Why maize and school cash thieves must be made to pay

THE PAST WEEK HAS CERTAINly been a dramatic one in the fabulously rich history of corruption and impunity in Kenya.

The big question is whether it is a defining moment in the war or just another battle, or even worse, just a political one-upmanship debacle.

It is not as if the multiplicity of maize scams of 2008 was breaking news. Several of us hammered the alarm bells month after month as political ineptitude and callous greed made the country a hostage to huge shortfalls of our staple food product and massive exploitation of what maize that was left or imported.

Whatever Agriculture minister William Ruto’s interpretation of the PricewaterhouseCoopers forensic audit, he was largely responsible for the intensity of the overall crisis.

As shortages loomed, Mr Ruto ensured the National Cereals and Produce Board would be the controlling power in maize distribution, thus locking out the formal private sector in helping to fill those widening supply and demand gaps.

THE FORMAL SECTOR WAS DENIED the opportunity to buy maize reserves directly from NCPB or to import maize directly.

Out of that came a gluttonous feeding frenzy as those on the political coat-tails used their various contacts to get NCPB to give them pieces of paper allowing them an allocation of this reserve, which they in turn sold on for windfall prices.

At the same time, it should be remembered that the Ad Hoc Committee on Food Security based in the Office of the Prime Minister was ultimately responsible for the importation of maize that came in belatedly and at a price significantly higher than the already high prevailing world prices.

As a result of all this, the majority of Kenyans, who devote 70 per cent of their expenditure on food, were paying through the nose for it, or for what little they could afford.

At one stage, the World Bank estimated that Kenyans were paying double what they should have been.

Where to from now? First and foremost, the whittling down of impunity and the move towards greater accountability has taken on a momentum which even the most articulate political gymnast will find difficult to go against or undo.

Indeed, any attempt at the latter is likely to hasten the process of the former.

Second, the way forward is the PricewaterhouseCoopers forensic audit team to be given no more than 30 days to access further material, fill the gaps in their report, and come up with clear conclusive recommendations.

It will be an insult to the majority of Kenyans for the Executive to set up yet another hand-picked committee or commission of inquiry. The facts and figures have so far been put together by a competent, professional razor-sharp external team.

Let us complete that process and be bound by it.

It is common practice in the commercial world to externalise or delink the audit process of its financial operation from those who run it, for the simple fact that you cannot have people investigating themselves. Let us, for a change, take a leaf out of that book.

Any deviation from the above should be fiercely resisted. Parliament and civil society can play a significant role in ensuring the Executive sticks to implementing the PricewaterhouseCoopers recommendations ,whether it likes it or not.

It should also be remembered that even if the Executive does not do this, it is not the end of the story. The price of corruption in Kenya has been ratcheted upwards significantly in the past couple of weeks, and those parties to it should soberly reflect on that.

FURTHER TO THAT, AS WE ARE SEEing, bringing to book corrupt activities does not have to be in a short term time-frame.

There are growing examples around the world, and even in Kenya, where people who thought they had got themselves immunity by hook or by crook faced prosecution at a later stage.

Let us remind ourselves yet again. The multiplicity of scams in the Free Education Programme and NCPB maize sales and government maize imports in 2008 was not just any type of corruption. The corruption cases are body-blows against Kenyans.

As a result, many parents have been denied a fair and reasonable education for their children – an education they could not otherwise afford. Food has been snatched off the tables of many who have gone hungry or even died.

This is a very callous form of corruption that must be made an example of.

Mr Shaw is a Nairobi-based businessman.