Lest we forget the small, systemic corruption amidst Kenyans

NAIROBI: Admittedly, corruption is a hydra-headed monster that Kenyans have over the years been asking successive governments to slay if the country was to realise any meaningful development.

Corruption is the octopus that, with its many tentacles, has been sucking the blood out of Kenya, making it an ailing nation, unlike economic giants like Singapore which, in 1963, was not better than Kenya at independence.

Singapore's leap from Third World status to First World took conscious effort and the goodwill of the political class to transform the country.

This was not done through recriminations, name-calling or grandstanding.

Founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who led Singapore's transformation, was determined to make it happen and exerted all his energy in turning it into reality.

Two very simple things guided Mr Lee Kuan Yew's premiership; the elimination of corruption and illiteracy.

Only a few days after President Uhuru Kenyatta expressed willingness to fight corruption, the country is in an uproar led by the political class.

While it was the common man's expectation that the leaders of the country would give the President their unwavering support, the opposite prevails.

There are even attempts, some laced in legal jargon, to prevent the anti-corruption juggernaut from picking up the momentum to crush all those in its path.

But even as Mr Kenyatta set the ball rolling, we should not lose sight of the fact that there are categories to the sleaze and everyone has a role to play in ending corruption. This is the small corruption. The greasing of palms to get an official document or a service in a Government office.

It smoothens things for the purveyor of corruption but at a cost to the others. Be it a title deed, a driving licence, a passport, a National Identity Card, a licence for a business, a permit, a bribe to be let off at a police road block after having one too many after a night out.

The amounts involved are not in their billions, but the effect is systemic and like the big corruption, obstructs development. The deserving are elbowed out of the way. Only those who can pay kitu kidogo rule the roost.

Yet, unfortunately that comes at a cost: The quack masquerading as a doctor, and with a 'bought' practising licence into the bargain; the unqualified driver on the road; the counterfeit product in the market; high-rise buildings that collapse while still under construction or immediately after occupancy; roads that fall apart as soon as they are commissioned; overloaded trucks damaging the roads even as the Government tries to improve them because corrupt officials or policemen at the weighbridges pocketed a few thousand shillings to let a truck proceed to a neighbouring country; Immigration Department officials who let in terror masterminds at the border posts.

All these are grave indictments of systemic corruption in the country.

As we go after the big fish, the net must also reach wide enough to catch the small fish. We must slay this dragon before it ruins our country. We must do so with unprecedented zest, the preposterous political and legal red-herrings notwithstanding.