Laptop Project - who ate what when
What you need to know:
- It is not too early to conclude that money may have changed hands; that is some people, somewhere ate and perhaps ate big.
- Having benefited from a sneak-preview of some of the tender documents, it’s my considered opinion that any of the top three companies has the capacity to deliver these laptops.
Forget the Laptop hypothetical view we discussed a few weeks ago – it is now official from the Public Procurement Administrative Review Board (PPARB) that something was not right with the tendering process. With close to Ksh 30Billlion at stake, Kenyans would have been too ambitious to imagine the process would be smooth sailing.
With the Ethic and Anti-Corruption agency (EACC) vowing to join the action, it is not too early to conclude that money may have changed hands; that is some people, somewhere ate and perhaps ate big.
So who could have “eaten” and at what stage could this have happened?
The stages the laptop tender process underwent were five:- (1) Technical Evaluation (2) Financial Evaluation, (3) Best & Final Offer Negotiation, (4) Best & Final Offer Financial Opening and (5) Due Diligence stages.
Any of the above stages present vulnerable attack points for what Olive Consortium, formerly the winning bidder termed as “busy-bodies”. Other analysts have called them “tender-preneurs” as opposed to entrepreneurs or simply put, business front-men for political heavyweights.
CAPACITY TO DELIVER?
The first two stages, which incidentally are the most critical were carried out by the Ministry of Education. These stages produced the top three suppliers, Olive, HP and Hier - with their corresponding reports being subsequently used in the later stages.
The Ministry of Education expanded the team to include the Ministry of ICT, specifically the ICT Authority, in order to drive the last three stages. And so questions have been raised – how could the ICT Authority clear Olive consortium while the Public Procurement Oversight body, the Parliamentary committee and others have found doubts about their capacity to deliver the laptops?
Having benefited from a sneak-preview of some of the tender documents, it’s my considered opinion that any of the top three companies has the capacity to deliver these laptops. This does not mean that PPARB is lying to Kenyans since it depends on the perspective they chose to evaluate the process.
For example, two of the many PPARB concerns revolve around the allegation that Olive is not an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and that it does not have the financial capacity to deliver the project. This may be true if Olive is judged in isolation, as opposed to being judged as the lead partner in a consortium of OEM and financial players as provided for in the bid documents.
Having said that any of the top-three can deliver the laptops does not mean that the “eating” aspect was not relevant. And so the question remains – who ate what and when?
YOU AND ME
Unfortunately, it is you and me. Yes, that is very true. You and I ate the Laptop money, more than a year ago in the heat of election campaigns and we have chosen to forget about it.
We ate, each time the politicians flew by with an army of helicopters, each costing Sh500 million to buy and Sh2.4 million per day to run.
We ate each time they booked “ prime” time slots in the leading media houses at Sh1 million per 30-second clip, and Sh1 million for coloured, full-page adverts per day.
Ladies and gentlemen, you and I ate each time they booked into expensive hotels, moved in motorcades and entertained us at various venues across the country.
Finally and most recently, we ate and cheered, when both sides of the political divide paid millions to a battery of senior counsel to see them through the presidential petition.
So yes, we ate the laptop money and forgot. Unfortunately, the financiers have not and it is very likely that it is now payback time - Season One. Season Two will kick in shortly, just one year before the next election.
We sanctioned the “eating” when we failed to pass the election campaign bill that would have capped, controlled and made election campaign funding more transparent and accountable. This would have limited the amount “owed” as political debt and publicly listed those who are now operating in the shadows as busybodies aka “tender-preneurs”.
In such circumstances, it is expected that each of the three leading bidders has their “political partners”. And each will do anything and everything financially, technically, legally or otherwise to undercut the other. So the more we repeat this particular tender process, the more we expand the opportunity for the “tender-preneurs” to extend their gravy train – at our cost.
In other words, whatever happened at the Ministry of Education, at the ICT Authority, at the Public Procurement Administration Review Board or at the Parliamentary committee seems to be headed to courts. But bottom line? It is most likely a reflection of power struggles between political elites trying to recoup their campaign investments of yester and future years.
On his way to winning the presidential election in 1992, Bill Clinton proclaimed “Its the economy, stupid!” as a way of focusing the electorate on the real issue. To the Kenyan child and parent who still believes that this project is about Lap-tops, I politely say to them “It’s about the election money, stupid!”
Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter : @jwalu
