Corruption: Kenya’s Peculiar Problem is Impunity
In 2014, when John Githongo, Chief Executive Officer Inuka Kenya Trust rose to speak at the 4th Human Rights Watch Film Festival, one thing that he said was, “The ruling elite blow hot and cold and seem divided with regard to rampant corruption. With the discovery of oil the potential for the toxic mix of graft, tribalism and both organic and state engineered insecurity to blow up in our faces has never been higher.”
The Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Agencies in East Africa Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda 2015 Report with regards to Kenya noted that, “corruption remains endemic to Kenya’s public sector. The media and civil society have, for at least a decade, freely exposed corruption scandals; however, this exposure has not ended corruption and its attendant impunity. The laws and institutions to combat corruption are in place and yet the situation does not improve.”
“Prevention, suppression and punishment of corruption frequently feature in Kenyan political rhetoric, but rarely is this rhetoric matched by action,” the executive summary read.
John Locke the world’s renowned scholar in his theory perceives man as a good creature who dwells on positive achievements.
On the other hand, his counterpart scholar, Thomas Hobbes build his contradiction on Locke’s theory hence considers man as an evil creature who live on destruction.
The society we are living in today tends to get worse and worse each passing time due to manipulations of characters of its occupants.
We have failed to unmask evils committed by the few at the expense of majority of innocents. Failure to condemn what we actually see as wrong has led to jam packing of challenges where many of which have reached maturity stage, to uproot or shove them from our footpaths it requires bulldozers.
As a matter of fact vices such as corruption in Kenya today are at the peak because of lack of willing men and women with confidence to fight it. Current surveys shows Kenya is among the leaden countries that are lagging behind because of rampant corruption that are existing in various sectors of economy.
Before the 2016/17 fiscal year budget was presented before the National Assembly, PKF East Africa, a tax firm said Kenya loses over 50 percent of its National Budget to corruption despite the positive steps taken to combat it in the public sector, the adverse effects in various agencies of government ‘cannot be overlooked’.
March 2016, Kenya was ranked as the third most corrupt country in the world. The rate at which individuals in power are looting public property has won them a global recognition and soon the world title of ‘World Number One Most Corrupt Country’ will be ours.
It is now being globally said that Kenyans are skilled thieves. That Kenyans steal with passion. That they steal like there is no tomorrow.
According to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) the rate economic crimes in Kenya is 25 per cent above the global average. In the year 2015 alone, economic crimes rose to 61 percent from 52 percent in 2014.
Subsequently, Transparency International’s corruption index placed Kenya 145th out of 176 countries with a score of 26.
This was a drop of 6 places in the index from 139 in 2015 with 26 points behind Rwanda (54) and Tanzania (32) in the East Africa Community.
TI states that the human cost of corruption is huge, yet all too often leaders with notoriously corrupt records continue to enjoy lives of luxury at the expense of people living in grinding poverty.