Philip Kinisu messed with well connected employees

Phew! Philip Kinisu is gone from Integrity Centre, Nairobi, isn’t he? He should know people.

Not one to hem and haw, Mr Kinisu arrived in office early this year, threatening to audit the lifestyle of employees at the commission.

Although the National Assembly reconstituted the EACC intent to sack all senior staff, the President dissuaded Members of Parliament by instead offering that they be vetted afresh.

There is something crushingly disappointing about educated people who are unable to get a good joke, and Mr Kinisu exposed himself by seizing on the vetting of employees even when a case had been filed to block the entire foolhardy enterprise.

Naked displays of cruelty to colleagues does not augur well for the esprit de corps in the war on corruption, which requires clean people to hang together.

As it were, and without the help of Mr Kinisu, the vetting of employees has been stopped by the courts for fear that their constitutional rights would be infringed by poking into how much property they own, the number of lovers they maintain and what they eat in their private time.

Quarrelling with the secretariat is a career killer for any chairman of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.

MUBEA SUSPENDED

Had Mr Kinisu been wiser, he would have studied the cowrie shells to understand what befell those who preceded him at the commission, especially former chairman Mumo Matemu, whose tenure came to a screeching halt last year soon after he outgrew his breeches and began second-guessing diligent workers in the EACC secretariat.

Instead of trusting his lieutenants in the commission and seeking their approval before launching inquiries, he skulked around silently looking for skeletons that did not exist.

He kept his ears open for all sorts of trash, including claims that anti-corruption officials had been offered houses to drop investigations into impropriety at the National Social Security Fund.

There was another incident in which the investigation of corruption in the award of Sh10 billion tenders by the Geothermal Development Company was frustrated.

Heck, he even wanted to investigate who the landlord receiving rent from the EACC for Integrity Centre was; and overreached himself by sending the deputy chief executive, Mr Michael Mubea, on a month-long suspension.

As it were, EACC chief executive officer Halakhe Wako countermanded the suspension and had Mr Mubea back at work in two days.

FRESH LEADERS

People like Mr Kinisu come into the EACC with an exaggerated sense of their own piety, and start messing up people’s careers by asking for lifestyle audits, writing secret letters to the Central Bank of Kenya on the proceeds of the Sh80 billion Eurobond, and in the process diverting investigative resources of the entire anti-graft effort.

Had it not been for the hawkeyed Mr Wako catching him in the act, attention would have been diverted from writing letters of clearance for clean people seeking public appointment.

As it were, Mr Kinisu’s reluctance to pursue the innocence of suspects in the National Youth Service scandal exposed his soft underbelly as a person who was economical with the truth.

Despite his big talk, his phonebook had no useful numbers he could call to prevent his eviction from Integrity Centre, hence his decision to fall on his sword. Adios Amigos!

Having dispatched Mr Kinisu and Mr Matemu into unemployment in a year; and Prof Patrick Loch Lumumba, Justice Aaron Ringera and Mr Harun Mwau before them without much ceremony, it is clear that the EACC can survive without politically appointed heavyweights bossing hardworking investigators around.

The anti-corruption effort should be led by technocratic lawyers without political supervision from meddlesome individuals who want to count employee coins.

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