Moi-era schemes that bred corruption, greed

Those like me who grew up in first two decades of independence will remember days when farming was a rewarding occupation.

Any crop grown — coffee, tea, maize, sugarcane, cotton, cashew nuts, pyrethrum, tobacco, name it — paid well and in good time.

Ordinary households — that is small-scale farmers and traders — had enough to eat, dress well and pay school fees and other bills.

Many families could also afford a small second-hand saloon car — mainly a Volkswagen, Ford Cortina, or Ford Escort, if not a Peugeot or Datsun pickup. Toyotas had not yet flooded our roads those days.

For us raised in then Rift Valley Province, KFA, short for Kenya Farmers Association, put a smile on our faces.

If we overheard our parents talk about the KFA cheque — and it unfailingly came — we knew there would be a merry Christmas and we would return to school come January.

Then, out of the blue, one early morning in the 1980s, we heard that KFA had been ordered to close shop. The decree came from the Head of State, Daniel arap Moi.

It was announced through the only radio station in the country at that time — VoK, now called KBC, and now headed by my friend, Dr Naim Bilal, formerly known as Mr Makau Niko.

BIWOTT'S THREAT

In our youthful age, we cried that night. The death of KFA meant our parents would henceforth operate on empty.

Food on the table would no more be a guarantee. There would be no new clothes at Christmas, and going back to school in time was doubtful.

It was the first time we heard about “bursaries”. I guess that is what today’s children will experience should Covid-19 force officials to impose a lockdown, and their parents made to stay idle indoors — meaning a leaner or no payslip at all.

Today being a Sunday, those of us who pray ask God not to allow the lockdown to come to Kenya.

Years later when I became journalist, I met Mr Rueben Chesire, who was the chairman of KFA when it was ordered to wind up.

I asked him to tell me why the President of Kenya would wake up one morning and kill a farmers’ body.

He gave me story that sounded half comedy, half tragedy. He and friends were having a social drink one evening at the Nakuru Rift Valley Sports Club when Cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott suddenly showed up and headed to their table without any courtesies.

Facing up to Chesire and in a threatening gaze, Biwott said: “You Rueben, we hear you have been going around boasting that KFA has more money than the government of Kenya. Very soon you shall never again hear about that KFA of yours!”

BOSS TAKES OVER

That weekend President Moi addressed a rally at Afraha Stadium, where he made breaking news (literally that is what it was!) that KFA would be no more, to be replaced by an outfit called Kenya Grain Growers Co-operative Union (KGGCU), a thieving conduit whose story the less told the better.

That was Kenya of those days: that a private association would be dissolved, not through a members’ AGM as the law provides, but at a public rally or through a roadside decree!

Over lunch at the Nairobi Boulevard Hotel, Chesire gave me background to that story. He told me that when Moi was vice-president and Biwott his personal assistant (PA), the latter used to complain aloud that people in Mount Kenya region, and those in Nandi, Kericho, and Uasin Gishu districts, had no respect for the VP (allegedly) because they had money.

“Rich people don’t obey and have no regard for authority,” Biwott used to complain.

Chesire recalled one evening at Eldoret Sirikwa Hotel when Biwott unleashed in a torrent of anger.

“You people have no respect for us because you have money and we don’t! Wait until we get to power and we make the donkey catch up with the horse!”

He told me that was the “philosophy” behind the killing of the KFA, a fate that would soon befall other institutions and individual enterprises where there was money that the “system” — rather the “boss” — didn’t control.

Henceforth, it was the “boss” — also called HEDAM — who would decide which Kenyan should have money in the pocket and how much — and the “boss” would take it away when he felt like it!

BRINKMANSHIP

For that to happen, not just KFA but any other enabler institution that put money in farmers’ pockets, was hauled to the guillotine.

That included, among others, the Kenya Co-operative Creameries (KCC), Kenya Planters Co-operative Union (KPCU), Kenya Tea Development Authority (KTDA), Pyrethrum Board, Cotton Board, Agricultural Finance Corporation (AFC), Agricultural Development Corporation (ADC), all sugar factories, and the Pan-African Paper Mills.

Then followed the turn for individual enterprises to be sabotaged into bankruptcy.

Among the most remembered cases were indigenous-owned banks and financial institutions forced to close shop in the mid-1980s: Madhupaper International, fronted by media mogul S.K. Macharia, and an indigenous giant conglomerate called JK Kalinga Industries.

At about that time, five indigenous entrepreneurs' bid to purchase the local franchise of the US tyre-manufacturer Firestone was sabotaged by the “system” at the last minute and the business bought by the “big man” and his associates.

Jubilee Alliance’s ‘Tuko Pamoja’ sloganeering and the white-shirts/red-ties PR razzmatazz, is all well known.

What is not known is how the two camps that could not see eye-to-eye in 2007 suddenly came together in 2012. Behind the scenes was deceit, brinkmanship and, yes, blackmail.

SUCCESSION WAR

It is a bizarre, untold story best understood when you get to know how the Jubilee “brothers” financed the blitzkrieg that had the coalition win 2013 election — against all odds.

A huge chunk of the campaign war chest came from one faction in the coalition. A little also came from notorious wheeler-dealers.

The deal, as negotiated, was that the faction with bigger financial muscle — thanks to old family money — would get the “big seat” but the other faction would be given Cabinet portfolios where there is “meat” — not just “bones” — so that they, too, would have something of their “own” come 2017 and beyond.

That was the condition put for the “donkey” in Jubilee to agree to travel same road with the “horse”.

It is also where the 10/10 deal, disowned by Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe, was sealed. Apparently, he had dashed out to the washrooms when that happened!

* * * *

Allow a little digress there. The late Nyeri Governor Wahome Gakuru who, before being elected governor, had chaired the Vision 2030 steering committee, told me the idea to build SGR was first floated during President Mwai Kibaki's administration, who rejected it on reasoning that Kenya first needed to rehabilitate the old railway line, which would have cost a third (real and stolen) of what was paid in SGR project.

Governor Gakuru recalled President Kibaki telling the Vision 2030 team that if rebuilt, the old railway line would generate revenue enough not just to build a SGR line all the way from Mombasa to Kisumu (no stalling in Naivasha!) as in case with Ethiopia.

Incidentally, that is time Kenya came up with idea of Konza Techno-city, which Jubilee conveniently forgot — there was no “meat” in it — but Ethiopians picked it up and are implementing.

* * * *

The main heist under Jubilee Party was to come in the name of “eight mega dams” — though lots of other money was stolen in-between and carted away — maybe in rucksacks.

At least, we have seen money carried in rucksacks, but we never saw the “hairdresser” gunny bags.

Or is it possible the gunny bags were emptied into rucksacks to make us lose trail?

For example, there was Sh200 million paid to a “maize farmer” who “sold” the commodity to the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB).

Everybody wondered where in Kenya a single farmer had grown that kind of maize! Perhaps only the then Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri, who has since been “eaten” by locusts, can better tell that story.

Total — even in death

It is in Parliament in 1990s where Cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott declared himself “a full … and total man”.

The then Ugenya MP, now Senate Minority Leader, James Orengo, would later remark in the House that Biwott wasn’t “only a “Total man” but “the Bull of Auckland”.

Being a Sunday, I won’t relate here what had transpired during a presidential trip in Auckland, which is the incident Orengo was referring to.

But, come to think of it, Biwott may have remained “Total” even in death: his beloved “baby”, the Kerio Valley Development Authority (KVDA) — the outfit he used in the Turkwel dam project — is the same that husbanded the Arror and Kimwarer dam projects just around the time he passed away in 2017.

And the Cabinet minister who signed in on the projects is a “boy” from his neighbourhood in Keiyo!

Still on “Total man”, he wondered in Parliament why Kenya would be called a Third World country when it could “afford” to build the Turkwel dam.

I tend to agree with him, but based on different calculations. Just look at this: according to the World Bank report released last month entitled “Elite Capture of Foreign Aid”, between 1990 and 2010, Kenyan politicians and their accomplices stole over US$3.6 billion from foreign money that got into the country in the form of loans or grants.

It means Sh360 billion was stolen over 20 years — which is Sh18 billion every year, Sh1.5 billion every month, Sh50 million every day, and over Sh2 million every single hour for 20 years!

* * * *

Thieves in the first term of the Jubilee administration would laugh that “only two million” was stolen every hour in the last 12 years of the Moi government, and the first eight years of the Mwai Kibaki administration.

That is child's play. Jubilee thieves play in the big league. Have a look at this: according to the National Assembly report by the Committee on Environment and Natural Resources tabled in the House in October last year, in the financial years 2016/17 and 2017/18, the National Treasury released Sh120 billion to fund the construction of eight mega dams in the country, none of which has, and may never, see light of the day.

That includes Sh21 billion on Arror and Kimwarer “dams”. Oops, DP William Ruto said “only seven, not 21 billion”, was paid in the “projects”!

Now, Sh120 billion “disappearing” in just two years means an average of Sh60 billion “got lost” in one year, which is Sh5 billion every month, about Sh1.7 billion every day, and Sh70 million “disappearing” every single hour under Jubilee.

With that kind of money, why wonder — or feel jealous — that some chap can fork out a “mere 10 million” in just a weekend. That’s peanuts!

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