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{
    "id": 896973,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/896973/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 234,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Turkana Central, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. Lodepe Nakara",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 2926,
        "legal_name": "John Lodepe Nakara",
        "slug": "john-lodepe-nakara"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to also contribute to the President’s Address to the nation. First of all, our President met his obligation of reporting the progress of the nation to Parliament as per Article 132 of the Constitution. The President made us get assurance that this country is stable. In his opening remarks, he stated very clearly that the state of our nation is strong. When you hear such kind of words from the leader, you feel you are secure in your own country; you feel like you can stay in this country. Even developers and investors would feel secure on hearing such a comment from the President. The President assured the nation of his commitment to protect our borders and Kenyan lives. That assurance alone has made us to feel we are part and parcel of this country. But we have a challenge that we need the President to address: internal conflicts between counties in this country. The conflicts are killing more people than Al Shabaab, if you compare the numbers. If you look at the conflict between the Turkana and the Pokot, the one between the Marakwet and the Pokot and the conflicts between local counties—we need to see how we bring these people together. We need to co-exist as Kenyans. We need to do business: The Pokot to invest in Turkana and the Turkana to invest in Pokot because we are all Kenyans. So we need the President to come up with a solution of how to solve this problem internally. The President gave his commitment to devolution by saying that since April 2013 he has disbursed almost Kshs1.7 trillion to the counties. We have seen the changes in our counties, though not as we expected as per the money that we receive. We cannot solve generational problems within five or six years. So we need to give counties time. We need to embrace devolution so that we can see the benefits in future. The President’s commitment to devolution is encouraging. We want to see that devolution is growing and is doing well in terms of infrastructure. More than that, we expect the counties to major on areas that affect their own people like food production and healthcare. Those are the areas we expect devolution to address. The President stated that the state of the economy is strong. We can agree with him partially. Somehow he has tried. But somehow he has not done as we expected. We have no money in circulation. What will show that the economy is strong is when we see money circulating in the country and when people have purchasing power. The rural communities have no purchasing power. For us to know that the economy is strong, we must see people purchasing economically. Small businesses are closing down because the economy is bad. People have no money, so those small businesses are closing down. So we need the President to pull up his socks so that the economy of this country can grow. On the issue of the Big Four Agenda, I support it fully. But I was so surprised to hear the President saying the hides’ factory will be put up here in Nairobi. We expect tannery factory to be put up either in Isiolo or Turkana. We have Lomidat in Turkana west. We have a factory there. Why"
}