available to the county. There are own-source revenues, conditional grants, additional allocations and other resources.
The question, therefore, is not whether Homa Bay has received public money.
It has.
The question is what the people can point to after the money has been spent.
THE ROAD THAT CHANGED THE CONVERSATION
The Linda Mwananchi tour did not invent Homa Bay's infrastructure problems.
The county's own planning documents acknowledge that transportation infrastructure remains a major development priority.
A Homa Bay municipal development document describes a road network containing both paved and gravel roads and notes that some roads can become impassable during heavy rains.
The county has also acknowledged the importance of roads to agriculture, trade, employment and access to public services.
Its development plans identify projects including the Mbita-Sindo-Magunga road, Magina-Pala-Kowuonda route, Kanyadhiang-Homa Hills-Kadel Road and other connectivity projects as strategically important.
The Linda Mwananchi convoy therefore drove into an existing development debate.
What changed was the visibility.
The roads were no longer merely statistics buried inside a county development plan.
They were suddenly on millions of screens.
That is the power of political communication in the digital age: one ordinary road can become a national accountability symbol when citizens see it, share it and ask who was supposed to fix it.
BUT THERE IS ANOTHER SIDE TO THE STORY
A responsible investigation cannot stop with the images.
Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga has rejected the suggestion that the road conditions represent a failure of devolution.
Her argument is that the poor infrastructure reflects decades of historical marginalisation, rather than simply the performance of the current county administration.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has also criticised the Linda Mwananchi presentation, accusing the movement of selecting poor road stretches while failing to showcase major roads constructed or improved in the region.
Those responses deserve to be recorded.
They also point to an important distinction that is frequently lost in political arguments:
Not every road in Homa Bay is a county-government road.
Some major highways fall under the national government and its road agencies, while county governments are responsible for county functions, including many local and access roads.
Therefore, blaming the county for every road visible in Homa Bay would be inaccurate.
But the opposite argument is equally problematic.
The existence of national-government roads does not erase the county's responsibility for roads within its mandate.
And that is where the real accountability test begins.
KSh85.79 BILLION CHANGES THE STANDARD
When devolution began operating in 2013, counties were promised more than administrative decentralisation.
They were promised government closer to the people.
The philosophy was straightforward: decisions and resources should move closer to citizens so that local priorities can be identified and addressed more effectively.
Homa Bay has now lived under that system for roughly 13 years.
The county's equitable-share receipts have increased substantially over that period.
Treasury payment records show the annual flow rising from roughly KSh4.18 billion in FY2013/14 to more than KSh10.29 billion in FY2024/25.
For FY2026/27, Parliament has approved an equitable-share allocation of KSh8.914 billion for Homa Bay.
Meanwhile, Homa Bay's approved FY2026/27 budget stands at roughly KSh12.1 billion, according to the county's official budget estimates.
That is a serious public resource base.
It means residents are entitled to ask serious questions.
How much goes to roads?
How much is actually released?
How much is spent?
Which contractors are paid?
Which roads are completed?
Which roads are merely graded?
Which projects stall?
And perhaps the most important question:
What does the completed road look like one year after completion?
THE PENDING-BILLS PROBLEM
The road controversy becomes more significant when viewed alongside Homa Bay's wider financial-management record.
The county's own FY2024/25 pending-bills documentation shows substantial outstanding obligations across departments.
The Roads, Public Works, Transport and Infrastructure department, for example, had outstanding pending bills of more than KSh322 million as at June 30, 2024. By the end of FY2024/25, the documented outstanding amount was still more than KSh163 million.
The same county document shows outstanding obligations in health, education, trade, water, lands and other departments.
This is important because development money can look large on paper while actual cash available for new work is constrained by obligations inherited from previous years.
A county may announce a new road.
But if contractors from previous projects remain unpaid, the government is operating under financial pressure before the new grader even arrives.
That is not necessarily evidence of corruption.
It is evidence of a fiscal-management challenge that deserves scrutiny.
THE AUDITOR'S FILE CANNOT BE IGNORED
For years, Homa Bay's audit reports have raised questions over financial documentation, unsupported expenditure and reconciliation of public resources.
These findings should not automatically be translated into accusations of theft.
An Auditor-General query is not a criminal conviction.
But repeated audit findings are still important.
They tell citizens where public financial-management systems have failed to provide auditors with the evidence required to establish that money was properly spent.
That is why the county's financial history matters to the current roads debate.
The question is not merely whether leaders promise development.
It is whether the financial system can demonstrate, shilling by shilling, that the money allocated for development produced the promised public asset.
THE COUNTY SAYS IT IS BUILDING
To its credit, Homa Bay has not presented itself as a government sitting still.
Its official development publications identify infrastructure expansion as a priority and list road construction, maintenance, water, energy and other projects.
The county's official project-tracking system also provides the public with a database through which projects can be viewed. That is a potentially important transparency tool because citizens can move beyond political speeches and inspect what the government says it has implemented.
The county's own 2025 publication highlights road projects including the Ojijo Oteko road, Sindo-Magunga-Kiabuya road and other infrastructure initiatives.
The argument, therefore, should not be reduced to:
“There are no roads.”
There are.
The stronger question is:
Are the roads being delivered at the speed, quality and geographic scale required by the money available and the needs of the population?
That question is much harder to answer — and much more useful to citizens.
THE LINDA MWANANCHI MOMENT
This is where the political story and the accountability story meet.
Linda Mwananchi arrived in Homa Bay as a political movement.
Its tour became something else.
The roads became the visual centre of the conversation.
National attention shifted from political mobilisation to infrastructure.
That development has created an unusual opportunity for Homa Bay residents.
Instead of allowing the debate to become another exchange of accusations between political camps, citizens can demand evidence from everyone involved.
If Sifuna and Linda Mwananchi say the roads demonstrate failed leadership, they should identify the specific roads, determine whether each falls under county or national jurisdiction, and establish what budgets were allocated.
If the county says the roads are historical problems or ongoing works, it should publish the contracts, budgets, timelines, completion percentages and payment records.
If the national government says major highways have been improved, it should similarly show the projects, costs, contractors and completion status.
The answer should be documents, not political noise.
THE REAL VICTIM IS THE ORDINARY RESIDENT
For a farmer trying to move produce to market, a poor road is not a political metaphor.
It is a cost.
For a student travelling to school, it is time.
For a pregnant woman travelling to a health facility, it can become a serious access problem.
For a trader, poor connectivity can mean fewer customers and higher transport costs.
For a young person searching for economic opportunity, infrastructure is part of the environment in which opportunity either grows or disappears.
That is why the roads shown during the Linda Mwananchi tour resonated so strongly.
The images represented something bigger than politics.
They represented the distance between a government budget and a citizen's daily experience.
WHAT HOMA BAY SHOULD DEMAND NOW
The answer cannot simply be another political rally.
Homa Bay needs a public road accountability register.
Every major county-funded road should have:
1. Location.
2. Road length.
3. Approved budget.
4. Contractor.
5. Contract date.
6. Amount paid.
7. Completion percentage.
8. Expected completion date.
9. Current physical condition.
10. Whether the project falls under county or national government responsibility.
That information would instantly transform the debate.
Instead of politicians pointing cameras at roads and governments pointing to development reports, citizens could compare the documents with what exists on the ground.
That is what mature devolution should look like.
THE CIVICLENS VERDICT
The Linda Mwananchi tour did not prove that every road in Homa Bay has been neglected by the county government.
It did, however, expose a legitimate and uncomfortable reality:
parts of Homa Bay still have infrastructure conditions that appear difficult to reconcile with the scale of public resources that have flowed through the devolved system.
Homa Bay has received approximately KSh85.79 billion in equitable-share payments through FY2024/25, while its current FY2026/27 equitable-share allocation is approximately KSh8.914 billion.
There are visible projects.
There are development plans.
There are roads under construction and maintenance.
There are also pending bills, stalled projects and recurring accountability questions.
Both realities can exist at the same time.
And that is precisely why the debate must rise above political slogans.
Sifuna and Linda Mwananchi have put the roads before the public.
Governor Wanga and other leaders have offered their explanations.
The county's documents provide another layer of evidence.
The Auditor-General provides another.
The Controller of Budget provides another.
Now the public deserves the final layer:
independent verification on the ground.
Because after 13 years of devolution, Homa Bay should not have to choose between development and accountability.
It deserves both.
And perhaps the most powerful question coming out of the dust is not who is politically right?
It is this:
If billions have been allocated, where exactly did the money go — and can the people see it, use it and verify it?
That is the question Homa Bay cannot afford to leave unanswered.
CIVICLENS GAZETTE.
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