Let’s be careful even as we give religious leaders secular jobs

President Uhuru Kenyatta chats with retired Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya Eliud Wabukala during his 65th birthday celebration and farewell party at the Church's Bishopsbourne residence in Nairobi on June 26, 2016. He wants to be EACC chair. PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • One would pray that churchmen – especially – would be careful before throwing themselves into this cesspit.
  • Wabukala’s current government assignment – that of chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Steering Committee – suits his calling quite perfectly.

I am inclined to agree with the people who are sceptical about the prospects of retired Anglican Archbishop Eliud Wabukala taking up the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) job.

With all due respect, it is not that I expect the churchman to fail.

Nor am I insinuating that he is unqualified in a technical sense.

My point of departure is that we have picked a good man for the wrong job.

I must confess to have watched, with some trepidation over recent years, the process where religious personalities have increasingly taken up visibly secular, “political” roles.

This trend has been accelerated in part by the perception that the normal world of public officialdom has become deeply corrupted.

That might be the case, but turning to persons of a religious calling is not the solution.

Only the other day, we saw Parliament pack the selection committee for new IEBC commissioners with these pious types.

Sadly, the committee botched the initial shortlistings for the IEBC chairman with names deemed to be quite unsuitable from a political and ethnic perspective.

Only a subsequently expanded shortlist saved the day.

SUICIDAL TASK
The EACC job has traditionally been a minefield of controversy.

One would pray that churchmen – especially – would be careful before throwing themselves into this cesspit.

If our body politic is as rotten as it seems, let’s not additionally risk the integrity of other institutions that should morally referee things from a safe distance.

Wabukala’s current government assignment – that of chairman of the National Anti-Corruption Steering Committee – suits his calling quite perfectly.

Formed in 2004, the entity carries out public education, sensitisation and awareness campaigns against corruption.

However, the EACC is a different kettle of fish altogether.

The retired prelate will be expected to actively chase and secure the prosecution of corrupt criminals, many of them highly-placed and with an incentive to frustrate him by running rings around him.

None of his predecessors as EACC chairman has ever quite come out as a success in the job, and a few have ended up being actually disgraced.

It is a tough and thankless job, and any miss-step will rub off badly on the respected former archbishop.

The history of religious people indulging themselves in public commissions does not, unfortunately, inspire much confidence.

MURKY GROUND

I vividly recall the so-called Report on Devil Worship in Kenya commissioned in 1994 and chaired by the late Catholic prelate Archbishop Nicodemus Kirima.

Though this was a quasi-religious commission whose setting up had been pressurised through a public furore kick-started by the same religious leaders, it was, in retrospect, a very ill-advised mission.

All that came out was a rather bizarre report that in the nature of its woolly assignment had no head or tail and which the government wisely shelved.

Wabukala, like Kirima before him, is by all accounts considered to be a conscientious man of God.

And that is precisely the problem when we rush to adorn such men with ill-fitting secular robes.

Many of their contemporary peers are not as well-spoken of.

We have seen plenty of hustlers from the less reputable cults who, in the name of the Almighty (and earthly glory), rush to win political jobs.

These charlatans only give religion as well as the vocation of public service a bad name.

Religious people inserting themselves into the political sphere in a somewhat excessive way has become commonplace.

Every day, you see them holding press conferences on all manner of worldly political obsessions.

They have become a staple of newspaper and TV news, and they look like they enjoy this non-spiritual publicity enormously.

SUCCESS

I have nothing in principle against churchmen pontificating on public affairs, but one supposes this would be done within a certain framework and with the expected gravitas.

All said, I don’t expect Wabukala not to become the next EACC chairman.

His name has already been forwarded for Parliamentary approval, which will almost certainly be a formality.

Let us all wish him the best in this new responsibility.

 ***
On a somewhat different tangent, I learnt over Christmas of a diocese in the Mt Kenya region which is asking parishioners to contribute Sh2,000 each to put up a retiring bishop’s home.

Simply by counting the thousands of parishioners, the sum looks excessive.

The late Cardinal Maurice Otunga did quite well in a simple home for old people.