A few years ago in 2017, a group of three daring
robbers tunneled their way into a bank in Thika town and stole Sh52 million.
It didn’t take a week before the suspects were
arrested and part of the loot recovered. Keep in mind that these were hitherto unknown
faces. The case is still pending in court I believe.
On early morning of Sunday 16th August 2020,
11 criminal suspects were reported to have escaped from Bungoma police station
after digging a hole on the wall of the cell using a metal bar.
However, one of the suspects was not so lucky as he
was shot and arrested soon after the prison break!
The other ten suspects are still on the run and at
large but I can guarantee that they will be found within a week! Our police force here in Kenya is quite
efficient!
The Thika Tunnel Heist was well planned and executed.
The suspects rented an office next to the bank for several months and set up a
proxy bookshop business.
They brought in sophisticated equipment that they used
to dig a tunnel under the bank.
And so the new mantra for stealing seems to be an
engineering work of art that requires strategy, timing, and patience.
The Covid-iots, the tunnel diggers of our days are not
any different from these bank robbers and escapees.
They are actually worse because they steal what is meant
for the public and then sell it to private entities and back to government agencies at
inflated prices.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
But the Covid-iots have stolen from us twice!
At least the bank robbers of Thika invested their
time, money and expertise for several months as they planned the big heist.
This is reminiscent of the Kanu era where corrupt
individuals would grab land belonging to state corporations like Kenya
Railways, NSSF etc and resell it back to the same institution at a higher cost.
What’s happening in Kenya right now is only comparable
to the well-connected gangster of New York Al
Capone in the 1920s and the drug dealing Mafioso of Colombia Pablo Escobar.
We as a people are not ready or willing to slay the
giant yet. I guessed the bleeding isn’t profuse enough to elicit a mass outcry!
One can easily tell from the crop of dealers we elect into public
office. Most of them have obvious and
glaring integrity issues and we do not seem to care.
The day the rain started beating us was when we began
to accept money from politicians in exchange for votes.
And to them, they had gotten their money’s worth
whether it was 50 shillings or more! The Scripture in Proverbs 17:8 says it
all, “A bribe is a charm to the one who
gives it; wherever he turns, he succeeds”
But look how low this has brought us, stealing innocent
babies at Pumwani, leaving healthcare workers without protection in a pandemic,
robbing the widows of their land and so on.
How you
have fallen from the heights
O Kenya,
daughter of the East!
Return thou
to your cave and repent
Save the Widow
and consider the Orphan
The fundamental question is, where do they get the
money to throw around? And secondly, no one likes to lose money especially
gangs!
And so the logical thought process of anyone who gives
a bribe in exchange for a favor is to have a recovery plan; which is based on winning
a political seat and positioning themselves for a jackpot like the Covid Money
Heist.
We must deal with our individual sense of right and
wrong first before throwing stones!
The tragedy about festering corruption is that it’s
like a trap that catches everybody, even those who are not involved. So we cannot sit back and watch.
The other conspicuous reality is that, there’s a
stinking rot in our civil service. President Uhuru has alluded to it, CS Mutahi
Kagwe recently mentioned it.
The only problem is this; if we do not put names and
faces to this monster we can never slay it! We must identify the individuals
and name and shame them, then we can begin to prosecute them.
But as things stand now, we are still playing Russian roulette
with a monster that has its tentacles all across the nation and a poisonous
sting.
We must begin to chop it off limb after limb until it
becomes immobilized!
In countries such
as China, Pakistan and Iran economic crimes such as bribery and plunder of
public funds results in death sentence
if found guilty!
The situation in Kenya is grim. They say corruption
fights back. And so every time the dragon opens out its mouth and spits out
fire you cannot be standing there looking helpless – you’ll be singed!
Political loyalists and cohorts across the divides is
another challenge that’s letting down this war against corruption.
There are some doors you just don’t go knocking on in
the name of investigating a crime, you’d have yourself shipped off to the
driest part of the country in the name of a transfer that didn’t exist until a
few minutes before!
This is one of the fears of many who are trusted with
the responsibility of taking action. The Big Boss Syndrome.
Even well trained police officers, whose role is to
follow their conscience in upholding law and order have become biased in one
way or another.
It is therefore reckless to think that the political
class have a solution to this problem. On the contrary, they are part of the
problem!
They have become impervious to the predicament of the Kenyan
populace and are only interested in striking deals that serve their selfish
ambitions.
On the other hand, there is a double faced system in every government agency that has two clear
purposes.
One is a new outward appearance brand to fool the
public into believing that the government is working in the favor of its
people.
The other, which is the culprit, is the old guard
whose sole purpose is to continue the historical looting and plunder of public
coffers.
This old-guard system is the reason you will find
strangers taking ownership of ministry boardrooms and making decisions that
cost the taxpayer in billions.
And one might ask, how did we get here? Of course it
did not happen in one day. Therefore, the clean-up process is likely to take a
while too.
This requires strategy, timing and patience!
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