Opinion: Brazen NYS scam an ominous sign for what is yet to come

The latest National Youth Service (NYS) corruption scandal is yet another reminder of the complete lack of self-respect, competence and imagination among our political leaders. Let’s be clear.

The grand scandal involving over Sh9 billion would not have been possible without the direct collusion of our political leadership. The Treasury’s Integrated Financial Management System (IFMIS) was compromised.

Someone had to have signed off on transactions worth millions of shillings. The banking system was involved – a fact that also implicates their regulator, the Central Bank.

And there was a breakdown in oversight, both from Parliament and State House. All told, the buck stops with the political leadership in Parliament and State House. There is no running away from this fact.

The theft at NYS is also a metaphor for the state of Kenya: a country led by a myopic and insatiably rapacious elite class that will steal the future of the youth without a second thought.

Recall that at its formation, the NYS was supposed to be a tool for nation-building through which youth would be exposed to public service and to different communities. Recently, the service was redesigned into a tool of economic empowerment of the youth through vocational training.

In its current form, and with a budget running into billions, the NYS has the potential to be potent tool of industrial policy. Through strategic contracting, the government can build medium sized firms and create jobs for youth. We need to create jobs, and stop asking youth to be entrepreneurs. If entrepreneurship were so easy, why do the same people cling to government jobs that allow them to subsist on theft of tax shillings?

This perspective makes the heist at NYS doubly disturbing. Not only was therecorruption. -- Those involved stole not 10 or 50 per cent, but 100 per cent. Firms that did not deliver anything (not even air) were paid millions of shillings. The opportunity costs of this kind of thieving are huge.

The whole episode makes a mockery of Vision 2030 and the Big Four Agenda. Earlier in the year I argued that we will know about President Uhuru Kenyatta’s seriousness about his legacy projects through his actions and inaction.

So far he is reliably disappointing on both fronts. His Cabinet appointments did not signal that he had internalised the seriousness of the job at hand. His inaction in the face of corruption is a guarantee to those that steal from taxpayers that they are safe. This is not the first NYS scandal. And will likely not be the last.

The same madness is festering in the sugar and maize industries. President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto have made it very clear – through their actions and inaction – that it is kosher to steal from hardworking Kenyans. In a sane country, all those in charge (including ministers) would have already resigned.

Finally, one of the disturbing things about the nature of the NYS graft is what it tells us about our political elites. They are no longer even trying to hide their thieving. The breakdown of moral accountability is an ominous sign of what is yet to come. It will only get worse.