By GATONYE GATHURA
Catholics in Kenya are more likely to offer or accept a bribe than people of other religions. They are also the least likely to punish corrupt individuals.
But Kenyan Catholics can take solace that they are no different from their brethren elsewhere, with countries dominated by high Catholic populations scoring poorly in global corruption surveys.
A recent study at the Nairobi-based Christian university, Daystar, which sampled 1,012 students in 15 universities and colleges countrywide concluded that religion must be called in to cure the number one cancer that is crippling the country.
Dr Abraham K Waithima, a senior lecturer at Daystar University, the study author, starts by colouring Kenya as a religious country with about 82 per cent professing Christianity. According to the current census report, only about one million Kenyans are atheists.
The 2009 national population census puts the percentage of Christians in the country at 82.5 per cent shared between Protestant at 47.4 per cent, Catholic 23.3 per cent and other Christian groups at 11.8 per cent. The percentage of Muslims is about 11.
The 2009 Census had 922,128 people reporting that they belonged to no religion. This is 2.4 per cent of the total, making this group larger than the groups reporting themselves as traditionalists, Hindu or members of other religions. Some 61,233 people reported that they did not know their religion.
This would roughly mean that on a Sunday, not less than 20 million heads are bowed and 40 million knees bended in supplication during prayers.
Yet, repeat global corruption reports by Transparency International ranks Kenya among the most corrupt countries on earth. Last year, Kenya was ranked as the 139 most corrupt country out of 174 global economies
Dr Waithima, the Daystar University study leader, notes: “There are many causes of corruption and an individual’s religiosity has been established as a significant factor globally.”
In his study, the report says all religious groups are prone to corruption but Catholics, especially in positions of management, are more likely to ask or accept bribes compared to people of other faiths. They are also most unlikely to punish people who have been found to have participated in a corrupt deal.
The study showed that 87.2 per cent of Catholics acting as managers offered a bribe compared to 78.8 per cent of the Protestants, and 66.7 per cent of the Muslims.
“In both cases, the differences are significant at 8.6 per cent compared to Protestants and 9.8 per cent compared to Muslims. Managers affiliated to Islamic faith are just as likely to offer a bribe as those affiliated to the protestant Christian faith,” says Dr Waithima.
The study published in the European Scientific Journal further found that a manager or public official who is a Catholic is more likely to offer and accept a bribe than their Protestant counterparts. “A Catholic citizen is less likely to punish corruption culprits than a Protestant citizen.”
But before local Catholics start throwing brickbats at the messenger, a similar study in the US carried out by Prof Patrick Flavin of Baylor University, suggested a link between corruption in the US government with the religion of individuals in public office.
Prof Flavin found that there were higher levels of government corruption in states where a higher proportion of the population professed to be Catholics.
An analysis of the 2010 corruption report by Transparency International done by the group Free Republic, a US online information group on official corruption, showed Protestant states usually topped in global lists of least corrupt countries.
For example, in the 2010 Transparency International corruption index, Denmark tied with New Zealand as the least corrupt countries in the world followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada and Netherlands, all but Canada being Protestant nations. The population of Catholics in Canada is put at about 40 per cent with the rest being mainly Protestants.
Other countries which completed the top 10 of least corrupt countries in the TI report in 2010 included Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and Norway which are generally Protestant states.
The analysis, which did not include countries from Africa, which in many cases are very corrupt, had countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina and Italy; all Catholic nations on the other end of the scale.
But it is current debate on social media over the economic crisis unfolding in the European Zone which brings a sharp focus on whether countries with high Catholic populations are more corrupt than those heavy with Protestants.
The British author Ed West, writing in the Daily Telegraph, demonstrated that the current financial crisis in Europe has mainly hit mostly Catholic regions and their close relatives in the Orthodox Church sometimes called the Orthodox Catholic Church.
Top on this list are countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy. Greece compared to protestant Germany differ extensively in their respective approach to paying tax.
“One of the reasons that Greece is in desperate trouble is that most people dodge tax in some way, and there is little social stigma in doing so; in Germany fewer than two per cent of people avoid tax, and tax evasion and tax avoidance are both hugely frowned upon,” says West.
While the issues of the current crisis and link to religion are not being voiced forcefully, so far, not a single Protestant country has needed a bailout.
The finanical scandals have not spared the Vatican City, home to the Catholic faith. About a week ago a Vatican prelate Nunzio Scarano was arrested on allegations of trying to smuggle in $26 million (Sh2.2 billion) from Switzerland.
The arrest was part of a sweeping probe of the scandal-plagued Vatican Bank which had immediately lead to the resignation of the bank’s director and the deputy director.
Pope Francis, who is the new Pope, has laid great emphasis on cleaning up the financial scandals that have tainted the bank for decades.
Back to Kenya and at the Daystar University in particular, Dr Waithima says the majority of university students sampled said they were aware that corruption was a major problem in Kenya.
More than 80 per cent said they encountered corruption several times in a week, most of this in government offices, police stations and hospitals.
But they also noted that they had encountered corruption at the universities and other academic institutions, a fact that has been repeatedly captured in various reports of Transparency International.
However, almost all the respondents (87 per cent) said though they encountered incidents of corruption frequently, theyhad never reported this to authorities. The main reason for not reporting corruption cases was because they considered this a waste of time since the government did not have the will to fight the vice.
The study brings out various issues for debate. For example, while a male manager is most likely to offer a bribe than the female counterpart, the latter will much more easily accept a bribe compared to a male manager.
While a Catholic is less likely to punish corruption than a protestant, a Muslim is also less likely to punish corruption culprits. At the same time a woman was found to be less likely to punish corruption culprits compared to their male counterparts.
