In Kenya, appointment to public office through a political process is a poisoned chalice.
Rarely do you get into office and leave happily. Many who genuinely wanted to serve the people of Kenya have wrecked their careers because of the intrigues that visited them soon after they signed below the dotted line to accept the appointment.
Rent seekers, influence peddlers, tenderpreneurs will be on your case and the political class – particularly the appointing authority will have their expectations of you. Your hands are tied and you could easily find yourself without a job if you are not very careful. As a result, public institutions have been swamped by scandal after scandal —from the IEBC to the Kenya Pipeline.
It is not clear who is fighting who, but if you really look closely, the political class particularly the ‘effective’ appointing authority would not be too far away from the wars. The ‘effective’ appointing authority would have to be either the president or his deputy or whichever politician presented your name which in this case would also include Raila Odinga. These people own you. You have no life of your own!
In the last few days, many senior managers have fallen to boardroom intrigues and explosive scandals and now it happened that a good number of them have been Kalenjins. There have been all manner of theories – conspiracist or otherwise, forwarded as to why exactly these Kalenjins have been targeted. Senior Kalenjin managers at Kenya Power, the Kenya Pipeline Corporation, Kenyatta National Hospital, NSSF, NHIF and the NCPB, among others have had dramatic exits from their senior positions in the last few months.
There are those who opine that these Kalenjins were targeted as part of the wider drive to contain Deputy President William Ruto’s 2022 ambitions. Others say they were targeted because they were plainly incompetent, or that it was simply a case of being caught with the hands in the cookie jar.
Others are believed to have been tipped over following stiff boardroom battles and succession wars waged by parties interested in anything from tenders to power. These CEOs have not been exactly lucky. Some are in court, others are yet to be arraigned, while others opted to just call it a day and pursue other things.
VICTOR’S REVENGE
In the frenzied last days of the Moi administration, many Kalenjin CEOs and heads of various parastatals and public institutions, ministries and senior military and police officers were understandably apprehensive about their future. They did not know what to expect from the new administration particularly after the bitter rhetoric of the election campaigns. When the Kanu candidate conceded, they were quite sure that their goose was cooked. Indeed, true to their fears, soon after President Mwai Kibaki took over the presidency, they began to fall like dominos. But in true Kenyan fashion, they resorted to victimhood and their political leaders began to shout loud that they were being targeted simply for being Kalenjin. And so it was that the hue and cry among the Kalenjins over this saw them troop to the side of Raila Odinga and were founder members of ODM in 2005.
THE DATE IN COURT
Some of them knew it was only a matter of time before they would be charged, and so the tense moments of the first days of the Kibaki administration was spent trying to correct the books that would definitely expose them. And there was a whole lot of stuff they had done wrong. From curving up sacred forests in the city to allocating public land to the well-connected. They had a sackful of sins to contend with.
One of the first to fall was Linus Cheruiyot, who was the managing director of Kenya Pipeline, who was charged for a computer tender deal worth Sh339 million. He fled to the US.
His arraignment in court was considered part of scheme to ‘fix’ William Ruto, who was regarded as having massively benefited from raiding the coffers and the lands belonging to Kenya Pipeline. Ruto went to court too but was eventually exonerated. Cheruiyot’s successor, Ezekiel Komen, also would go down in 2010 over corruption charges before Shem Ochuodho and George Okungu also had their day in court. Then in came Charles Tanui, who, like his predecessors, ended up being charged. Then Joe Sang was the latest to find himself quitting Kenya Pipeline in controversial circumstances.
CORRIDORS OF JUSTICE
Perhaps the first Kalenjin CEO to end up in the corridors of Justice and to be convicted was Alfrick Kiptoo Birgen, who was the managing director of the giant Tana and Athi Rivers Development Authority (TARDA).
Tarda was an important parastatal that was involved in electricity generation in the seven forks dams and carrying out other functions, including irrigation. The parastatal was closely associated with the Ministry of Energy, which at this time was under Nicholas Biwott.
In 1991 Birgen was charged for stealing Sh3.9 million from the corporation, even though the amounts involved were much more than that. He told the court he had used the money to build himself a home in Kitengela. He and his wife had formed Mosong Ltd, which was the owner of the land on which Tarda had constructed the Sh3.4 million home.
Tarda had charged a profit of Sh500,000 and billed him Sh3.9 million, which he failed to pay despite occupying the house. In 1996, chief magistrate Uniter P Kidula found him guilty and jailed for him three years in what was one of the few graft convictions during the Moi era. However on appeal, judge JLA Osiemo quashed the conviction on July 29, 1998 and he effectively got away with it.
ENERGY AND CONFLICT
Perhaps it is the nature of the commodity — energy — that is causing such a great turnover of CEOs, who in this case happen to be Kalenjin.
Oil is identified as the single greatest driver of conflict in the world and so it follows that even the value chain is cursed. From drilling, refining, distributing and even selling,
you will seldom go a day without some form of conflict. Perhaps the quietest point in the oil value chain is in the fuel pump, where you will refill according to your ability and go your way. But there is a constant war between petrol station owners and oil marketers, and we saw the gun drama in which a former senator shot in the air when his Naivasha petrol station was being taken over by the oil marketer (led by Polycarp Igathe).
So it follows that the person sitting on the perch of the single largest oil distributor, the Kenya Pipeline, cannot sit pretty. So great is the focus on them that perhaps in the near future, only a robot should run the firm.
VICTIMS OF PATRONAGE
It is stated that when Jubilee came to power, Ruto insisted on having the Energy docket, which the President was happy to give him. Energy is considered the third most strategic ministry behind Finance and Internal Security.
It is also probably the one ministry that touches the lives of nearly every Kenyan — from the electricity in our homes, offices and factories, to the lanterns in our villages and the fuel in our motorbikes, cars, planes, lorries and trains. The Ministry of Energy is home to powerful parastatals from Kenya Power, Kenya Pipeline, KenGen, Ketraco (Kenya Electricity Transmission Company), GDC (Geothermal Development Corporation) and other agencies such as the Electricity Regulatory Commission will determine what each Kenyan will pay for energy.
Their budgets and turnovers are in hundreds of billions. They also receive billions through bilateral donors. Ruto immediately appointed his bosom friend Charles Keter, who had just been elected Kericho Senator. He could have appointed anyone but this was not just any ministry — you needed a safe pair of hands here.
So pundits quickly interpreted this to mean that Ruto was positioning the billions in the energy sector to fund his 2022 ambitions. On his part, Keter moved to appoint Kalenjins into Kenya Power and also in KenGen in what was seen as
making it easier to “get things done”. Everything moved well until we began hearing rumours that well-connected individuals were supplying strategic materials that were required in electricity distribution or had done something to tweak the books, or were overcharging for electricity or not accounting for tokens or had interests in pipeline construction…. Murmurs were muted and it would follow that we were actually seeing a kettle that was overboiling and it was a matter of time before we saw a major explosion.
THE RUTO FACTOR AND 2022
If indeed the CEOs that have been profiled and paraded in courts happened to be Kalenjins, then they may only be victims of a diminishing political patron — at least as far as the influence in the corridors of power is concerned.
It so happens that their perceived patron is one Ruto, who has many powerful enemies keen to clip his political wings. His enemies will stop at nothing to ensure he will not ascend to the top seat and then these CEOs were therefore mere pawns in a cataclysmic war that may not even end when the election of 2022 is behind us. When the commercial exploitation of the Turkana oil began, Petroleum was removed from the Energy docket and taken to the Mining docket. This move caused lots of friction and intrigue. It was immediately interpreted as a part of the wider move to constrict the flow of funds to the Ruto 2022 warchest.
It is not lost us that Linus Cheruiyot was Ruto’s close friend and when Narc came to power, he was the first victim of victor’s revenge. His petrol station near Mater Hospital ended up being run by a State House operative who took over when Cheruiyot fled in 2004. If you are a CEO and are regarded as being close to Ruto — whether you are a Kalenjin or not — is now not a very cool thing. If you know what is good for you, you should lie low like an envelop. There is a sword sharpened and trained for you!
BAD TIMING
We are now in a new concerted effort to rein in on runaway corruption. The war on graft is enjoying immense political goodwill and there is nobody who can stand in the way of a well-orchestrated scheme to bring down a CEO who is considered corrupt.
Kalenjin CEOs are, therefore, finding themselves in a very unfamiliar place: Standing in the middle of an armageddonic war against corruption, and which is, increasingly, targeting their patron.
So it is part, bad timing and part bad luck. Otherwise, I would specifically say they are any more corrupt than others. They are just guilty of flying too close to the sun.