Gerald Kiilu’s hopes for justice rose for the first time in two decades when he approached the parliamentary Public Petitions Committee on November 23, 2023.
A member of the committee called him with encouragement on the positive prospects of his petition before it was casually suggested that a Sh10 million consideration would oil the delivery of a favourable decision.
Mr Kiilu has been seeking assistance to collect his Sh46 million compensation as recommended by a Ministry of Labour Tribunal on February 7, 2008, for the years he served as a cashier at Barclays Bank of Kenya (now Absa Bank) before his dismissal.
Once it became clear that the Sh10 million ‘facilitation’ could not be raised for the committee, another MP reached out to Mr Kiilu, asking that he quickly rustle up Sh5 million. Since no money was raised, the committee took a decision to dismiss the petition on April 22, 2025, with eight of the 15 committee members signing the report. Some of the signatures, such as that of the chairman, were for committee members who had not attended a single hearing. In fact, the committee chairman was not in office when the petition was lodged.
In June 2023, Absa had published a notice in the newspapers inviting former Barclays Bank of Kenya employees who had left the institution between 1971 and 2009 to claim their pension, and since Mr Kiilu had reached 50 years, he wrote to the fund managers.
He had notified the petitions committee about the strange letter he received from Zamara Actuaries, Administrators & Consultants Ltd declaring that he was not entitled to a deferred pension since had not completed 10 years of service as required by the Fund Rules. He had, in fact, completed 12 years but the fund managers claimed that he had only worked for the bank for just over two years. Even this drew no remark from the petitions committee.
It is not the first falsehood that the Absa Bank would have been caught in over the Gerald Kiilu matter: At the time of his dismissal in January 2005, the bank said Mr Kiilu incurred a loss of Sh149,000, which was borrowed from him by the then retail manager. A report of on-the-spot investigations carried out on November 30, 2004 revealed that in fact, Mr Kiilu had a shortage of Sh366.10.
A colleague of Mr Kiilu’s for whom an investigation at the same time found to have had a shortage of about Sh30,000 was not dismissed. “The evidence of investigation revealed a loss of Sh366 through a process that appeared to target an individual,” says the parliamentary report.” Mr Kiilu believes he was a victim of witch-hunting, discrimination, intimidation, nepotism and malice.
After Mr Kiilu obtained a decision in his favour from the tribunal at the Labour ministry, the bank began a long journey of tying him up in legal knots, which ended when the Employment and Labour Relations Court refused to hear his case because he had not lodged a certificate from the Commissioner of Labour confirming that all possible avenues for settling the dispute had been exhausted.
A challenge of the decision at the Court of Appeal did not succeed either. This then was the crux for the petitions committee’s decision — that Mr Kiilu’s matter had been decided by a court of law and could not be revisited. It is legally ingenious but extremely duplicitous.
Parliamentary corruption is expected to be standard fare, but it hurts real people. The end game of some discussions of parliamentary corruption is more insidious than can be imagined.
PJ O’Rouke’s A Parliament of Whores is called “an everyman's guide to Washington”, which savagely dissects the ethical foibles, corruption, and bureaucratic workings of the American political system, but the game has been perfected in newer democracies like Kenya.
A decade ago, an envoy asked the then Chief Justice in this writer’s hearing for Sh100 million as facilitation for a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee to stave off a “damaging” and negative report. As it were, that watchdog committee was caught in the eye of a corruption storm so tempestuous it resulted in its own disbandment.
It should follow that Dr William Ruto’s attack on parliamentary corruption would seem like a sensible thing. Unfortunately, it is not unlike the male customer of the red light district condemning flesh-peddling. Dr Ruto has bought the majority in the National Assembly and the Senate, ring-fenced the speakerships and the committees. His policy proposals hardly face any oversight or resistance. However, if Parliament has developed a corruption habit, it is because the Executive has whetted its appetite for it.
The criticism of Parliament, especially from Dr Ruto, is a disingenuous ploy to collapse public confidence in the institutions of the legislature rather than to reform them. Kenyans must ask themselves what they are being invited to love if the person who has participated in corrupting the legislature is the one calling out the vice.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected]
