Uhuru takes full control of Nairobi with Executive Order
By Collins OmuloThe Nairobi Metropolitan Service (NMS) has finally been published as one of the offices under the Executive Office of the President.
The new development, contained in a new revised Executive Order by President Uhuru Kenyatta, now legally recognises the new outfit as a public office and therefore a legal entity.
The office that is headed by Major General Mohammed Badi as its director-general will now be one of the offices under the Executive Office of the President.
It is tasked with the implementation of the Deed of Transfer of functions executed between the National Government and Nairobi City County Government.
NMS came into existence on March 18, 2020, when the Deed of Transfer of Functions signed between Governor Mike Sonko and the State on February 25, 2020, came into effect.
Under the Deed, four county functions –health, transport, planning and management, and public works and ancillary services– were transferred to the National Government.
Last month, however, the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) President Nelson Havi said NMS is not a legal entity as it does not meet the criteria of a public office.
Mr Havi was responding to a request by NMS deputy director-general Enosh Onyango for LSK to nominate an advocate of the High Court to be a member of a soon-to-be-formed NMS Physical and Land Use Planning liaison committee.
In the May 15, 2020 letter, Mr Havi declined the request arguing that since the establishment of NMS lacks any legitimate legal foundation, they cannot nominate any of its members to serve in the liaison committee.
This, he said, is because there is no statutory instrument establishing NMS and therefore it is not a body established or recognised by law.
The LSK boss further pointed out that there isn’t the publication of any statutory instrument prescribing and establishing NMS as an institutional framework pursuant to Article 7.1 of the Deed and made in accordance with provisions of the Statutory Instruments Act, 2013.
Article 7.1 of the Deed stipulates that the National Government shall prescribe and establish an institutional framework for the execution of the transferred functions.
Consequently, Mr Havi explained, NMS fails to meet the criteria of a public office as outlined under article 260 of the Constitution.
“After careful consideration of the above, and in the absence of a statutory instrument establishing NMS, we have made the conclusion that NMS is not a body established or recognised in law,” said Mr Havi in the letter.
“The same article further outlines state offices and state organs established under the Constitution. NMS does not make the list. It is therefore imperceptible from your letter under which written law NMS is established,” he added.