Watch out for wrongdoers who fault Auditor General’s reports

Media reports have lately been awash with adverse reports of the Auditor General on the national and county governments accounts for the 2013/14 fiscal year. As is our tradition in recent years, the reaction from affected public institutions was swift but dismissive, a display of usual blatant impunity. Barely a few days earlier, US President Barack Obama had warned that our nation’s progress is predicated on our commitment to accountability and integrity in public administration. We applauded him but bid him farewell with pitiful splash of our greed and rot in public service.

The depressing reports for the national government are nothing out of the ordinary. The Auditor could not obtain satisfactory explanations for public spending amounting to a whooping Sh450 billion. The situation in the counties is no different. No explanation was availed to the Auditor for billions of shillings by the county governments in their first full year of operations.