David Ndii’s statement officially declaring that Ruto and his UDA are not interested in fighting corruption must be pretty frightening to Kenyans but Dr. Ndii was just stating the truth, that his new boss William Ruto wants to be a president of Kenya with no interest in fighting corruption.
Ndii goes to those meetings with his boss and he is telling the country the truth of what they talk about there.
William Ruto wants to form a government of thieves, by thieves against the Kenyan people who lose hundreds of billions every year as the politicians and their appointees steal everything they can put their hands on.
One disturbing aspect of Ndii’s delusion about Kenyans and corruption is that Ndii thinks like his boss, that Kenyans love corruption and love corrupt people. Ndii also tries to be cute by suggesting that independent bodies like EACC can fight corruption and president Ruto will be busy rolling up his Bottoms Up fantasy.
This is a challenge to Kenyans. Those who want to hold the highest office in the land actually glorify corruption and in fact the more the merrier, as you give a little change of what you steal to others in the church and in harambees, where our thieving politicians go to show off how much they have stolen.
Ndii, in trying to justify his outrageous statements says he himself gives bribes to avoid traffic tickets and that all Kenyans are corrupt. Maybe that is part of their talk when he meets his boss.
But comparing a mwanainchi giving Kshs.100 to avoid police harassment with politicians and their appointees robbing hundreds of billions meant for development is taking Kenyans for permanent fools. And no, they are not fools and they are going to deal with those who want to defend and protect corruption in the country.
David Ndii argues that Kenyans are addicted to corruption and that is why UDA embraces it because the first step towards dealing with addiction is “acceptance”.
So grabbing hundreds of billions of Kenyan money by political thieves is fine as long as those thieves accept that yes they are corrupt, and they are addicted to robbing them and will keep doing it. How brilliant. This is going to work great for Kenyans. You have leaders addicted to robbing you and they have accepted their addiction.
Except addiction to public theft doesn’t hurt the thief. It hurts the robbed people of Kenya. So why would the theft addict want to stop? This is an addiction that benefits the addict and they will have every reason to go on with it.
That defending corruption and the thieves is a real campaign platform for UDA for the 2022 General Elections is a big insult to every Kenyan and it will be the Azimio team to tell us if they will adopt the same platform and invite every corrupt thief in Kenya to run for office as their candidate.
UDA is already doing that. It is like they have a big sign urging all thieves to run to UDA. They can have them and they are many but Kenyans must have very different ideas come August 2022.
The idea that the government cannot fight corruption is ridiculously stupid. The first duty of any government on this planet is to protect and safeguard public money and property. There can be no higher role.
But if you want to form a government of thieves working for the benefit of those thieves then of course you can’t fight corruption and theft of public property.
Ruto has been on a rampage lately whining about EACC and DCI investigating and taking corruption cases to court. Ruto claims these are politically motivated cases.
So he doesn’t want the government to interfere with EACC and other investigative bodies and yet he spends a considerable amount of time lecturing those independent agencies not to investigate politicians who are accused of stealing public money?
One thing Ruto can do very effectively as president to give peace to the corrupt thieves is to withhold any meaningful support and funding to the agencies investigating and prosecuting corruption. The EACC hardly has any good team of investigators and prosecutors and that is why they are doing such an awful job.
A president committed to fighting corruption would ensure these agencies including the Auditor General’s office are properly funded and have the resources to be competent and effective in getting our money back and getting the thieves locked in jail where they belong.
Read: War on Poverty, Corruption: Odinga’s top agenda as President
The president also receives a copy of the report by the Auditor General which typically provides very valuable information about our stolen monies and who is stealing it.
A president committed to fighting corruption will take that report and comb through it and take executive action against the thieves something which the Auditor General cannot do. The AG provides the information and it is up to the government to take action.
How can we have a president who says he will do nothing and let the thieves just go free on our money which is gravy for them?
William Ruto himself is on the dock for Weston Hotel land theft and another case in Eldoret involving grabbed buildings which Ruto tried to kill using his best weapon, the corrupt National Land Commission (NLC).
A few weeks ago, a court in Eldoret ruled that Ruto’s claim that the properties he has in Eldoret were approved by the NLC was not true and threw out his application out, so the case is going on.
The same exact situation with Weston Hotel where the hearing starts on March 15, 2022.
It is going to be interesting when the man who wants to be our next president and who says fighting corruption is a none issue for him will be in court facing massive graft cases involving theft of prime public land. Kenyans will make their call on that.
In a country where we lose hundreds of billions of taxpayers and borrowed money, you cannot talk of any development for the citizens unless you end the bottomless pit of corruption.
That is where any development starts. If we can’t build dams to provide very necessary development facilities because government officials have stolen all the borrowed money for those projects then we have to stop that theft or stop talking about any form of development. Whether it is bottoms up or down.
The money being stolen is at the bottom. Building a water dam is right at the bottom of any development we can think of.
When Ruto’s own appointee, Henry Rotich, then-Treasury Secretary works with his colleagues and they grab all the money and now we have to pay back the loan with nothing to show for it that is bottoms up theft from the ground to the Treasury. That is what is going to be the official policy of UDA government if we ever let them in power.
Ruto has publicly made it clear that he is considering Rigathi Gachagua as a possible DP candidate. Now that makes even more sense than before. Rigathi Gachagua is on the dock for stealing more than Kshs. 12 billion from public money and a lot of it from his own constituency. If you really want to form a government of thieves for thieves, that guy is an ideal candidate for you as your deputy.
Read: Trickle-down theft of public money by politicians. Can it work for Kenyans?
How can the government fight and kill corruption in Kenya?
One, if you are president or anyone in any public leadership position just don’t steal public money or property. That may be too late for William Ruto but it is the first step for any government to fight corruption.
Next, if you head our government, don’t surround yourself with thieves with endless corruption cases already in court. That is also too late for William Ruto. We all know the people flocking to his house every day to sing for him. Many of those have ongoing cases of corruption and are waiting for president Ruto to throw out all those cases.
Third, do not hire corrupt people to handle the money and public property of Kenyans. Again too late for Ruto. If Ruto was the president today, Henry Rotich would still be the Treasury Secretary cleaning up all our money from the bottom to the top.
The president hires the top civil servants who handle our money. If such a president is committed to fighting corruption instead of being part of it they would hire people with no record of corruption.
Fourth, a president who is against corruption as opposed to one who revels in corruption would fire any civil servant or public official accused of and engaged in theft of public money.
A government that is fighting corruption would provide facilities, resources, and structure to the independent bodies charged with responsibility of tackling corruption.
First set up a system to provide the Auditor General with resources to assemble special audit teams to ensure that the CDF of every constituency is audited every year and the audit reports are made public.
You cannot talk about bottoms up development when the politicians singing for you every day have cleaned out their entire CDF money and turned it into their personal allowance and pocket money.
The CDF is the money from the national government of Kenya to provide development opportunities at the grassroots level. When the M.Ps eat all that money and never have to account for it whatsoever, forget any possibilities of development at the constituency level.
That money doesn’t go for bottoms-up development. It goes to the bottomless pit of Kenyan thieves who run our country and UDA wants to encourage that plus even add more money for the thieves to spend and maybe donate a little of it to churches here and there.
A serious president and national government should put in place all mechanisms to make sure that the CDF money is used to benefit communities and is not robbed by M.Ps. Otherwise, change the name of CDF to MPPM (M.P. Pocket Money) because that is what it is right now. Anybody who wants to run our country and doesn’t want to address corruption in our CDF money is simply not fit for office.
A serious president and national government would put in place all the mechanisms to stop the huge theft of public money and resources at the county level.
Devolution was supposed to bring resources and development to the local level. It has done the exact opposite. It has brought huge corruption and theft of resources to the local level and they steal the money in such aggressive and often stupid ways.
Take for example the trip two weeks ago of 31 MCAs from Embu County going to Tanzania and giving themselves Kshs 20 million for the trip allegedly to learn “GOOD MANNERS”. We all read about it in the papers and absolutely nothing is done about it.
Read: Kenyan politician thieves travel to Tanzania to learn “GOOD MANNERS”
That is how easy it is to steal public money in Kenya and now we have someone running for the top office who says he doesn’t give a damn about that. Really?
And you want to be the president of this country bleeding to death from everything meant to improve the lives of its men and women being grabbed ruthlessly by politicians.
If our next president does not want to deal with the massive stealing of money at the county level, such a person is not fit for that office.
How the heck are you going to have a bottoms-up development when county leaders are stealing all the money at the bottom of our economy called counties. If Ruto wants to promote bottoms up theft of public money, Kenyans will have something to say about that in August 2022.
Then we have these big loans and Eurobonds and that money too disappears in the bottomless pit of corruption. If our president and national leaders are not interested in stopping that then they will be leading us to complete bankruptcy.
If that is what Ruto wants to do can he please find another country to lead as their president? We just cannot afford it in Kenya.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
