Kenya’s Corruption Menace more than Playing Good Cop Bad Cop!

Kenyans and the whole world will always talk about corruption, corruption, corruption, corruption. Everywhere in the world people are corrupt! Stop and think, we condemn this vice, but one has to stop and think why The Police still ask for ‘Kitu Kidogo’, why the civil service/bosses, etc will pretend to be busy yet sitting on some job application or make things happen only to act when a catalyst i.e. ‘kitu kidogo’ is thrown in the mix!

As the saying goes ‘until at that point when the lions will have someone to chronicle their tales , the hunter will always be glorified’, no one can understand the plight of these evil doers unless you put on their shoes. Unfortunately, the political class is completely without the moral authority to tackle this monster, which has turned this country into a beggar society. As a common man would ask, why would the ‘kiganjo boys’ be paid pennies to investigate the Goldenberg scandal, Pattni Case, I mean if Ida Odinga is being paid Ksh.400,000 per month in allowance by virtue of being the wife of the Kenyan Prime, if the MPs can get the paid more that their counterparts in the Developed nations, If corrupt officials can get away with being prosecuted Minister then hell these folks have to fend for themselves in an attempt to get a slice of the national cake!

Societies across the board are wired in such a way that those who control politics also control the economy, hence the definition of politics as a game of who gets what, when and how. To fix corruption, therefore, is to sort out our politics. To pretend otherwise is an exercise in self-deception more expensive than corruption itself. Maybe this is the reason why there is a hullabaloo among Kenyans across the world as to why Githongo is back in Kenya. It’s even confusing as to why Murungaru is suing the former ethics boss over defamation despite the recordings and press releases that Githongo offered in support of the corruption allegations during his time in office. Murungaru see himself as clean hence the law suit, this can partly be true because the most of these folks that were named as ‘evil’ were never prosecuted, I mean if this guys were lined up and charged for the so called allegation, do you think Murugaru would be busy following Githongo all over Nairobi to serve him the court orders?

Truth be told that this is merely one individual like many who is grappling with the realities surrounding corruption that has now become institutionalized in Kenya hence it will take more that recordings, prosecution to slay this corruption ‘dragon’. As Tom Mshindi {Daily Nation Editor} notes the stumbling block on the path to a cleaner government is not lack of information about who is culpable. Official reports from Parliamentary watchdog committees and the Controller and Auditor General — complete with names printed in bold — have always gathered dust in shelves with no will to act on them. The tragedy is, a good number of those fingered over the years by these reports sit pretty in even higher offices than those that were the scenes of their crimes. Some of them are not only in Cabinet with greater powers to determine who gets what when and how, but also our “heroes”.

I think the sooner we realized that it’s of absolute importance to reward people based on merit, struggle to be accountable ourselves, cultivate a society of fairness and equal distribution of resources without paying tribute to race or ethnic/tribal affiliation and finally stop being selfish and rob the poor people because it makes them even worse! We can lay all the blame and play good cops as much as we can, however, remembering that corruption is institutionalized in Kenya, hence the need for an institutionalized approach because playing good cop has not taken us anywhere so far!