FINANCE-KENYA: Bribery Highest among Police Officers

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Katy Salmon

NAIROBI, Jan 24 2003 (IPS) - A survey into bribery in Kenya released Friday shows that the police are still the worst culprits, with 97 percent of respondents being asked for a bribe. But they are now taking less money than before.

The amount of money ordinary Kenyans spend bribing the police has dropped from 35 U.S. dollars to 16 U.S. dollars per month over the last year, according to the survey released by Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organisation, working to eliminate corruption.

The survey found that corrupt officials are now accepting smaller bribes and taking less punitive actions against those who refuse to pay up.

David Ndii, the author of the report, attributes this to increasing confidence among ordinary people to stand up to corruption.

Last year’s report, the first of its kind in Kenya, attracted massive publicity, hitting the front pages of several newspapers. The police were forced to call a press conference to defend themselves against what they termed ‘’malicious propaganda”.

The balance of power between the police and citizens appears to be shifting in the people’s favour.

‘’Because the police are so much in the spotlight, the citizens feel more empowered to resist extortion by the police. So the negotiating power of people is much higher,” Ndii points out.

‘’And of course, if citizens are more aggressive or resisting, the policemen are more likely to back down than they would have before,” he adds.

The report’s authors are hoping that next year’s bribery index will show a dramatic decrease in the vice.

Since the survey was carried out in June, a new government has come to power in Kenya, promising zero-tolerance towards corruption.

The new president, Mwai Kibaki, has asked all Kenyans to help in the fight against corruption. This has led to several citizens’ arrests of traffic policemen demanding bribes from public service vehicles. Another reason that TI are so hopeful about change is that their former director, John Githongo was appointed Permanent Secretary in the newly created Department of Governance and Ethics earlier this month.

However, a broader look at the war against corruption across the region gives a hint of some of the pitfalls that may lie ahead for Kibaki’s government.

TI’s Global Corruption Report 2003 warns that ‘’government actions are often just a veneer, intended to meet donor conditionality in a region where most governments depend on foreign aid to support their budgets”.

For example, in neighbouring Uganda, donor-funding accounts for 52 percent of the public expenditure.

Kibaki is about to introduce legislation requiring that public officials declare their wealth annually, to prevent them looting from public coffers with impunity.

But Uganda has had a leadership code for more than seven years, with very little impact. TI attributes this to its weak enforcement mechanisms. It seems action is only taken against the corrupt when the political interests of those in power are not directly threatened.

‘’In Uganda, Justice Julia Sebutinde’s commission of inquiry into corruption in the police force in 1999 recommended that certain police officers be dismissed. The officers were considered hostile to the regime, and the government acted,” says the TI report.

‘’Her second commission, which in 2001 investigated alleged corruption in the purchase of sub-standard military helicopters, allegedly implicated the president’s brother. Her report has not been made public and there has been no follow-up since it was submitted to the defence ministry in August 2001,’ ‘ it recounts.

This example illustrates a common problem – that legislation is meaningless without the political will to back it up.

In West Africa, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Togo have all set up donor-instigated anti-corruption bodies, which have proven almost completely ineffective. Nigeria’s federal anti-corruption commission has been criticised for failing to bring a single case against a senior government official since it was founded in Sep 2000.

‘’Institutions are often established to appease international actors while government’s endeavour not to alienate political allies at home through anti-corruption crackdowns,” explains Niyi Alabi of TI.

One man who has dared to challenge the donors, with some success, is Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. He has pressurised Western government to demonstrate their own commitment to anti-corruption efforts by repatriating money that ‘’has been stolen from our treasuries and hidden in their financial institutions”.

Nigerians have subsequently seen 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in funds stolen from Nigeria by the late dictator Sani Abacha returned to them, in exchange for the dropping of theft and money-laundering charges against his sons and one of his business associates.

Tanzania is another success story on the continent, where former minister for works, communication and transport, Nalaila Kiula has been subjected to a lengthy trial on charges of misappropriating 3.7 million U.S. dollars of donor funds intended for road construction.

TI’s Global Report highlights another critical factor in the war against corruption – the role of the judiciary.

For Kenya’s government to succeed in cracking down on corruption, assuming that it has the political will that so many other governments seem to lack, there is urgent need to reform the judiciary.

‘’A corrupt law enforcement officer who obstructs the pursuit of justice can render law enforcement ineffective in the fight against crime in general. This in turn can undermine public confidence and trust,” says Ron Noble, Secretary General of Interpol in the TI report.

Kenyan Chief Justice Bernard Chunga, who presided over hundreds of kangaroo court trials in the 1980s, is coming under increasing pressure to resign. Kibaki, currently in hospital, has not yet made any comment on the subject.

However, Kiraitu Murungi, Justice Minister, is promising that the new government is about to purge the judiciary.

‘’In the next few weeks, very many people are going to be charged with various offences of corruption,” he says.

Kenyans are encouraged by Friday’s news that a warrant has been issued for the arrest of a senior judge, Justice Samuel Oguk – the first time in Kenya’s history that such a warrant has been made. Oguk has been questioned over the way he handled a civil case between the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) and Uhuru Highway Development over the ownership of the Grand Regency Hotel, which is situated in Nairobi, according to the Kenya’s leading, Daily Nation newspaper.

The paper claimed that Oguk authorised the removal of a CBK manager, who had been assigned to hotel, which was in receivership, replacing him with one favourable to the hotel’s bankrupt owner, Kamlesh Pattni.