Kenya’s cheating culture worrying

The severity of the problem was underlined when World Athletics President Seb Coe visited Kenya last March, and warned that athletes found guilty of falsifying their ages so that they could compete in junior events would be stripped off their titles and medals.

That the story did not generate howls of outrage and calls to action is quite telling, and very worrying. We are a cheating nation. We have no problem with liars and fraudsters in our midst, starting right from the highest office in the land down to presumably innocent teenagers.

We not only tolerate a whole culture of cheating, but encourage, promote and participate in it. The young boys and girls found to have falsified their ages so that they could run for Kenya in junior international events did not do so on their own. The cheating involved a whole network that must have included their parents, teachers and coaches, as well as Athletics Kenya officials and the officialdom responsible for the issuance of birth certificates and passports.

In other words, we are not just talking about a few young malcontents, but about an official, systematic and coordinated collusion intended to ensure Kenya wins medals at global junior events by sending over-age athletes.

Moral failings

The culprits in this case are not just the athletes caught out, but an entire ecosystem which goes even way beyond Athletics Kenya, to national ethical and moral failings.

We have seen the same thing with drug cheats. Kenya has been flagged as one of the countries marred by widespread doping. Dozens of athletes are caught and suspended every year for taking banned performance-enhancing drugs. It is the same corrupt ecosystem which aids and abets a scourge that may bring temporary glory, but ultimately affects the careers and health of young athletes.

It would be a simple thing for Athletics Kenya, anti-doping agencies to go beyond merely banning individual athletes who fail drug tests, and extend the net to coaches, agents, managers, training camps, athletics officials and others in the coordinated doping networks. But nobody will be do that because the very authorities responsible for guiding and protecting young athletes are in the pockets of the insidious mafiosi that now have de-facto control of the sport in Kenya.

Given the industrial-scale level of doping in Kenyan athletics, we are extremely fortunate that we have not yet been banned from sending athletes to global events. A time might come when Kenya will not be allowed representation at the Olympics, World athletics Championships, the African Games and other high-profile competitions.

We may be talking about greed on the part of athletics officials, but ultimately, we are talking about ourselves. We are part and parcel of the problem. We do not see lying, cheating, corruption and the ejection of morals and values as a problem.

Elaborate security operation

Look beyond sports, for instance, and go to the national school examinations systems. Quite often, we will marvel at the elaborate security operation put in place to curb cheating at the annual primary and secondary school end of year exams. We might be impressed at the sheer firepower out on display as tens of thousands or armed police officers fan out countrywide to secure examination papers and stand guard at schools.

It is a veritable waste of security manpower as those armed officers are not deployed to protect students from terrorists or other dangerous elements. They are there to prevent the students from cheating. The need for overwhelming police presence confirms the fact that examination cheating is a national scourge. It is not just the students who cheat, but, again, an entire ecosystem which involves their teachers, parents, exam officials, political and community leaders.

As a nation, we take it that cheating is okay as long as we are not caught. When some young man or woman is caught cheating, the culprit is hung on his or her own, while we refuse to dismantle the systems responsible, or to acknowledge our own role in the cheating culture.

It is the same mindset that leads us to elect for high leadership office individuals with known propensity for lying and stealing; then we forever whine and complain when those same fellows we placed up there steal from us.

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Mr Gaitho, an independent journalist, is former NMG Managing Editor for Special Projects. [email protected].