Redeem AIE from the ‘Authority to Initiate Eating’

What you need to know:

  • The Bungoma County Government wheelbarrow scandal is a perfect example of what I am talking about.
  • You see, there exists in government, county and national, an important tool known as AIE, which officially stands for Authority to Incur Expenditure.
  • Local TV, still trying to understand how Bungoma County would buy a wheelbarrow for Sh109,000 instead of Sh10,000, reported on Wednesday evening that the hospital’s gate had cost Sh6 million.

There is a stunning untruth being propagated, unfortunately but not surprisingly, by many Kenyans who opposed the current Constitution.

You will hear it said, without the speaker batting an eyelid, that the Constitution devolved corruption.

Nonsense! Our five-year-old Constitution does no such thing; its tattered and battered predecessor did not centralise corruption either. There is no law in our statute books created for the purpose of abetting and or condoning graft.

Because the old constitution did not vouch for corruption and the current one is anti-graft, why is the vice endemic, systemic and institutional? Because those who manage and govern circumvent and defeat, bend and break the law and rules to pilfer and plunder.

The Bungoma County Government wheelbarrow scandal is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Does the government require wheelbarrows? It does. And so the question became not how much a wheelbarrow costs, but how much it could be made to cost.

You see, there exists in government, county and national, an important tool known as AIE, which officially stands for Authority to Incur Expenditure.

Unofficially, but much more importantly, AIE stands for Authority to Initiate Eating.

In government, before and since the 2010 Constitution, every opportunity to procure goods and services is a godsend chance for the authorising committee, those for whom goods or services are to be procured and those in the know to eat (pilfer and plunder).

So if a certain department needs wheelbarrows, these questions will arise: How much money has been set aside for this purchase? How many of us are involved in the procurement process? Can we increase or reduce the numbers (volumes) so that there is enough money to be shared among us?

Volumes of the goods to be purchased will rise or fall depending on the money available and the number of officers in the deal. And there is always a cut for the boss. Conversely, these numbers and budgets will affect the quality of goods or services procured.

If some department needs to build a gate, the above questions will come into play. I remember when the Women’s UN Decade came to Nairobi in 1985, a gate constructed at the University of Nairobi for the conference collapsed before the event began.

What happened? Simple. Somebody did not use the right materials, in the right quantities and the right mixtures. If they did, there would not have been enough money to be made. A similar fate befell a culvert constructed last July near Oloolua shopping centre in Kajiado County.

It collapsed and was repaired last month before it had handled a drop of water. I know it very well. Enter Nyamira County’s referral hospital.

Local TV, still trying to understand how Bungoma County would buy a wheelbarrow for Sh109,000 instead of Sh10,000, reported on Wednesday evening that the hospital’s gate had cost Sh6 million.

Disbelieving folks complained at the gate that the hospital did not have drugs. Well, when the drugs will be available, these folks will do well to remember that the questions I have asked above will have been addressed by those in the deal.

The issue is not — never has and never will be — what the cost of the goods and or services to be procured is. The issue is how costs will be manipulated so that there is enough money for all in the deal. The issue has always been that every AIE must translate into an opportunity for the chiefs to eat.

The problem is not the Constitution, or its devolution of governance. The problem is our love of eating; the problem is our love for making money rather than working to earn it. Worse, we believe public money (mali ya umma) is for eating (pilfering and squandering).

The problem is not the Constitution or devolution; the problem is that we have taken advantage of the opportunities created by the two to spread and multiply thievery and looting of public coffers many times over. The two have not led us into graft, but exposed us as steeped in it.

We cheer loudly when the President declares war on graft and then we justify sheepishly the erection of a Sh6 million gate and acquisition of a Sh109,000 wheelbarrow.

What that says is we need a change of mind-set so that AIE stands exclusively for Authority to Incur Expenditure; we should work and earn money, and should protect rather than plunder public money.

That will take some learning.

Opanga is a media consultant; [email protected]