Three former bosses at the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) believe the country is living a big lie as far as the fight against corruption is concerned.
Immediate former EACC chair Mumo Matemu, his predecessor PLO Lumumba and the founding head of the institution John Harun Mwau say the fight against corruption has assumed a decidedly circus pattern which has no end on sight.
Their reasons as to why Kenya has not moved an inch are however different. All the three were hounded out of office at different times before their terms were over.
They spoke exclusively to The Standard on Sunday against background of pressure on current EACC boss Philip Kinusu to quit the Integrity Centre over alleged graft. They did not however discuss the plight of Mr Kinusu.
“The war has been lost from the very understanding of what corruption entails. From the day the commission started straying into the domain of penal code offences and essentially taking police work, we got jumbled up. You cannot move forward with this kind of confusion,” Mr Mwau told The Standard on Sunday.
He barely lasted seven months in office before he was suspended and removed through a tribunal. Within the said period and in the middle of a financial year, Mwau had, somehow, set up office, investigated and obtained arrest warrants against senior government officials.
“That office needs a person free of external influence and baggage. Someone who cannot be owned, influenced and controlled by anyone other than himself, someone who approaches the fight from a deep understanding of what corruption is and keeps the focus on the ball. I know I was that kind of a person,” Mwau added.
Mr Matemu whose entry into EACC was as dramatic as his exit agrees that there is a need to re-evaluate the concept of commissions with a view to asserting their independence and security of tenure for commissioners.
Rather than promote their independence, he said, there is a growing pattern to eat upon commissions independence by empowering their executive organs (secretariats). Besides this creating two centres of power, it has also created fertile grounds for commissioners being hounded out of office on contrived grounds. “I have not taken time to study the accusations against my successor. However, from my experience and look into my predecessors tenures, what stands out is a clear pattern of flimsy and petty grounds of removal often not supported by law,” Matemu said.
He said sometimes the pattern also entailed parliamentary and court process whose long and short was to disenfranchise or intimidate the commission heads, slow them down and eventually remove them.
“We have even had situations where Parliament legislated against a particular person just to get away with them. I believe this was the case with my predecessor PLO Lumumba. The petition against me was all joke until I figured out what it was all about,” Matemu added.
Celebrate and sleep corruption
The former EACC boss and commissioners - Irene Keino and Jane Onsogo were forced to resign last year after a petition was filed in Parliament to remove them. There are claims some were threatened into resignation and others offered alternate jobs.
Prof Lumumba too believes the country is living a lie in as far as the anti-corruption crusade is concerned. He said the assumption that EACC with a few hundreds of employees can eliminate deep-rooted corruption among 40 million Kenyans is far-fetched.
He says the EACC always attempts to execute its mandate but its efforts are always swallowed by millions of Kenyans who believe, walk, talk, eat, defend, celebrate and sleep corruption. “If it’s educating people against corruption, EACC always does that. If it’s a question of investigating people EACC does that. If it is charging people in court, it has happened. To expect these gains to be appreciated in a country where communities defend their corrupt is to expect too much,” he said.
According to Lumumba, the biggest problem with the various anti-corruption mechanisms the country has adopted is that they don’t fight corruption where it ought to be fought. He said they always gloss over the real problem.
“Lifestyle audit is the snare to catch all thieves. You are earning a salary of Sh300,000 and you have two houses in Karen, top of the range vehicles and your four kids are in university in the UK, you are living a lie. We should be able to catch you,” he said. Lumumba cited “fairy tale” stories from the recent police vetting: “Right now Kiganjo Police Training College is the best business school in the world, churning out the best fish farmers. None of those officers has been charged in court.”
Matemu and Lumumba attempted to introduce various shades of lifestyle audits before they were hounded out of Integrity Centre.
Lumumba added that until the country makes a solemn vow against corruption and adopts new ethos distasteful to corruption, the country will continue to suffocate under the weight of corruption.
