On the bench this week was Murang'a Governor Irungu Kang'ata, once voted the best-performing governor in the country, and a man with a grievance. A few weeks ago, Afya.ke, the digital health system his county had spent four years building, went dark. "What went wrong?" Jeff asked. "Give us the backstory."
Kang'ata said the county set out to run its hospitals without paper cards, to close revenue loopholes and keep proper patient records. Rather than build from scratch, it took a system the national government had developed but never fully rolled out, got access to the source code, and deployed it across about 170 health facilities. Satellite internet, new computers and solar power followed, along with a telemedicine service used by about 30,000 elderly patients.
Jeff then played a clip of Health CS Aden Duale on Sunday Live, saying the system belonged to the National Intelligence Service and accusing the governor of playing politics. Kang'ata was unmoved. If Afya.ke is a government system, he argued, why push counties onto Tabibu, a private platform they must pay licence fees for, when the county's own system was free? He blamed the CS and the Principal Secretary for the switch-off and called it "inhumane," saying four years of patient records can no longer be opened. The Ministry of Health has denied switching the system off.
Jeff did not let him off lightly. Why was there no backup? "That's very naive," he told the governor. "Maybe we are guilty as charged," Kang'ata conceded, saying the county never imagined anyone would switch off a system holding patients' data. He said telemedicine has stopped, hospitals are back on paper, and revenue is falling: automation, he said, had taken daily outpatient collections at Murang'a Level 5 Hospital from about KSh 60,000 to KSh 600,000. The county has a court order and, he said, may seek contempt if the system is not restored.
In Part 2, talk turned to Mountain politics. Kang'ata, who moved from UDA to DCP, said former President Uhuru Kenyatta's role in the opposition is "moral support, but nothing more." Pressed on his party hopping from TNA to Jubilee to UDA and now DCP, he said he is simply "an employee" of the people of Murang'a. He is seeking re-election, and spoke of an industrial park he says will one day be larger than Nairobi's CBD, and a school feeding programme set to reach about 200,000 children a day from January.
The Magic Wall brought some of the night's best moments. Asked whether party leader Rigathi Gachagua is a political bully, Kang'ata said Gachagua had once "saved my life" by warning him away from a by-election where he was later injured. He ruled out any interest in being deputy president, and when Jeff asked what he would do if President Ruto wins another term, he laughed: "What shall we do?"
It was a sharp, often personal hour on health, devolution and the road to 2027, from a governor with plenty to say.
Continue with Part 2 on Citizen TV.
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