Come clean on Eurobond and clear nagging questions

NAIROBI: Then he who had received the one talent came and said, ‘Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed. And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours.’

But his Lord answered and said to him, ‘You wicked and lazy servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown, and gather where I have not scattered seed. So you ought to have deposited my money with the bankers, and at my coming I would have received back my own with interest. Thus the New King James Version translates the parable of the talent.

Although the servant who does nothing with his talent is heavily reprimanded, it is left to the imagination to conceive just what would have happened had he instead of burying the talent he had squandered it.

The degeneracy and sloth of the servants of Kenya is such that a good portion of the 200 billion talents realised from the Eurobond sale that we entrusted to them has been squandered. To be sure, the money was given to the bankers, but it earned no interest that we know of. What’s more, it was transferred mysteriously from one account to another and finally vanished into the ether.

While the facts are clear, I realise that the fact that it is the Right Honorable Raila Odinga uttering those facts can in itself negate them in some people’s minds.

Yet even the most impartial, objective and level headed financial analysts agree that the numbers simply do not add up. Respected financial journalists are reporting dodgy transactions.

The most peculiar movements of the Eurobond money is one that would lead a reasonable person to ask, why?

This question has been met with incomplete explanations that do not make sense. If these are false accusations by a political opportunist, why not shame Raila by publishing all transaction details?

Although some would like us to believe that money transfers from one account to another are something akin to rocket science, we know that the average person would be able to follow and trace without great arduor the money trail if given all the information. The very fact that there is incomplete information is in itself an indictment.

One gets a strong sense of déjà vu : first the total denials and feigned indignation, accompanied by concealment of key information, to be followed soon by a brazen claim that theft was actually averted, thereafter a forlorn admission that ‘some money may be missing’ Have we not been here before?

Do we have to do battle all over again simply to get the responsible parties to step aside and join the lighter duties queue?

In his customary lip service to corruption, the President in his Jamuhuri day speech said: “Those who believe they are entitled to steal our resources will try to manipulate our political debate. Others will wring political capital from the fight against corruption. We will not defeat them unless we all keep our eyes on the prize — a country in which corruption is shunned.”

While I agree with the President that “Kenyans want to see those who rob them of their hard-earned money prosecuted, their ill-gotten gains frozen and reclaimed, and jail terms handed out,” I am definitely not holding my breath as in a classic turnaround he concluded on the Eurobond matter: “Ours was one of the best issues ever on the African continent. It was oversubscribed. Yet some of us contrived to talk it down, undermining the credibility of our institutions, and investor confidence in our country.”

It is indeed true that those who believe they are entitled to steal our resources first begin by politicising the debate.