Ours is a slippery government where deals and scandals flow freely like oil

Just when we thought we would have a quiet, relaxing, and reflective government-free Easter break, we found ourselves flabbergasted, or not, depending on your view of this administration, by yet another scandal, this time involving what suspiciously feels like an oil import deal gone bad.

To be crystal clear, this is very different from an oil import deal that was bad in the first place. Even figuratively, you could smell the deep-fried scapegoat, not roast goat, this Easter weekend.

This is not a negative take from waking up on the wrong side of the bed. It raises a question about whether we are in a governance space where uncontrolled troops take cues of impunity from leadership actions. Meanwhile, citizens are being told to accept the 2027 election result “for stability and progress.” This comes amid a confusing mix of voter registration exercises: seven million IDs issued since 2022, another three million expected by June, a 2.5 million target for the IEBC voter registration month, and five to six million registrations under the “Niko/Tuko Kadi” drive led by young people. The signs are not encouraging.

Especially when, on the fiscus, the National Assembly felt it necessary to add to the Treasury’s proposed bloating of our budget deficit in a revenue shortfall space that has not factored in our exports and imports, hence our growing, producing, and buying are hit by Middle East happenings.

Perhaps that explains why, during Easter, the simple family question was: “What are we being diverted from?”

If you go to the Budget and Appropriations Committee’s reports on the 2026/27 Budget Policy Statement (BPS) and Division of Revenue Bill, and the more recent first Supplementary Estimates for current 2025/26, even ignoring the data realism inconsistencies, and that’s before you take a glance at our two-thirds fiscal performance in the gazetted February 2026 Exchequer report, it’s bad.

In brief, Parliament bloated this year’s supplementary spending proposal from Treasury, while accepting we won’t hit revenue targets, before deciding, despite CRA advice and CoG representations, to keep Treasury’s proposed county equitable share for next year based on, guess what, 2021/22 audited accounts. 

In the same breath, they had earlier passed next year’s estimates framework (the BPS), inspired by this year’s estimates, before the supplementary bloating.  Reading the reports and inputs therein, you wonder, do public participation and stakeholder voice matter?  Technically, without a three-in-one view (next year budget, current year latest, prior year audit) to our public finance management practice, we are simply not serious.

Meanwhile, as the war presents us with our latest economic resilience test, we are doing car sunroofs and deals. There is something about this administration that seems to revel in an unholy mix of policy adventure and primitive accumulation, believing they do not cancel each other out—like oil and water. Yes, this isn’t our first scandal.

But every one of the administration’s fine ideas—universal health care, affordable housing, hustler fund, even this government-to-government (G-to-G) fuel import arrangement, either begins with an untidy back end or finds itself mired in dirt.

So I’m not holding my breath expecting much from the DCI investigations.  After all, what happened to the edible oils and fake fertiliser scandals? Then again, we confuse investigating crime with actually detecting it (isn’t that why they are called detectives?). 

And, please, enough with the sob stories about “cartels”.  A lot of the suspicion and innuendo around this deal would be dissipated if people truly believed this is a transparency and accountability, even justice, moment.

In any event, as investigations continue, it reminds us that what we have – and, to repeat, it’s not just this administration – is a systemic problem. 

In other words, these scandals are not the result of occasional bad practice, but reflect an embedded scavenger pathology across public office.  This is because we don’t tick the boxes on what I will loosely call, for argument’s sake, the “10 Ps”.  “10 Ps”? Yes, today let’s approach this whole business of scandals with a different, unusual lens.

The first P is Policy, as the means to solve societal problems, including through law and regulation.  This is a mixed bag; we’re good at crafting law to prevent bad, but less so at drafting policy to promote good.  Even for this administration, how many of their fine ideas are settled in policy?

Let’s jump to the fourth and fifth Ps – Projects and Procurement.  This is the space we revel in, and without getting into a long story here, this is also where all the funny stuff happens.  You can even see it in the general resistance across government to embrace automation in these areas; after all, paper records can be made to disappear, but it’s much harder with computers, right?  Strictly, the fourth P should be Projects and Service Delivery, but there’s less cash in the latter.

Because we love to move straight from policy (or law) to projects and procurement, we are not serious about the second and third Ps – Programming (the vehicle that drives us to our policy destination and sits above projects and service delivery) and Planning (as said before, we discarded planning a while ago).  Which means our sixth P – Performance – is measured by completed activities, and sometimes outputs (services delivered), but never outcomes.  Do our fine ideas have outcome statements?

The seventh P – People – is also the 10th.  The former is about internal capacity – both ability and incentive - to deliver, the latter is about impacts for actual people, as in you and me, as citizens.  Which leaves us two Ps to be ticked.  If we get the first seven right, that’s working government.

The eighth P is Private Sector, or Markets.  In simple terms, how do the actions of government enable or disable markets, or facilitate or hinder private sector growth?  Which brings us to the ninth P – Platforms.  This is where I once saw this administration’s ideas heading, from government as controller, to government as a service and ultimately, a platform (think Singapore’s “Invisible” Government 4.0).  To be clear, without the 10 Ps, the scandals will flow like oil.

This may sound completely theoretical because it is, but it strikes me that someone would do well to spend time ensuring constant alignment between the administration’s fine ideas and best or smart practice across the 10 Ps.  It’s probably time better spent than investing in an 11th P – Public Relations.  Or worse, turning events such as this scandal into P Zero – what we call Politics.