How cash-strapped TJRC ran on soft loan from commissioner

The TJRC report is handed to President Uhuru Kenyatta by Chairman Bethwel Kiplagat at State House, Nairobi on May 22, 2013.

The recently published revelations on truth and reconciliation commission have brought to bearing a least-discussed financial scandal that exposed the commission so much so that an individual commissioner had to lent money to the commission.

In his book, The Kenyan TJRC: An Outsiders View from the Inside ex-Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) Commissioner Prof Ronald Slye said the parent Ministry of Justice under the late Mutula Kilonzo engaged in financial misfeasance to the detriment of the commission.

In addition to squandering funds meant for truth telling, ministry officials maintained such a tight leash on commission spending, that the commission was forced to be wholly depend on the government for every activity they wanted to undertake.

For the first whole year of operation, the commission had no control over the money legally allocated to it and relied on permission from the ministry for any expenditure they wanted to incur.

In January 2010 when they wanted to take an outreach trip to the Coast, their request for money fell on deaf ears forcing one of the commissioners to step in. “Because the money was not forthcoming, individual commissioners lent money to the commission to cover expenses of the trip,” the book says.

It recounts how expenses approved by commissioners in formal commission meetings piled up unpaid, and how CEO Patricia Nyaundi, recruited in February 2010,  survived without a salary for months.

“Approximately Sh16 million had been spent on the Council of Elders, an organisation that had no relationship with TJRC.

We were later to learn that Ambassador (Bethwel) Kiplagat had been involved with the Council of Elders,” he writes.

Rent payment listed for TJRC offices was inconsistent, and might have included rent for other commissions supported by the Ministry of Justice. There were also bulk payments to ministry officials for “non-existent retreats” that occurred six months prior to the payments.

Also, a lot more money was spent on what the ministry described as “casual workers”. “Individuals had been seconded to us by the ministry, but despite our repeated requests, we were unaware of the identities of those who were paid on our behalf as casual workers, their functions, or how much they were being paid per month,” he said.

By April 2010, the government had not responded to their two-year operational budget developed by the finance committee chaired by Mr Slye. The commissioner says when the commission complained of possible misfeasance involving ministry officials, the ministry grew jittery and the minister became uncharacteristically silent. “As far as I am aware, by the end of our operational life three years later, we had still not received a proper accounting of the money that was spent on our behalf,” he writes.

Commissioner Tom Ojienda confessed to the Saturday Standard that indeed he lent money to the commission. He says he stepped in to ensure commission activities did not stall over what he was capable of doing. “It is not that I had a special interest - we needed to operate and I thought the best way forward was not to sit around waiting for the day the government would give in to our request. The commission did eventually refund me though,” Mr Ojienda said.

Ojienda says that unlike other commissions which benefited from practical comparative studies, the Kenyan TJRC did not.

He says because of budget issues, they canceled planned trips to Yugoslavia, Ghana, Rwanda, Guatemala, Chile and Sierra Leone.

“Amid the noise that characterised the truth process, commissioners sacrificed in many ways and forms for it. The testimonies we heard were heart wrenching, our experiences draining and traumatising, “Ojienda said.

He says the only way the commissioners can be compensated is through implementation of the report they churned out in most difficult of circumstances.