SAM'S SENSE: Spend, Yes, but can we account?

Tonight on my sense, I am reflecting on the ordinary Kenyan’s daily life and drawing a parallel with the Government of Kenya.

You see, in your typical household: father, mother and a few children, money is a critical question.

Families have targets and priorities. If they do not own the home they live in, there is rent to pay. There is water, electricity, food, school fees and all the other essentials that make life bearable, even at the most basic level.

If both parents are lucky enough to have a regular income, they must plan. They must share responsibilities. Because running a home, any home, requires practical decisions.

Children have demands. When they are young, perhaps it is toys and little things that bring them joy. As they grow older, the demands become bigger.

But the children have no income of their own. They depend on the parents.

And sane parents understand that while entertainment and comfort matter, they cannot come at the expense of the household’s basic needs.

The adults in the room must decide where they want to take the family; in the short term, the medium term and, importantly, the long term.

They must invest for the future while meeting the needs of today. Often, that requires sacrifice, especially from the adults. For the simple reason that they are expected to know better.

Children can demand endlessly until someone explains to them that money is not an unlimited good.

In that national household are millions of people, all with different needs, competing interests and competing demands.

In Kenya, that national household is divided into 290 basic political units called constituencies. Each elects one representative to the boardroom we call Parliament, where the national cake is divided.

But notice something important: The cake is never baked in Parliament.

It is baked by the workers, businesses, farmers and taxpayers across those constituencies. People who hope that the wisdom of their representatives will prevail when it comes to sharing it.

And so basic needs such as education, healthcare, food production and infrastructure ought to receive priority.

But, dear countrymen, there is a problem. The cake baked last year was worth about Ksh.5.2 trillion. Part of it we baked with our taxes and service fees. The rest we borrowed at home and away. And the report is out.

Some 83 per cent of the cake went into recurrent expenditure. Only 17 per cent went into development.

In a household, that would be like spending almost everything on running the home, while putting very little aside to build something that can generate more income tomorrow.

But then, even within the money spent on running government, there are questions.

The Controller of Budget found that about Ksh.105 billion was spent under a broad category called “other expenses.” And some departments received particularly large amounts under this heading. In fact, four out of the many government departments took half of it.

The State Department for Internal Security and National Administration received about Ksh.21 billion under other expenses, which it attributed to security operations.

The National Treasury received another Ksh.12 billion for security operations. The National Police Service received about Ksh.11 billion.

And then there is the head of this national household. Where does the head of the family sit? Yes. State House.

Parliament allocated State House about Ksh.8.5 billion back in June 2025. It was not enough. Within six months, much of it had been spent, prompting additional funding through the supplementary budget process. State House eventually received another Ksh.10 billion.

And when it came time to account for the expenditure, about Ksh.6.7 billion was classified as “other expenses”. Expenditure that, in this case, the Controller of Budget subsequently treated as confidential.

Would you like to know exactly what that money was spent on? Then, perhaps, ask the Auditor-General.

Because here is the question: Go back to that ordinary Kenyan household. What would happen if one of the parents kept spending large amounts of money under unexplained expenses?

What if, every time the other parent asked where the money went, the answer was simply: It was confidential. Or that it was spent on security operations.

Would trust survive?

And would the children be wrong to ask questions?

The national household is no different.

The people who bake the cake have a right to know how it is shared.

And when billions of shillings are spent under vague or confidential classifications, the question is not whether government should spend. Of course it should.

The question is much simpler: Can we account for what we spend?

Because in a household, money without accountability eventually becomes a family problem.