We need all hands on deck to win the war against corruption

Recent economic surveys and government statistics indicate that the Kenyan economy has successfully rebounded from the adverse impacts of Covid-19, the conflict in Ukraine, and the global economic downturn, which caused a surge in fuel prices and destabilised the Kenyan Shilling.

Despite these positive indicators, the latest Afrobarometer survey in Kenya reveals that citizens are feeling the strain of a struggling economy and are pointing fingers at the government. A significant majority of citizens attribute the worsening economic and living conditions to increased tax burden, rising living costs, and escalating unemployment rates.

In light of these challenges, one must question who truly benefits from the current economic climate. It is evident that while the economy may be showing signs of recovery on paper, the reality on the ground paints a different picture for the average citizen.

This reminds me of  the age-old Ghanaian folklore ‘Looking for a rain god,’ the author, Bessie Head, describes a seven-year devastating drought that befell the land, turning it into a dry, open thorn bush. Amid the people's despair, one family embarks on a quest to find the elusive rain god, while charlatans, sorcerers, and witch doctors exploit the situation for financial gain, hoping the drought persists.

In a desperate attempt reminiscent of the folklore, where the Mokgobja family sacrificed their two children to appease the rain god, Kenyan households are resorting to extreme measures such as sending their children to the Gulf States, despite reports of modern-day slavery as widely captured in social and mainstream media.  

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Kenya is currently facing a multitude of challenges that are hindering the economic progress made post-Covid-19 for the average citizen. Chief among these challenges is corruption.

Corruption undermines social and economic progress, jeopardises national security, and hinders millions of citizens from accessing essential services such as education and healthcare. It only serves to benefit a select few at the expense of the greater population.

Of course, it is not just the government that bears responsibility for this. The private sector too shares the burden as it is often only with their collusion that public officials can execute graft.

In the recent past, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has warned against budgeted corruption through which State agencies, including the county governments, are embezzling public resources.

The budget determines the allocation of resources for service delivery, with ministries, departments and agencies serving as the conduits through which this service delivery is realised. However, reports have shown that corruption is many a time negotiated not from the point of payment, but at the point of the creation of the budget.

For instance, in 2023, the Controller of Budget (CoB) revealed that the National Treasury over-budgeted their (CoB) salary by three times, and by extension salaries of other State officers, to the tune of Sh1 billion of taxpayers' money.

In May 2024, the Ministry of Education was implicated in a scandal involving phantom schools where non-existent schools received annual funding for students who, of course, had not been enrolled anywhere.

Earlier, in 2015, EACC flagged public procurement as one of the most vulnerable sectors to fraud and corruption due to the huge amounts of resources the government spends in delivering essential services to the citizens.

Despite the legal and institutional reforms carried out in the sector, corruption continues to thrive with bribery contributing at least 20 per cent of total contract cost.

To arrest corruption at the budgeting and procurement levels, ministries, departments, agencies, and county governments must own the fight against corruption. So we must have all hands on the deck against this vice.

It is foolhardy to imagine that the Auditor General, the EACC and other investigative agencies alone, are capable of getting rid of corruption. The entire system must be programmed to disallow corruption and punish severely, infractions leading to loss of public funds.

During the approval hearing of the new EACC chief executive officer Abdi Mohamud, Members of Parliament were concerned with the relationship between the EACC, the Director of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the investigation and prosecution of corruption. This followed the recent systematic withdrawal of high-profile corruption cases by the ODPP most of which were opposed by the EACC.

The EACC Chairperson Bishop David Oginde has on numerous occasions admitted that the Commission could not do it alone and called for concerted efforts from civil society organisations, professionals, the Church, and lLabour movements, if the war against corruption must be fought effectively. According to him, all hands must be on deck to win the war.

Just like the charlatans, incanters and witch doctors in the folklore hoped that the dry spell would continue, the war against corruption is bound to elicit strong opposition from those who benefit from it. In fact, it will viciously fight back.

It thus behoves the key sector players to step up efforts to collectively tackle corruption and unethical conduct by designing and implementing anti-corruption initiatives. Partnerships under the Kenya Leadership Integrity Forum bringing together stakeholders from the public and private sectors, civil society and religious organisations could leverage competitive advantage to contribute to the fight against corruption, creating the requisite synergy for better results with shared resources. We need all hands on the deck.