By Mugambi Nandi

Twitter@MugambiNandi

At least once every year the Auditor-General hits us with very bad news. We are now used to it.

The shocking news this time is that in the last financial year, a whopping Sh304 billion of taxpayers’ money “could not be accounted for”.

We suspect that this is accounting euphemism for “the money was stolen”.

Halfway through the newspaper summary of the Auditor-General’s report we yawn, turn over the page, and move on to juicier stories of love triangles and other gossips that ought not to be found in newspapers of national circulation.

We resign our collective fate to politicians, tenderpreneurs and public servants who have “authority to incur expenditure”. Meanwhile, the looting continues unabated, and no one is fired or charged in court.

The unlucky few who end up in court are either acquitted for “lack of evidence” or fined a fraction of the loot; a fine they gladly pay and move up the social ladder as elected representatives of the people.

It is a pity that we worship wealth without questioning how it was obtained. Not that we should worship it at all. Wole Soyinka captures this uniquely African conundrum in his book Ibadan where, in the Foreward, he has an anecdote on one Adelabu, a son of the soil and a Cabinet minister. Soyinka tells us that such was his charisma and hold on his followers, that when Adelabu was accused of financial wrongdoing, he drove his newly acquired limousine to the market and invited the throng to ride in it and treat it as their own, protesting that it was the car he bought with the money he was alleged to have stolen. The story goes on that the crowd, wholly inspired by their love and affection for their gallant son, instantly composed a song in his praise. Among the lyrics was the line “the money is ours — go on, spend it as you please!”

As they sang his praises, the ecstatic crowd lifted their hero shoulder high, and would have lifted the limousine itself, with him in it, and danced around town, if it had been possible.

Unaffected by any sense of propriety and undeterred by the laws on assault, the crowd proceeded to the main accuser’s house and stripped him naked.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of some people, we dare say that our conduct as Kenyans over the years has been no different from that of Adelabu’s market crowd.

Year in, year out, politicians and wheeler-dealers steal from us, with the assistance of some public servants. The ill-gotten wealth is used to buy protection from the law. It is used to buy political influence. It is “sanitised” through generous donations to various religious and social causes, for the benefit of people who would otherwise not touch stolen property.

What do we do with our hallowed thieves? We carry them shoulder-high during election campaigns. We sing their praises. We decorate them with state honours. We regard them with awe. We even elect some of them to be our representatives.

It is unacceptable that people who are entrusted with our resources should steal or misuse them and get away with it. It is disappointing that those whose responsibility it is to catch the thieves — which is what they really are — cannot, for whatever reason, do so.

It is disheartening that justice is sometimes so blind that it will dismiss glaring evidence as inadequate, and give free passage to those who loot public coffers.

We often wonder why the chicken thief is not so lucky. Once he is caught he gets stoned, beaten and lynched by the very mob that composes and sings praise songs for Adelabu. Clearly, not all thieves are equal.

We need to deal with this injustice and inequality.  Can we consider publicly hanging those who steal from the national coffers?

The writer is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya