Eliminating corruption in Africa is a tall order for anyone seeking to do so

The existence of an African Parliamentarians Network against Corruption (APNAC) is one of the bad jokes in Africa. Of course, it is a pun that dates back to 1999 when it was conceived as a noble cause by Westerners for Africans, except that the latter's perspective on corruption is totally different. It astounds that our National Assembly Speaker, Justin Muturi, while presiding over the parliament should promise to end corruption in Africa and improve the living standards of the continent’s indigent after being elected President of APNAC.

African countries have the pride of place in the top ranks of corruption worldwide. Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index, having ranked 180 countries in 2017 on a scale of 0 - 100, gave African countries a mean score of 32. Corruption is a way of life in Africa, and those perfecting it are its leaders. They have no reason to fight corruption when they are the biggest beneficiaries.

The struggle for representative slots in parliament is often fierce; a no-holds-barred brawl in which contestants bankrupt themselves buoyed by the knowledge that loses can be recouped upon victory. The motivation for seeking legislative positions is, primarily, the monetary rewards that come with the office, and our MPs have proven it countless times. Financially unstable Members of Parliament are a risk to society. Parliament cannot be trusted to conduct its business in an objective, non-partisan manner when most MPs are merely putty in the hands of wheeler dealers.

Wrong priorities

Rarely do Africa’s parliamentarians ventilate on issues that impact positively on the populace. Locally, runaway inflation, a rogue executive that has its priorities wrong, excessive government borrowing of billions of shillings to pump into infrastructure while millions of Kenyans are threatened by food shortages; while millions of children go hungry every day and miss schooling because of poverty have never been the concern of our parliamentarians in their pursuit of self-aggrandisement.

In 2015, the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament came under scrutiny after being labelled corrupt. It was alleged that at the behest of unscrupulous power brokers and businessmen under the sobriquet ‘cartels’, committee members regularly took bribes to influence decisions of the House. For the consideration of kickbacks, individual MPs are said to take inducements to bring motions to the house that seek to benefit specific individuals. While not necessarily part of the scheme, I have never understood why Members of Parliament spent time - and even got paid allowances - to deliberate and declare that a loaf of bread should weigh 400 grams, down from 500 grams. Quite petty if you ask me.

Wheeler dealers seeking lucrative government tenders need not look past nearly broke, over ambitious legislators to actualise their dreams. Revelations are now coming out of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission on matters of graft that parliament cannot exonerate itself from. Already, too much power has been vested in parliament.

Our parliament, as many across Africa, has become the theatre of the absurd where personal scores are settled, mediocrity and sycophancy rewarded. Parliament is the hallowed place where constitutional provisions, otherwise to be jealously safeguarded, are trashed for political expediency. Parliament is the place where political party ideologies play out, where numerical strength, rather objectivity, count for anything.

There is no ideological convergence point for legislators except when they unanimously resolve to dip their sticky fingers in the public till. They will fight as a united team to have control of the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). They complain to a man about poor coffee and bad food in their cafeteria at parliament, completely oblivious that to millions of Kenyans, what they complain about is a luxury.

MPs are united and vocal in their endeavours to pad their salaries and allowances, yet suffer amnesia when doctors, nurses, teachers and the police; those who do the donkey work in moving this fatigued country forward demand modest pay raises. Not a single MP has protested the slashing of police officers’ salaries, but they nearly lynched Sarah Serem, former Chairperson of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission for suggesting a little cut in their salaries.

Parliamentarians would rather connive to make false mileage and sitting allowance claims than sit down to fix electoral laws and an electoral commission that are the source of the misery in Kenya today. Revelations about Cambridge Analytica and the admission of mischief at IEBC play into the Opposition's claims Jubilee did not win the August and October 2017 presidential elections.

The world over, politicians are ranked the most corrupt, only a step ahead of the police. The million dollar question is; if Mr Muturi cannot tame Kenya’s rogue parliamentarians, how does he hope to make Africa corruption free? In reality, APNAC is a white elephant.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The [email protected]