By TEE NGUGI

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You probably saw the monstrosity on Kenyan news or on social media. The billboard proclaiming that Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga and a Member of the County Assembly (MCA) were the guiding lights in the construction of a single pit latrine in a neglected school. The governor’s and MCA’s beneficent faces smile down from the billboard at the residents of Nyeri.

Now this is obnoxious on two levels. First, several latrines should have been built many years ago in all schools in the county. That only a single one in one school is being built, and the fact that in other schools children use toilets in unspeakable conditions, should be a source of great shame to the leadership of Nyeri County.

Second, was the cost of putting up the billboard and having the faces painted on it value for money?

We might dismiss this absurdity as a petty instance of a human’s vanity, but it falls within a tradition of pathological and costly megalomania among the political class in Kenya. Last year, Kajiado governor Joseph Ole Lenku splashed millions of shillings on a self-congratulatory party disguised as a baraza (meeting) to assess progress since he took office.

No independent experts appraised the baraza on the failures and achievements of the county government.

Instead, groups of singers in traditional regalia were on hand to praise the governor. Then the aspiring mini sultan inspected a guard of honour mounted by county askaris. National government ministers and officials were present, enjoying the largesse extended by the county.

And in 2016, Siaya governor’s portrait appeared on school exam papers in the county! Other than the extreme vulgarity of this form of megalomania (even Kim Jong Un might find this too vulgar), it must have come at an extra cost.

But these aspiring county ‘Dear Leaders’ are not the only ones. As you enter every county, huge billboards with the smiling face of the governor welcome you. Also, mundane county information messages on TV are always accompanied by the gracious faces of the relevant governors. Even if so many children in some of those counties learn under trees or go to school hungry, the ostentatious displays never waver.

Even hunger and starvation offer golden opportunities for self-aggrandizement. During the famine in the northern counties last year, the Deputy President William Ruto and Mandera Governor Ali Rob triumphantly flagged off trucks carrying food to the starving. On the sides of the trucks were huge banners bearing the faces and names of the two leaders. Why a leader would view the most unequivocal and gruesome sign of failure of leadership as an opportunity for self-glorification shows the extent of this disease.

How do we cure this disease of megalomania and self-aggrandizement from Kenya’s body politic? Difficult to say because institutions that should help - Parliament, Senate, Executive, and county governments - are all sick from the disease.

What is clear as daylight is that leadership thus afflicted is incapable of leading us to our development vision.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator