The extent of systemic corruption in government tells us more than poverty about the consequences of natural calamities.
Haven’t you browsed through the daily mail Newspapers and the BBC world news websites: - Thousands drown after Elnino floods, an earthquake of 8.8 magnitude kills people in Haiti…
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| By Chika for Africa |
Corruption doesn’t only bring down life and buildings but social institutions; corruption destroys both the mortar that holds together physical capital and the glue that binds social capital.
Political corruption is what can best define government officials who unethically use their rather democratically gifted powers for illegitimate private gains. Corruption is not limited to Kenya alone. There are Tens of thousands globally who suffer the impact of corruption daily as tallied by Transparency International (TI), one of the best non-governmental organizations headquartered in Berlin, Germany.
Try typing into the google search box "Corruption" and the results and wait for the search results; Corruption in India, corruption in Nigeria, Corruption in Kenya, Waiguru corruption case, Uhuru and corruption and Images of corrupt government officials; this sums up to Corrupt Leadership.
The fact that we are still embracing corruption can be one way of amending the qualifications of our leaders. Soon, Political leaders would produce certificates of proven corruption in order to get to the job.
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Administrative corruption is so rampant in Africa and in most third world nations that it’s almost an alien culture. Hellman and Jones call these “private payments to public officials to distort the prescribed implementation of official rules and policies.” Could it be colonialism that leaked systemic corruption into Africa? The ancient Africans never knew tax, the military, and policemen, the warriors then were purely for community protection; today, they are tools for hire, reserved for the wealthy Billionaires class.
Categorizing types of corruption, the cause of corruption, and identifying champions of corruption has unfortunately been someone’s multi-billion full-time job; Transparency international. It may appear too common to us making it difficult for us the wananchi to understand its gravity. It's shocking to get to know a one-hundred-year old granny to vividly also knows that corruption is the disease that is now affecting Kenya but some folks may say that is being "DIGITAL” and "INFORMED" as they call it as the old grannies can now grasp a word or two in English.
It may sound funny and rubbish but the time of understanding it well is when we will be feeling its consequences which are ruthless so to say.
The fact that corruption is slowly becoming the daily menu of our beautiful nation Kenya is making us to focus majorly on the corrupt individuals rather than finding a solution to eliminate it for good. It was just recently when there was rampant leakage of the K.C.S.E examination but the solution that was being employed was to cancel the whole examination yet the problem is with the examination body itself. Why punish innocent and bright students for a fraudulent mistake initiated by you?
Apparently, the overhauling of the educational sector has proven rather difficult because the people who are made ministers of education (or science & technology, agriculture) have no passion for the growth and development of the African institutions but the positions could be a mere appreciation of party loyalists who played the part for the govt to ‘win’ the general election
The best solution that could be offered would be:
To fire the officials since by retaining them nothing is solved at all. Cushioning corrupt officials only extends the culture of impunity; no public servant should appear immune to the ethics code.
“Yeah, as individuals we must ensure the societal space is clean and corruption free and find guys of similar values to align with in order to build up accountable and progressive leadership for the future.
People should limit the culture of consumerism and pursue productivity.
Strengthening ant graft institutions for example EACC in Kenya.
Promoting religion and religious teachings that condemn corruption and high dependency in the communities since people listen to their religious leaders as well as political leaders.
Building national values based on the African culture; this would limit the extra capitalist formalities instilled to many by the white man’s magic.
Initiating massive economic growth and development measures that would limit societal poverty.
Corrupt people are criminals and shouldn’t be spared a bullet.
Providing both formal and informal education on corruption and leadership; to fight corruption, the community should learn that Merely shouting from the roof tops that everyone is corrupt creates a larger atmosphere of corruption.
Those in the political leadership should stop misuse of official authority; this includes an award of government contracts and tenders after bribing instead of focusing on competence.
The fact that we are embracing corruption risks changing the qualifications that leaders need to attain in order to acquire certain positions. One may be asked to produce a certificate showing that he or she is corrupt in order to vie for certain positions if we will continue cosseting corruption thus providing favorable conditions for it to breed.
I fear that if we will continue tolerating this cancer, we are going to the dogs and we are the ones who will face the consequences of what we are doing. Let us join hands and decry such practices by calling a spade a spade and remove the corrupt from office.
