Best way to fight corruption
Focus on the civil service where graft is most lethal rather than in politics where it is most politically attractive
Over the
last three weeks, government of Uganda has done what was previously
unthinkable. First, police rearrested the ringleaders in the scam in the
ministry of Public Service that saw our country lose close to Shs 500
billion paid to ghost pensioners. Second, it subjected them to rigorous
interrogations, which led to the recovery of 256 titles of properties
they had accumulated. These properties have an expected value of over
Shs 800 billion. Third, it froze their bank accounts and placed caveats
on their assets. Fourth, police is initiating the process of recovering
the money by confiscating the properties and handing them to government
for auction.
There is
also little evidence that our democratic process can fight corruption as
effectively as the public mood would demand. This is because
politicians, even when elected, possess interests different from those
of their constituents. In most corruption fights, politicians seek their
personal benefit first (if someone can bribe them too) and the public
interest later. And when they do, as they often pretend in our
parliament, it is to use corruption as a platform to score political
points against the ruling party (as in when opposition is fighting the
NRM) or for intra party struggles for power (as when NRM fight among
themselves). In fact it is this political posturing on corruption that
has made it difficult to fight the more cancerous form of this malaise
in our country.
To combat
corruption in today’s Uganda, one would have first to give less priority
to political corruption (by this I mean the corruption of powerful NRM
politicians and their immediate cronies) and focus on that corruption
that is purely criminal. Political corruption helps NRM maintain its
electoral coalition. So there is little incentive on the ruling party to
cut the hand that feeds its electoral machine. However, not every
corrupt act is politically sanctioned or functional. Most corruption is
by civil servants, high and low. And this is the most lethal as it makes
public goods and services difficult to deliver. NRM can have a vested
interest in fighting this form of corruption – and one reason the
struggle against the thieves in the pension scam seems to be working.
Although
civil service (or nonpolitical) corruption may constitute 90 percent of
all theft of public resources, it is politically unappealing to fight
it. This is because the public thinks, quite wrongly, that the biggest
theft is by the powerful politicians like ministers. Yet experience
shows that most money is stolen not even by top civil servants –
permanent secretaries, under secretaries, directors and commissioners –
but by “small people”; accountants, nurses, head teachers, clerks,
auditors, district administrators, procurement officers etc. But their
names don’t excite public passions and don’t make good news headlines.
Take the
case of the “Temangalo scandal” that dominated news headlines,
parliament, the presidency and public discourse for four months in 2008.
It involved Shs 11 billion. NSSF bought 100 acres of Prime Minister
(then security minister) Amama Mbabazi’s land at Shs 24 million per acre
against an evaluation of Shs 18m. Even the worst critic of Mbabazi
would say if he cheated NSSF at all (and I insist he did not), his theft
would have been a meager Shs 600m. The civil servants in the ministry
of public service stole almost Shs 500 billion and we hear only a
whisper but never a shout at it in the press or parliament.
The
confluence of politics with fighting corruption has made the debate on
the problem lively and heated. It has also made it seem fairer as the
targets are the powerful. But it has also made it less effective in
generating the results our country needs. First, because it tends to
target regime cronies, it induces the president and the other arms of
the state to come to the defense of the accused – hence generating more
noise and less action. Second, it diverts attention from the more
insidious form of corruption that is widespread among many civil
servants where NRM and the president can be mobilized to support the
effort.
I suspect
the struggle to recover stolen billions by confiscating the properties
of the thieves in the pension scam is on track to success because there
are no powerful politicians involved. So the NRM has little political
interest to defend in protecting them and everything to gain in pursuing
the case. If NRM can be persuaded to focus on fighting this form of
corruption (the non political one) it can realise some measure of
success. Yet this strategy cannot win public support. This is because
the masses are driven, as Karl Popper said, by the sentiment for justice
rather than the articulation of factual truths.
Handcuffing
a powerful minister, especially one related to the President, and
sending them to jail, even if he has stolen only Shs 1 million, seems a
more just thing to do than arresting an accounts clerk in a ministry who
has stolen Shs 100 billion. This is because punishing an accounts
clerk, even when he has stolen billions instead of a powerful minister
who has stolen millions, seems like catching the little flies and
letting the big bugs escape. The public desires to see action against
the powerful, not those considered weak. Here we see the contradiction
between what public sentiment may demand and what better public policy
would achieve. Until we overcome this bias, the fight against corruption
will not peak.
Africa and Obama’s second term
How the newly re-elected US president is not the solution but the problem for Africa
Last week,
Barak Obama was re-elected president of the United States. Since his
first election in 2008, many African elites were happy that at least
“one of us” has won the presidency of the world’s only, albeit
declining, superpower. Behind this “one of us” label lies hope that
Obama, being “black”, would do more to “help” Africa fix its problems
like dictatorship, poverty, corruption and bad government. And it seems
from his rhetoric during his first election campaigns that he would try
to “fix” Africa. Nothing is scarier about Obama than this ambition.
Indeed,
Western attempt to solve Africa’s problems, however well intentioned in
their aims and however grandiose in their idealism, are part of the
problem not the solution for our continent. This is because any Western
leader would come with a set of assumptions and prejudices about the
source of our failures – corruption, bad leadership and lack of
democracy. When I was young and intelligent, I treated these assumptions
as manifest truth. Now that I have grown old and stupid, I see them as
symptoms of a more complex structural problem.
Here is my
first point: It is unlikely that Obama will sit around a table with a
group of African politicians, businesspersons, civil society activists
and civil servants to craft a solution for Africa. Even if this were
done, it would only be ceremonial. Therefore, the blueprint to fix our
continent would be designed in Washington by people who know a lot
theoretically about Africa but have little or no experience with actual
practical complexities of its politics. To attempt a large-scale plan
from such a position is the stuff that most delusions are born of.
Secondly,
many people from the West come with a set of assumptions about
institutions and policies that have worked well in the West and think
these can be replicated in Africa to produce similar results. This view
is supported by a large number of African intellectuals and lies at the
heart of our continent’s problems. We ignore the fact that these
policies and institutions that have served the West so well were born of
a specific context. It involved changing technology, which fostered
structural change giving birth to political contests by emergent social
groups. The resultant political contests took place in a specific set of
values, norms and traditions and these produced a set of institutions
and policies to respond to those realities.
Subtract
all these processes and pick the end result, the institutions, and then
copy and paste them unto a continent with a different social structure,
history, skills, culture, norms – name it – and think it can work. That
is one of the major delusions of all large-scale domestic or
foreign-engineered change. I add “domestic” projects because I am
acutely aware of some large-scale projects of national transformation
like Ujaama that were locally bred and turned out to be a disaster. So
the fact that something is locally generated does not automatically make
it desirable.
For many
years, the West, with the support of African intellectuals has attempted
various projects of modernising Africa by replicating Western values,
norms and institutions often with disastrous results. But the advocates
of this “modernisation” project never give up. The 1980s and 90s
Structural Adjustment Programs were one such experiment. These
experiments lacked legitimacy because their promoters were largely
white. Therefore, fear of being accused of racism tended to moderate
their actions.
However,
Obama is not restrained by such accusations. Being “black” and of
African origins, he enjoys near-unanimous support on our continent.
Local elites, frustrated at their inability to influence their destiny,
have been waiting for a messiah from the West, especially America, to do
for them by diktat what they need to do through political struggle i.e.
dictate the pace and direction of change. Now these local intellectual
elites have someone with the necessary legitimacy, born almost entirely
of his assumed racial identity, to do this work.
Armed with
an ideology that believes in the use of government power to promote
social change, combined with his personal sense of destiny to change the
world, Obama is the kind of man to attempt a large-scale experiment of
social engineering in Africa. He loves to preach, to lecture and to
guide. His messianic image of himself as the solver of every problem
using government presents our nations a very big challenge. I admit that
a lot of Obama’s ambitions in Africa are shared by a large cross
section of our intellectuals. They would need a Gestapo to implement
them.
Here is my
point: our problems are largely (certainly not entirely) domestically
generated, as are the demands to solve them. Often the problem has been
that in trying to shape solutions to them, we rely too much on imported
theories. The mismatch between suggested solutions and actual realities
on the ground has been a major cause of failure on our continent.
Africa’s
problems are primarily political, born of a complex web or power
relationships from the village to the city. They cannot be solved by
foreign diktat. Only domestic political struggle can. Foreign assistance
is vital but can only succeed if it seeks to support local agents of
change. When foreign assistance comes with solutions like those Obama
outlined in his 2009 speech in Accra, then we are back on a slippery
slope. In such circumstances, the best Obama can do for Africa is to
fold his hands and do nothing. Africa’s savior may be the continuation
of the economic crisis in America, which may divert Obama’s next big
plan for our continent.
Who will fight corruption?
With billions in stolen funds, the thieves are in a position to compromise investigations, prosecution and judgment
Over the
last few months, it has been exposed that officials in the office of the
prime minister and in the ministry of public service stole over Shs 600
billion (US$ 250m). Our country has bad roads, 26 mothers die in child
birth per day, 80,000 kids die every year from preventable diseases (in
ten years you have a number equal to the Rwanda genocide of 1994),
children study under mango trees for lack of classrooms, limited
agricultural extension services and supply of electricity is only to
eight percent of our people. Therefore Uganda needs every coin of public
funds to serve its citizens. However, this collective vision has been
lost. Instead, we see a pattern of actions where the interests of the
many have been usurped by the greed of a few.
Hence,
official loot becomes the glue that holds together NRM’s multi ethnic
and multi religious coalition. Otherwise, how would one keep such
diverse men as Kahinda Otafiire, Gilbert Bukenya and Amama Mbabazi under
the same roof? Remove corruption and the system could crack. Rather
than see it as a criminal act by individuals seeking material
self-aggrandizement, my view has been to see corruption as a social
institution through which political power is organised, distributed,
exercised and reproduced.
From this
perspective, one can understand that allegations of corruption against
powerful politicians and their auxiliaries fit this instrumentalist
view. However, corruption in Uganda also involves “small people”: the
nurse at a local clinic who sells to her patients drugs that are meant
to be free; to a head teacher at a rural primary school who pockets the
capitation grant; the traffic police constable on the street who lets an
offender go free in exchange for kitu kidogo i.e. a bribe; the agricultural extension worker who does not show up for his job but earns a salary.
How does
NRM politically gain from such small-scale yet widespread corruption?
Besides, this has the most detrimental effects on public service
delivery. There is a saying that a fish begins rotting from the head.
Once you have the top creaking with corruption, it infects the entire
body politic. This is theoretically convincing but empirically not
always true. I have read many studies of corruption in high places in
Italy, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan that make ours look like
chicken feed. However, elites in these countries, while corrupt at the
top, tend to discipline small public sector functionaries.Thus, in spite
of corruption, work gets done.
In
Uganda’s case, it is obvious that NRM also suffers the costs of
corruption. For instance, its national and international reputation is
badly tainted. During the last election campaigns, the failure of public
services was an important part of Kizza Besigye’s platform. Even in
rural areas where I covered Besigye and President Yoweri Museveni’s
rallies, Museveni was accosted with complaints of failures in public
service delivery. Each time he tried to name his achievements in service
delivery he would be booed by his supporters. He therefore adopted a
strategy of deflecting blame from himself to local government
functionaries. It worked but for how long?
Therefore,
even if NRM may benefit from corruption, it also suffers its costs.
Many people harmed by corruption are its supporters. Perhaps NRM does a
cost-benefit analysis and finds that it gains more than it loses through
corruption. But this also means it is not always a beneficiary of every
act of corruption. For example, how does NRM benefit when people like
Godfrey Kazinda, David Oloka and Christopher Obey steal billions?
Surely, NRM should have a vested interest in fighting certain forms of
corruption.
Why then
is the political will missing? Perhaps it is not just political will but
actual capacity to take on the thieves. Assuming this government (or
any other newly elected government) decided to fight corruption. Would
it change the current trajectory? To fight the corrupt, government would
have to rely on existing institutions and manpower – the police, the
Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the Inspectorate of Government
and the judiciary. But with thieves commanding billions, how many
officials from these institutions can resist the temptation of Shs 100m
delivered at their doorstep? Besides, the existing legal regime favors
the corrupt.
For
example, having stolen over shs 400 billion through ghost pensions, Obey
and Oloka were taken to police and given bond. Now they are free on the
streets and it is their legal right to be. Does anyone think that they
are out on the streets waiting for their day in court? Is it possible
that they could be busy trying to use their billions to influence police
investigations, to buy off state attorneys in the DPP’s office, using
their allies to hide evidence, sell off their properties and send their
monies to numbered accounts abroad?
Should we
be surprised that in spite of mountains of evidence, the DPP has not yet
preferred any charges against them – two months later? The choice
facing any government official trying to nail them is overnight riches
(because they can pay handsomely) or the thankless job of fighting a
lost cause i.e. serving a government that pays them peanuts. The state
cannot compete with the thieves in bribing its own officials to be more
committed to the public good.
Corruption
has become too deeply entrenched that fighting it may require a
combination of political will backed by the arbitrary use of power – a
willingness to be ruthless. It seems to me that any leader willing to
take on this monster would have to disregard due process, run rough shod
over peoples’ legal rights and use extra legal means to bring social
justice. That may be necessary, but is it desirable?
Kazinda interview: ‘Bigirimana planted evidence at my house……’
On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, a member of UAH (whom we
prefer to keep secret due to the sensitivity of this matter) had gone
to Murchison Bay prison in Luzira to visit a relative, and ran into the now
embattled former Principal Accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister
Geoffrey Kazinda, and asked him a few questions on record. Kazinda also managed
to photocopy a number of documents from his file and gave them to him. Below
are excerpts.
Kazinda was in hospital ward upper
floor bed number 8 by the window side facing the main Upper Prison, and there,
he can virtually watch every vehicle in-coming to Murchison Bay area.
Admin: So Kazinda what happened to you, we are reading a lot about
you in the papers over the scam in the OPM.
Kazinda: (gives sheepish smile, and lets out a prolonged hearty
laugh) Well, Mr. X, am glad to see here, I didn’t know you could think about
me. I am here, you know like you could have been in the Democratic Republic of
Congo the two of you, and problems crop up. So, your friend with whom you were
in Congo knows that you are the only other person who knows what you did there,
and decides to deal with you, if possible eliminate. So, in my case am
incarcerated here because the PS, Mr. Pius Bigirimana wants to keep me here. He
knows if am out he cannot be a free man; I will let out a lot of information
about the problems in OPM as far back as we began working together.
Admin: But surely, Bigirimana cannot keep you here indefinitely,
after three months on remand you may get out, but, also, you will have your day
in court so you telling your side of the story.
Kazinda: Yes that is true, but he hopes he can manipulate the system
as he maligns me along like what you hear him saying in parliament before PAC.
He is using the police especially IGP Kayihura to keep me here.
Admin: So what is your next step now that you are here, and each
time you are suppose to appear before court you claim you are too sick to attend
court?
Kazinda: No. As you can see, I am here in hospital admitted. In
fact the doctors here have told me they can no longer manage my case from here.
I need to get bail and travel to Nairobi for a further operation and treatment.
Admin: So what next anyway?
Kazinda: I am but when I get out am going to get a lot of money
because of this malicious arrest and prosecution by the state on the
instigation of the PS Bigirimana using the police, Grace Akullo and Kayihura.
Admin: You mean you are just being framed, you are totally
innocent?
Kazinda: I am sure am innocent but we have done many things
together with Bigirimana, and he knows that when I get out he may not be as
safe. He should be here with me. If anything, he is the accounting officer
responsible for many of much of the mess. But as you can see his testimonies in
parliament before PAC he does not have the right answers. I am the one with
some of the answers but he chose to deal with me as way of killing evidence and
they get nowhere with those investigations.
Admin: Why did you use the domant account to steal public funds?
Kazinda: Some time back the people in finance ministry asked all
accounting officers to indicate in writing which accounts were active and
dormant, and which of those they wanted to leave open. This particular was then
left open by the PS Bigirimana, he knows it and the Accountant General also
knows the truth. It wasn’t me who opened or used. Bigirimana is signatory to
that account.
Admin: Do you mean to say all these things we hear are really
lies about you?
Kazinda: Many of the things were with his approval. He approved
many of those things being talked about. But, am glad when he wanted me out he
chose to use the forensic audit. I was never part of the audit. I was never
interviewed. And so, most of the things are pinning him and he must be wishing
the ground could swallow him. He did not know how far this thing would spin,
and it is too late for him.
Admin: Do you mean you never forged Bigirimana’s signatures to
withdraw money from banks including Bank of Uganda?
Kazinda: Never. I never forged any documents. Indeed no documents
as far as I know were forged, and the PS knows as much. Those cheques were all
signed by Bigirimana. In fact the PS is never sure of his own signatures, and
we many cheques that were queried by Bank of Uganda and returned to us in OPM.
They were genuinely signed by the PS but unfortunately he can never get his
signature sight at once, he always tries many times before he gets it right.
Admin: You mean you did not steal cheque books, how about the
ones recovered from your residence in Bukoto?
Kazinda: that is why I told am going to get a lot of money from this
arrest and malicious prosecution. I was not present when the police search took
place. I was never asked to sign those forms after the search. All those are
concoctions by the PS, he is the one who personally brought a kavera full of
documents and gave it to my mother, and the police have not bothered to verify
them.
Admin: Why to your mother, and how did he know where your mother
stays?
Kazinda: The PS has ever visited me at my home. He knows my house,
and my mother lives next to me, and they know each other.
Admin: Where and when did Bigirimana visit you?
Kazinda: When I fell sick and took leave from June 04, 2012 to
begining of July. I think he visited me towards the end of June; I have it on
my records. But with a hind sight, I think he did not come to visit me just as
a friend and his officer, he also came to survey my residence so he could come
or send some people later to plant documents.
Admin: Why do you think so?
Kazinda: the Ps returned that evening and found he could not
penetrate my residence, and so, he chose to give my mother the kavera full of
documents which police later claimed, and used the press to say were recovered
from residence. It was to blackmail me.
Admin: So were the forged cheques among them?
Kazinda: Those are not forgeries; they are genuine signed by the PS.
Let me tell you the genesis of those cheques. It began some time, I think at
the beginning of 2010 during the landslides in Bududa. The then Prime minister
Prof. Nsibambi (Apolo) was returning from Bududa and he was with the PS when
their helicopter crushed somewhere in Busoga… Bugiri. Prof. Nsibambi took sick
leave, I think of about two months. The PS, Bigirimana never took sick leave
but chose to work from home because he complained of terrible back and joint
pains. The PS stayed home for about two weeks, and during all that I used to
take to him cheques to sign from his home. In fact, I used to take them to him
in his bed room. Not once, twice, three times, but many times I sat with him on
his bed as he signs those cheques which were indeed very many. Many times he
would try over and over until he gets his signature right. All those cheques
which he signed but with faulty signature, I returned them for custody because
they are government property auditors could come and ask for them.
Admin: You mean you went into his bed room?
Kazinda: Yes, because he was the principal signatory and there was
no way we get money to run the operations of OPM. He asked me to take them to
his bedroom.
Admin: Where does he live..I mean his residence?
Kazinda: Now he has shifted to Bugolobi, but at that time he was
staying in those flats in Nakasero as you go past Emin Pasha hotel. I don’t
remember the name of the road. There are some flats there I don’t know who owns
them.
Admin: How about absconding from duty and refusing to write a
handover report?
Kazinda: the PS is telling lies. I never absconded. He gave me an
official sick leave from June 4, 2012 to July 8, 2012. (Kazinda gives me a
photocopy of the leave memo dated 3rd June, 2012, and it endorsed by Bigirimana
in which the PS wrote; PA. It is unfortunate. However take note that I am not
aware of what went wrong. We shall discuss when you report back. Signed PS
dated 4/6/12).
Admin: So if the PS gave you leave why do you think he turned on
you?
Kazinda: The PS knows better why he did it. But I think that for a
while the PS had developed a dislike for me and the senior accountant under me.
He had cause his transfer, and ensured that someone he liked in the ministry of
health, Mr. Mugumya was given accelerated promotion, and who was eventually
posted to replace me even before I returned from sick leave.
Admin: Why did you refuse to handover and instead went
underground>
As you can see the PS secured
someone he wanted to replace me and got him posted even before I completed my
sick leave. Secondly, he got me transferred during that leave. Thirdly
according to my letter of transfer by the Accountant General, I was given up
August 31, 2012 as the date for handover. But all these maneuvers came in
between when I was on leave, and you can see the PS’s letter to the IGP,
Auditor General, Accountant General, and IGG were all about the same time in
July before I could complete my sick leave.
Admin: Will you testify before PAC?
Kazinda: I am not interested because as you can see the PS wants to
kill evidence and that is why he is claiming Kazinda stole all the vital
documents yet in his letter to the IGP he says he had put a second padlock on
my office door. Also, as you can see from his testimony before PAC the PS does
not gave all the information, and I don’t want to go there and give some of the
information that may exonerate him. The mistrust is no mutual between him and
me.
End
On Wednesday, December 5, 2012, a member of UAH (whom we
prefer to keep secret due to the sensitivity of this matter) had gone
to Murchison Bay prison in Luzira to visit a relative, and ran into the now
embattled former Principal Accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister
Geoffrey Kazinda, and asked him a few questions on record. Kazinda also managed
to photocopy a number of documents from his file and gave them to him. Below
are excerpts.End
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