Today, Governor Ali Hassan Joho is celebrating his birthday, Happy Birthday to him. But is he celebrating it in good moods? Imagine losing a bid to have control of a project generating millions of shillings, just a day to your birthday!
The Mombasa County Government has lost the fight to take control of the ferry services from the national government.
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed an appeal by the county government to manage the Likoni and Mtongwe ferries, which generate millions of shillings from travellers each year.
Judges said Mombasa County was time-barred for filing its case several months after the matter had been determined by the Court of Appeal.According to the judges, there was a time frame in which to challenge a decision from the Court of Appeal, and the county government had only itself to blame for dragging its feet on the matter.
Mr Joho’s administration wanted the Supreme Court to determine whether managing the ferry services was a function of the national or county governments, and who was entitled to collect revenues.
The dispute between the governor and the national government started in February 2016 when the county government muscled out the Kenya Ferry Services from managing the channel crossing.
The State agency sued the county government and in November 2016, the High Court ruled in its favour and ordered Governor Ali Hassan Joho to return management of the ferry services to the national government.
The county government appealed the decision but the Court of Appeal dismissed the case in favour of the national government. The court said the Likoni channel was not an inland lake but part of international waterways assigned to the national government.
The county then filed a suit at the Supreme Court, where lawyer Paul Mwangi accused the Appellate Court of relying on extraneous issues to deny the county the opportunity to collect revenue from a facility that fell within its jurisdiction.
Mr Mwangi accused the Court of Appeal of failing to appreciate the roles of the two levels of Government in managing devolved resources.“They contradicted themselves by ruling that Kenya Ferry Services was entitled to collect revenues from managing the parking bays on either side of the water channel, but that they must first obtain a licence from the county government,” Mwangi said.
He added: “The Appellate Court misapplied the spirit of devolution pertaining to the roles of both county and national governments, and ended up arriving at a decision not backed by any law.”Mwangi argued that the function of a government at one level might be transferred to another level of government through an agreement if it is proved that the resource under dispute can be better managed by that government.