Corruption choking Kenya as anti-graft agencies stifled

The rapidness with which the scandalous insolvency of Kenya’s previously blue-chip corporations is being reported should worry all of us. From Kenya Meat Commission, to Kenya Airways (KQ), Mumias Sugar Company and Uchumi Supermarkets, the trend is mind boggling.

Is this ‘scandals galore’ accidental?

Also, other key departments like the National Youth Service, Kenya Railways Corporation, Kenya Medical Research Institute and even county governments are in corruption crises.

The latest casualty of the current crisis is KQ. For long it thrived.

Then, it was very lucrative and easily attracted respected Western suitors keen to be partners. When a percentage of its shares were floated to the public through the Nairobi Securities’ Exchange, they were sold out.

Then abruptly we are told that more than Sh27 billion was lost over the last three years and that the airline risks imminent collapse.

Experts quickly advised that the Government needs to pump in at least Sh60 billion for KQ to be rescued sufficiently to stay afloat.

Shockingly, Treasury Henry Cabinet Secretary Henry Rotich is parroting the same bailout song instead of commissioning a forensic audit to dig out the cause of the heavy loss and nail the culprits.

Just like the case with Mumias Sugar Company, nobody is going after the suspected looters nor planning to prevent a repeat in the future.

This is happening at a time when the Jubilee government has directed all its legislative and administrative guns and efforts at weakening and suffocating all constitutional departments meant to fight corruption.

The vicious political attacks on the Auditor General Edward Ouko, following his latest damning annual report that has unearthed massive mismanagement and suspected embezzlement of public funds by ministries and national government departments, cannot happen in any proper democracy where there is a working Constitution in place.

It is a national shame!

Strangely, it has followed the suspicious disbandment of the Management Committee of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.

Ironically, Jubilee politicians appear to be cheering the ongoing stifling of the anti-corruption machinery.

As if to mock victims of corruption, some of the most well-known individuals in corruption infamy have become extraordinarily vocal in lecturing Kenyans on how to fight corruption.

The cancer of corruption was planted in Kenya by Kanu. When the National Rainbow Coalition took power in 2002, Kenyans’ hopes for proper reforms and an end to corruption were brutally dashed after former President Mwai Kibaki ganged up with remnants of the Kanu regime.

The country was then hit by Anglo Leasing and other scandals. Genuine reformists like former Permanent Secretary John Githongo soon parted ways with Narc feeling betrayed. Efforts by progressive Kenyans to reclaim their country through political re-engineering have not borne fruit.

The full effect of the destruction corruption has caused Kenya can be discerned from rising poverty, runaway crime, worrying misbehaviour by our frustrated children who have rebelled and openly exhibit their rebellion through sexual immorality, drug and alcohol abuse and burning schools. God help Kenya!