Corruption is Ailing the Economy of Kenya

There has been rumors that the government is broke, claims that the government has vehemently refuted and there are also reports of massive corruption in the public sector, something that is greatly hurting the economy of this country. Public funds, meant for the activities that would benefit the economy, are often diverted into the pockets of few public individuals whose moral compass is broken.

What is corruption? Corruption is simply the practice whereby public money is illicitly diverted for private gain by an individual, a group of individuals or by an organization, not for the purpose for which the funds were intended for but for personal gain.

This practice where public funds are misused is present to some degree in all societies in Kenya. Almost every Kenyan participates in corruption in one way or the other and the vice is such deeply rooted in the society such that trying to stem it out is very difficult.

Corruption has been identified as a major barrier to economic and social development in developing countries, and considerable research has been done into the causes of and the solutions to corruption in these countries, Kenya being one of them but with the implementation of the solutions not seeing the light of the day.

The wide spread of corruption in Kenya has raised substantial concern and those engaging into the practice are not scared. Initially, people used to steal public funds in thousands but currently public funds are being stolen in hundreds of millions and those stealing appear to be enjoying the protection of an unknown force that makes them all powerful.

In Kenya, particular circumstances of rapid economic and social change, strong kinship and ethnic ties, new institutions, overlapping and sometimes conflicting views about what is proper public behavior appear to contribute to corruption’s saliency.

Corruption in Kenya is as old as the country since independence and the culture is well embedded in most people such that one things that for him or her to get any service from any public institution, he or she should give out something in form of a bribe.

The government cannot just say that it aspires to stem out corruption from its systems without putting into consideration the moral compass of the public servants. The truth is that the moral compass of many societies in Kenya is broken. There is a lot to try and restore the morals of the society and this cannot be done through political rallies but through critical analysis of what has really gone wrong and what exactly should be done.

When devolution came into being, many Kenyans celebrated because they felt that the services, that only used to be offered by the National Government had now been moved closer to the people but little did they know that what had been devolved was corruption in disguise of services being brought closer to the people. County officials have been blamed for the misuse of public funds meant for development of the counties with the spending culture in most counties being at an alarming rate.

The problem with most corrupt Kenyan leaders is that they think that Kenyans are so stupid that they can just be convinced easily on why some funds have been used to do this and that. In this country, corruption is such rampant that one would spent more than one hundred thousand shillings on buying a wheelbarrow then try to justify why such amounts had to be spent.

Corruption is what is killing the economy of this country and talking about it alone is not enough.