Arrest and prosecute all implicated in Afya House scandal

It has been a week full of scandals, quite literally soon after the presidential exasperation.

What with the #MafiaHouse scandal, which I believe presents the President and his administration an opportunity to demonstrate just how seriously he is taking the fight against corruption.

#MafiaHouse, as it has come to be known, is a scandal of wanton looting of public funds unearthed by the leakage of an internal audit of project payments made within the Ministry of Health.

It is feared as much as Sh6 billion may have been lost through what the auditors describe as irregular and illegal payments to suppliers colluding with ministry officials.

Some of these suppliers are corporately personified by limited liability companies, one of them, owned by the former chairman of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.

The details are as mindboggling as they are outrageous: huge sums in tranches from a quarter of a billion and up to nearly a billion; each payment crippling critical services and projects at national and county level; active, obstructive resistance from ministry officials; fraudulent manipulation of the Integrated Financial Management System, the government’s ‘secure’ digital payment platform.

Why this has not been declared a national disaster is a mystery.

For years, the Kenyan public has known the Ministry of Health as host to the most resilient of corruption cartels.

Now a draft audit report from within the ministry reveals the disgusting extent of their latest pillaging and links this directly to the death and suffering of ordinary Kenyans.

We would never have known of this were it not for the determination and bravery of journalist Stellar Murumba, who, in keeping with the best tenets of responsible journalism, sought comment from the Ministry’s Principal Secretary, Dr Nicholas Muraguri.

His response gave a glimpse of the menacing hubris of the power people.

Without denying the existence of the internal audit report or commenting on the facts, Dr Muraguri resorted to threats.

And to date, no denial from the good doctor, and no consequences either.

DISCIPLINARY ACTION
Sinister manoeuvrings continued with the apparent purchase off the streets of the Business Daily publication that carried the #MafiaHouse story.

A desperate strategy rendered naught by a hasty Business Daily reprint, the internet and the ever vigilant Kenyan Twitter community.

Cabinet Secretary, Dr Cleopa Mailu, clearly embarrassed by the revelation, has reacted with measured circumspection.

He has promised serious consideration of the audit report.

Detectives are said to have been called in. Yet even with this obvious and commendable caution there were worrying signs.

That there is an internal audit report suggests the completion of the audit process.

It must be presumed that the auditors, in keeping with normal accounting standards, raised queries and prepared their report either with the benefit of the answers received, or with the detriment of the lack thereof.

So is it because it is now public that it is necessary to afford those implicated in the graft a fresh opportunity to tender explanations? That, CS, smacks of a cover-up.

And as to the opportunities fast slipping away?

To allow and require, on the basis of the report, the immediate investigation, arrest and prosecution of all persons implicated in the scandal; to subject ministry officials alleged to have obstructed the audit to immediate disciplinary processes; to require the Registrar-General immediately to secure the company files of the shadowy suppliers and to disclose (in the public interest) the names of shareholders and directors of Estama Investments Limited; and to commence immediately disciplinary proceedings against the PS for threatening and intimidating Ms Murumba.

And finally in this week of corruption drama, Chapter Six of the Constitution, the moral barometer Kenyans voted to subject all public and state officers to, remains dysfunctional.

Yet a profound and frank conversation as to why it does not work may herald the promise of that elusive political will without which anti-corruption sparring sessions endure.

Mr Okero is the president of the Law Society of Kenya