Kenyans must be concerned that the country has, for years, been losing the war against corruption despite the promises made during campaign periods to end the vice. The latest Transparency International (TI) report ranking Kenya number four in the Global Corruption Barometer should serve as a wake-up call to Kenyans and all the agencies tasked with ending it.
It’s worth noting that the three countries ahead of Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Yemen have all been torn apart by civil wars. By contrast, Kenya has been at relative peace with itself except for a few brief period following the disputed 2007 national election.
civil wars
This makes the Kenyan case unique as it has even been overtaken by Uganda, South Sudan, Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo—countries where civil wars are still going on in one corner of the country or the other.
Tragically, the very institutions that are supposed to lead the fight against the cancerous attack on the body politic—the police, judiciary and the legislature are the leading perpetrators.
This means the civil society and other independent private institutions that have managed to keep their feet free of the slime of corruption must step into the breach and lead the citizenry in demanding an end to business as usual.
What every citizen of this country needs to understand is that giving and receiving bribes eats away at the fibre of Kenyan society. The end result are the regular breakdown of law and order the country has witnessed in Tana River Delta, Bungoma, Busia, Mandera and, the latest, Kitui where families were slaughtered in cold blood.
In all these tragic cases, hardly any king-maker has been arrested, prosecuted and jailed for the crimes despite the flurry of activities and public assurances of bringing the perpetrators and their financiers to book.
The inescapable reality is that the fight against corruption can’t be won until there is a coalition of angry citizenry committed to slaying the dragon immediately.
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