David Wanjala
Kenya is ready for take off into the middle class economy. In fact, we have been ready ever since President Kibaki’s second term in power. What, with the discovery of gold mines in commercially viable wells of crude oil and other natural resources? The only two obstacles standing in between that imminent leap are corruption and impunity, which feed into each other and have stalked the country’s economy like cancer since independence.
In President Moi’s regime, Goldenberg scandal was the turning point in Kenya’s otherwise promising economy despite the loot and plunder of the independence government. It was a racket in which government subsidized exports of gold far beyond standard arrangements in the 1990s by paying Goldenberg International 35% more than their foreign currency earnings, looting dry the national treasury. The NARC Government of President Kibaki hatched Anglo Leasing, a government procurement scandal in which civil service mandarins in cahoots with private sector actors fleeced government of billions of shillings.
President Kibaki however redeemed his legacy by investing heavily in infrastructure and promulgating a new Constitution that was more liberal on civil and economic liberties. Luckily, too, it was in Kibaki’s reign that decades’ long exploration endeavours yielded results with the discovery of massive oil reserves in parts of the country.
It is however in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Government, which keeps churning out blueprints left, right and centre that if implemented would put the country on course to prosperity that corruption has skyrocketed, unabated. Government seems confused, uninterested or abetting the vice. Beyond lip service that has sometimes seen even President Kenyatta come out as a mere whistleblower in the fight against corruption, government has not shown firm intention to deal with it.
For a year into Jubilee Government’s rule, government denied escalation of corruption, promised action or merely procrastinated. It was frustrating to the nation when the President took to public forums to announce how rampant corruption had permeated the Office of the President (OP), leaving people wondering whether the President’s only option was to whistle blow.
In the meantime the looting grew into unrivalled scales and permeated even the private sector in unprecedented fashion. All government’s mega procurement projects including the Standard Gauge Railway, free primary class one laptops were marred with allegations of massive looting. To date, government’s pet project of entrenching IT skills in the up and coming generation by providing class one pupils with laptops is yet to be rolled out, three years on.
By the time the President realized he needed to rein in, it was too little too late. The private sector that trades with government had joined in and was also reeling with the vice even within itself. It has become, more than ever before, part of life with the net effect being that foreign investors with potential of undertaking major economic projects to provide government with revenue from taxes, employment to the youth and develop infrastructure have shied away. it has not only skyrocketed the cost of doing business, has increased the cost of living.
Five key ministries in President Kenyatta’s Cabinet including Land, Housing and Urban Development; Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries; Labour, Social Securities and Services; Energy and Petroleum and Transport and Infrastructure do not have substantive cabinet secretaries for the fifth month running. This came after the President’s inward purge on corruption.
It is difficult to understand how we will effectively transition into oil producing country, or generate enough and affordable electric power to be able to produce competitively on the global stage with Energy and Petroleum ministry being overseen in an acting capacity for months running. Or how we will push ahead the transport network agenda to even just decongest Nairobi City with Transport and Infrastructure ministry running without a figurehead.
More frustrating is the fact that the President’s approach to attempt to tame the vice is bereft of fidelity to the law. It is full of impunity that feeds and sustains corruption. The President patronized the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC), hijacked a list of names of corrupt public officials that under the law should have been taken to the National Assembly and, allegedly edited it to take care of political expediency before taking it to Parliament where he called on those whose names featured to step down. Subsequently, OP operatives allegedly targeted and edged out perceived rebellious commissioners of the commission in the most unconventional way.
The net effect of this is that the President’s declared war on corruption was deprived of legitimacy. It was reduced, in perception, to mere witch-hunt. No wonder the affected Cabinet Secretaries ignored their boss’s call and stuck to their positions forcing the President to resort to uncouth methods like appointing acting ministers while the affected ones were still in office to force them out. Out of the President’s actions, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission too lost legitimacy and integrity with Parliament targeting to render serving commissioners and the secretariat redundant. As we speak, the commission, lacking in quorum cannot do much and the recruitment process to jumpstart its operations has stalled.
“This is the most rapacious administration that we have ever had, corruption in Kenya has deepened and widened,” says John Githongo, Former Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics in the Office of the President
Then there is the most recent report by the Auditor General that has caused uproar as he revealed the massive unaccounted for spending in government. According to the report, only 1.2% of the country’s 2013 – 2014 Sh1 trillion budget was correctly accounted for. About Sh67 billion could not be accounted for. It is difficult to see how the economy can grow, together with the masses into a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, work autonomy and reliable expertise for sustainability that defines the middle class with this kind of impunity in expending public money.
During President Barrack Obama’s recent and first visit to Kenya as US leader, he called on Kenyatta’s government to take greater steps to tackle corruption, calling it “the single biggest impediment to Kenya growing even faster”. You do not have to be a forensic accountant, Obama said, to know what is going on.
Speaking at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi Obama said, “one of the things that we have come to understand — and this is particularly relevant to Africa — is that in order to create successful entrepreneurs, the government also has a role in creating the transparency, and the rule of law, and the ease of doing business, and the anti-corruption agenda that creates a platform for people to succeed.”
Devolution, one of Kenya’s cornerstones for economic liberation for its masses is being mutilated by impunity in expenditure of resources meant for development by county leaderships most of which is on valueless recurrent expenditure, nonstrategic property acquisition like Governor’s residences and offices and unaccounted for personal emoluments. In Nairobi County for instance, a chief finance officer on a modest pay of Sh85, 000 per month lived like a King, according to the dailies reports, with two maisonettes in Sout C, a plush townhouse in Kileleshwa, four apartments in Kilimani, eight plots of land in Muthaiga, Mavoko and Machakos and six cars. He was only suspended recently after the media blew the cover on him.
National institutions like the EACC, National Intelligence Service and Criminal Investigations Department mandated to deal with issues of economic and other crimes are yet to successfully pursue and convict any case of corruption in the counties. Salaries and Remuneration Communication and Controller of Budget are overwhelmed and they have joined other constitutional offices with similar mandate to play flower girl to the economic sabotage by a few that has held the country hostage.
The private sector is reeling with the vice as well. Tatu City, Konza Techno City have all suffered long delays owing to land transfer related corruption with prospective investors ruing lost opportunities. Semi autonomous institutions have not been left unscathed. Kenya Airways, the national airline is down on its knees. So is Kenya Airports Authority, Mumias Sugar Company, and all other sugar companies that government has stake in.
Proceeds of the Eurobond that government floated in the international market late last year fetching Sh200 billion, according to the Auditor General’s report, has been stashed in an offshore account and not the Consolidated Fund against Article 206 of the Constitution and Section 17(2) of Public Finance and Management Act, 2012. This, the report says, has afforded the government to escape scrutiny of the expenditure of the money, adding that already part of the money has been spent without the approval of the Controller of Budget.
Insecurity that has bled the tourism sector to its knees besides adversely affecting other sectors of the economy is largely due to entrenched corruption in the security departments. Just last month, a lorry belonging to the General service Unit of the National Police Service was found ferrying aliens from Ethiopia into to the country. Even though it does not fully portray the real picture of how security organs are rotten, it gives a glimpse into the extent to which they have sunk down. The catastrophic road carnage, which has persisted unabated offers yet another peek into the rot of the National Police Service. Worse still, poaching in the national parks and reserves targeting precious species that are under the threat of extintion like elephants and rhinos has rechead a crescendo in the last three years, threatening tourism further, Kenya’s second largest foreign exchange earner.
The most scaring, however, is the recent open admission by the Chief Justice that corruption has found its way back into the Judiciary.
“I have never understood why a judicial officer or administrator who is very well paid and others who enjoy security of tenure… mortgage and car loan facilities, has an excellent medical cover, has probably had a successful career as an advocate or scholar, bribe taking is one of the most despicable expression of self disrespect that I have ever seen and it must stop,” Dr Willy Mutunga decried last month during the judges colloquium in Mombasa. The openly disappointed head of Judiciary further warned, “The radical surgery and vetting exercises were traumatizing experiences for most of the judges. But if we do not take a personal and professional stand against this vice then I can assure you the vetting exercise will be back – and this time, in a more vicious form than the previous one.” This, coming from the Chief Justice is shocking, if not traumatizing to a country that had until recently held the seemingly reformed Judiciary as the saviour, whatever lay on the horizon intent on destroying Kenya.
Kenya is stuck on the runway, rearing to take off to prosperity. A lot of baggage is however, holding the country back. Depending with how we handle the issues of impunity and corruption, either, we will taxi away soon, gain momentum and take off, or we will slide back into self-destruction. With the discovery of massive natural resources, looking at other African states similarly endowed like Nigeria and former Sudan, prospects of the latter option have never never before seemed more real.
