Jubilee using National Youth for political scores

A week of revelations about financial misconduct at the National Youth Service ended in drama, characterised by a street demonstration and the demolition of toilets in Kibera, seen as a reaction to the street demonstrations.

While investigations have been promised into what has been presented as a failed attempt to corruptly obtain a sizeable chunk of public funds from the service, there is now little public expectation about the potential of these investigations to unearth anything useful.

To begin with, amid calls by the opposition that Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru should take responsibility for what has gone wrong at the service, the presidency has made pre-emptive declarations of her innocence, which means that any investigations will begin with her having already been exonerated.

Second, the National Youth Service investigation follows the arraignment, the previous week, of Lands Cabinet Secretary Charity Ngilu, on charges of interfering with the investigation of a scandal in her ministry.

The occasion of her court appearance saw a rare show of solidarity among the usually-divided Kamba leadership, from where she hails, with former Vice- President Kalonzo Musyoka turning up in court to give her moral support. While this show of solidarity may have been good for sectional politics in the area, it was disastrous both for the country’s endeavours for accountability against corruption, and the role of the opposition in those endeavours.

Whereas, few believe that a genuine prosecution of Ngilu will ever materialise, the fact that Jubilee has already overreached itself by charging her in court has won the government the benefit of doubt. However, by supporting Ngilu, the credibility of the opposition to demand accountability for corruption has been severely dented.

The immediate beneficiaries of the diminished credibility are those responsible for what has gone wrong at the National Youth Service.

CONSULTANCY ARRANGEMENTS

Last week’s events demonstrate the levels to which the National Youth Service has been politicised. The country, which was already struggling for responses to the politicisation of the military, must now add the service to the list of public institutions that Jubilee is not managing well.

The law establishing the NYS stipulates the functions of the service as “training of young citizens to serve the nation, and the employment of its members in tasks of national importance and otherwise in the service of the nation”.

In previous times, the role of the NYS was commonly understood as offering vocational training for young people as would support the acquisition of livelihood skills. While attending the service was previously viewed as training, it is now presented as employment, and there are promises of additional massive recruitments to the service.

When, in May last year, the first queries about the financial affairs of the service were raised, revolving around the consultancy arrangements with Mr Mutahi Ngunyi, Minister Waiguru declared that the information in question could not be disclosed as the NYS was a security agency. Other than being a unilateral reclassification of the NYS, the minister’s preference for secrecy over transparency probably set the stage for the recent revelations of wrongdoing.

The street demonstrations on behalf of the minister, which appeared calculated to defeat calls for accountability, are the second recent occasion when a minister facing accountability questions has responded with a political card. The first was Ngilu, who turned up with a throng of co-ethnics in court the previous week.

In all this, it may be argued that the Jubilee ministers have learnt from the best, their president and deputy president, both of whom have deployed a remarkable political strategy against charges that they faced before the ICC.

Thus, the consequences of an Uhuru/Ruto presidency on the country’s political culture, and the commitment to accountability, are significant and will continue to be felt long after their cases are ended.

The presidency is not in a strong position to prevail on the Jubilee ministers to accept accountability without resorting to sideshows, having benefited from sideshows themselves.

MAKE POLITICAL SCORES

Something should be said about the burning of NYS property in Kibera which elicited strong reactions within Jubilee, with Mutahi Ngunyi, the architect of the new NYS, declaring opposition leader Raila Odinga “a lord of poverty.”

Jubilee’s ill-explained transformation of the NYS is presided over by the president in person, Ms Waiguru and Mutahi Ngunyi. Removing Japheth Rugut from the service and replacing him with Nelson Githinji has remarkably concentrated the leadership of the new NYS in one region of Kenya.

While the choice of Kibera and Kisumu, both strongholds of Raila Odinga, as the places for starting out new projects for the service looked innocent at the beginning, it is now clear that Jubilee has succumbed to the temptation to use these projects to make political scores.

Odinga is not perfect. However, when Ngunyi, the poster boy of a government project, uses his exalted position to ridicule the former Prime Minister using the supposed achievements of a project he is closely associated with, he brings up memories of the lecture by Kiriatu Murungi to retired President Moi that he should retire to herd his goats and watch Kiraitu and his group govern the country.

Murungi’s admonition of Moi aroused ethnic passions by the unspoken things it implied. Ngunyi and his NYS associates, narrowly drawn from one area, are on the same perilous path. By burning toilets which they would ordinarily badly need, the people of Kibera communicated that in a choice between their dignity and the toilets, they would rather dignity.

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