A key recommendation from the Kenya Bribery Index 2025, published by Transparency International last month, is for Parliament to enact the Conflict of Interest legislation.
On the day the particular law received presidential assent last week, the chairman of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, which is charged with administering it by chasing down public officers who fail to disclose assets, offered a fervent prayer calling on heaven to strike the corrupt.
The ink had barely dried on the presidential assent when former President Uhuru Kenyatta called at State House.
His family had been in the headlines for selling sand to construct his pet project, the Nairobi Expressway, when he was in office. A tax dispute has exposed the payment of a Sh1 billion dividend to the owners of a company linked to the Kenyatta family.
The Conflict of Interest legislation has been in the making for at least two and a half years, but it has a longer antecedent. Members of Parliament were first required to create a register of interests as part of the reforms proposed under the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation agreements. Of course, they ignored it. Some 54 years ago, the Duncan Ndegwa Commission on the public service recommended that “government should consider requiring all senior civil servants to make a complete statement of their interests”.
Successive legislatures have played Ping-Pong with conflict of interest over the years, and even after a Bill was drafted, they watered it down to nothingness. The Conflict of Interest Bill presented to the President in April this year was sent back to the legislature with a truckload of recommendations.
One of the most poorly kept secrets in Kenya is that individuals seek and occupy public offices in order to trade with the government. The higher you go, the cooler it becomes. Beneath the public performance of rigorous competitive tendering is the bottom line captured in the sad short story by Magayu K. Magayu: ‘Do you know anybody?’
Seemingly necessary and benign government programmes are business sinecures for the proxies of senior officials in government that the Conflict of Interest Act does not have the capacity to catch. Again, the list of which government official is behind what government tender is a poorly kept secret. Wealth declaration forms remain secret, and so separating fact from rumour is a Sisyphean task. Perhaps if wealth declarations were not treated as a State secret, the public would not be so suspicious of everyone who holds high office. It would provide proof that in fact, anti-corruption authorities are not shielding anybody from investigation and prosecution.
Anti-corruption legislation
Former Attorney-General Justin Muturi recently remarked on X: “The signing of the Conflict of Interest Bill, 2025, into law is yet another addition to an already full shelf of anti-corruption legislation in Kenya. But laws alone have never been the problem. We must be honest with ourselves: fish rots from the head.”
Ruto inks law that will bar corrupt officials from grabbing tenders
The entrenched perception that corruption is a practice of the leadership has spawned an epidemic of copycats in every sphere of life — from hospitals to schools, private business to social sectors and families. Matters are not helped by the fact that the institutions mandated with dealing with this malaise keep winking at the problem. As it were, facing corruption accusations in Kenya is the first step towards ascending to high public office. The old tactics of naming and shaming corruption suspects have boomeranged on the nation by catapulting the objects of public odium into electoral darlings.
Few people in Kenya see the use in reporting corruption because they suspect that no action will be taken at best, or they will face reprisal at worst.
Corruption has evolved into two categories: petty bribery, which citizens experience on a day-to-day basis; and massive looting, whose effects they feel every day. Still, the Bribery Index offers important pointers on the pathologies of the disease.
Public confidence in anti-corruption institutions is generally low, except for the office of the Auditor-General. The Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, which is central to preventing and punishing corruption, does not enjoy the public confidence to prosecute this war. When asked to state their most-preferred contribution to the fight against corruption, 42 per cent of respondents in the Transparency International survey said that they would vote for good leadership.
According to the same survey, 71 per cent of citizens believe the level of corruption rose compared to the previous year, and an additional 12 per cent observed that the levels of corruption remained at the same level. We are in a state of surrender.
For the past two decades, the default response to corruption has been to enact new laws whose effect is hardly felt. It is argued that law is an instrument the ruling classes use to perpetuate their supremacy.
Perhaps, a time has come for the country to take stock of what 20 years of lawfare have delivered in the struggle against public corruption by assessing how successfully laws have been implemented and enforced.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected]
