The art of eating chicken and how multinationals export graft to Africa
What you need to know:
- We will not postpone national examinations merely because the government wants to implement a cost-cutting plan. Similarly, we do not postpone elections because the government has to roll out an austerity plan. Indeed, national examinations and elections must take place when they are due.
- When you are purchasing currency notes, you are not constrained by budgetary limits. Which is why it is not surprising that procurement of currency printing contracts hardly ever end without allegations of corruption.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the emails between the UK printing company, its local agent, and officials of Kenyan public organisations. There is sensational stuff in there.
What new insights have we learnt from this saga about how the corruption and bribery game is played?
First, that the incidence of corruption and bribery becomes pervasive where an entity is allowed to operate as if it is not constrained by budgetary limits. Because of the sensitivity around national examinations, the expenditure of the Kenya National Examinations Council (Knec) is rarely subjected to budgetary limits.
We will not postpone national examinations merely because the government wants to implement a cost-cutting plan. Similarly, we do not postpone elections because the government has to roll out an austerity plan. Indeed, national examinations and elections must take place when they are due.
These circumstances are what make top officials of institutions such as the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and Knec vulnerable to capture by corrupt European multinationals.
The same phenomenon explains why the incidence of corrupt dealings increases at the end of each financial year, when ministries engage in buying sprees to make sure that they quickly exhaust their budgetary allocations. Multinationals, especially Western companies, are adept at taking advantage of these situations.
Printing of currency notes is another area susceptible to capture by corrupt Western multinationals and their local agents. When you are purchasing currency notes, you are not constrained by budgetary limits. Which is why it is not surprising that procurement of currency printing contracts hardly ever end without allegations of corruption.
Prosecutors in the UK have managed to weave a thoroughly engaging narrative, giving us a rare glimpse and insights into how the IEBC top officials and their allies in the UK managed to craft a tight corruption network through the length and breadth of bureaucracy.
BUREAUCRATIC CORRUPTION
In contemporary parlance, what was going on at both the IEBC and Knec is referred to as entrenched bureaucratic corruption.
Entrenched bureaucratic corruption is tenacious and generates a kind of equilibrium. This is what you see as you read through the emails. Indeed, this saga was not about individuals or particular officials, but about an environment where too many officers were engaged in freelance rent-seeking.
The emails reveal that Smith & Ouzman had over the years succeeded in creating a network of operatives sharing not only rewards but also risks, a tight-knit group with a high stake, not only in hiding corruption but also in freezing out critics. You cannot have stability in a bureaucracy under such circumstances.
We all remember the ferocity with which camps within the IEBC fought over the procurement of the Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits and the fight over the procurement of the Electronic Voter Identification Devices that divided top IEBC officials into antagonistic camps.
The Smith & Ouzman emails reveal how procurement officials and IEBC would give the company the bid documents of their rivals well in advance of tender opening. Is it not an outrage that IEBC officials allowed instances where prices would be marked up by as much as 37.5 per cent?
Corrupt pay-offs are called many things, but naming them “chicken” is a first. Which brings me to a comment I have made on this subject before. In hungry Africa, we analogise corruption as “food”.
Older readers of this column will remember how former political gadfly, Martin Shikuku, was almost hounded out of the leadership of the opposition party, Ford, when he was accused of having accepted an invitation by then president, Daniel arap Moi, to an “ugali-eating” session at State House.
The Smith & Ouzman emails have surely added to the contemporary semantics. Here is what one of the emails says: “ I will give people their chickens latest tomorrow. I couldn’t do it over the weekend because I was not feeling well. The chicken is in the pot.”
Then there is this email when Smith & Ouzman wanted to send the message that it would not pay any commissions/bribes on some specific contract: “We have sharpened our pencils and all chicken are dead.”
It is a compelling tale on how multinationals export corruption to Africa.
