Institutionalized corruption is eating the very moral fiber of our country, Kenya. It will bring us down to our knees, aided and abetted by politicians, a bloated bureaucracy and a willing entrepreneurial class.

When will it end?

Corruption is essentially termed as an “impairment of integrity, virtue or moral principle; depravity, decay, and/or an inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means, a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct, and/or an agency or influence that corrupts.”

Corruption, when applied as a technical term, is a general concept describing any organized, interdependent system in which part of the system is either not performing duties it was originally intended to, or performing them in an improper way, to the detriment of the system’s original purpose.

I am sure all of us Kenyans and Africans have come across individuals who fit the above description. Political corruption, as the dysfunction of a political system or institution in which government officials, political officials or employees seek illegitimate personal gain through actions such as bribery, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, patronage, graft, and embezzlement. Political corruption is a specific form of rent seeking, where access to politics is organized with limited transparency, limited competition and directed towards promoting narrow interests (rent seeking is not to be confused with property rental).

Corruption in Kenya is so institutionalized that the world Bank estimates that it is a crisis beyond a crisis…It’s THE GREATEST SINGLE threat to development and the fight against poverty anywhere in Africa. (In my opinion it’s worse than AIDS and Malaria). It is not an imminent threat — it is real and existing.

Law enforcement, judicial and other legal avenues have failed, and I have yet to see to see a serious conviction by the anti-corruption body.

This has led to widespread poverty, gross failure of public institutions and ultimately — the lack of confidence in Government and social chaos. The present coalition government of Kenya has yet to come up with a plan to control, or abate the problem.

We lack a RICO law (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), commonly referred to as RICO Act or RICO in the US.

Does Kenya need a Rico Law? Yes we do. This should include mandatory ethical training for all public officials, including Law enforcement, procurement, contractual, legal and judicial, parliamentary and other key institutions.

No stone should be left unturned.

To be continued.

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