Budgeting for corruption: its campaigns season again!

The speed at which some development projects are being implemented at is astonishing. With the General Election under a year away, elected members in different political offices are in a rush – a mad rush indeed – to complete projects, some of which were launched three years back and done at a staggering rate to be ready a few days or within a month for a handover or opening before the next vote.

  It is all about political survival. Having enjoyed the trappings of power, and especially the benefits that come with being a holder of that political office, no politician is willing to bequeath their seats easily. Some have made it clear that their areas of representations are their fortes of sorts, and would not easily bequeath them to a serious competitor without cutting him or her down to size first.

  The politicians are back on the ground with a bang! This time more humble than the pious of saints and selfless to a fault. It is a calculated gimmick to endear them to the electorate. Watch their antics worth an Oscar as they outdo each other in comedy stunts that would make Eddie Murphy turn green with envy.

  It seems the pandemic too had dented their financial fortunes. If they have expected to reap handsomely on the government’s promise of car grants, especially the MCAs, on supporting the discredited Building Bridges Initiative bill, they’re in for a shocker. Granted, such grants may not be bad, but it is bad hoodwinking them to pass a bill on such premises no matter how good or bad a bill is.

  The incumbents to whatever political office have a head start though. Other than the advantage of the office, they can reap campaign funds from budgeted corruption. Simple as that!

  Sample this. On paper, a short distance road in a sleepy village, say three kilometres long, is graded and murramed at a colossal cost of Sh2 million - anyway, everything in this country is inflated. When it comes to cost breakdown, it would be expected the contractor had pocketed the lion’s share. But that’s far from the truth.

  First, the contractor is well connected to the office holder. And for lobbying for the awarding and seasonal maintenance of the roads, which is grading and degrading each financial year, the politician gets something from 20% of the total cost in kickbacks.

  Then there’s cutting the corners where the politicians and contractors share the spoils.

  Check this. A road is to be murramed at the same time it’s excavated. Murram is heaped along the excavated stretch. The expectation is the earth grader would do the spreading evenly in employing its wide blade. But that’s usually not the case.

  In ‘empowering youths’, the politician have jobless and well connected fellows employed to do the spreading of the murram using hoes, shovels and any other farm tools while the earth grader idles away somewhere. The result is uneven, bumpy road with hillocks and rocky outcrops projecting here and there.

  If the earth grader is charging Sh100, 000 per day on fuel alone, and twenty youths are paid Sh500 per day, that means a cool Sh80, 000 is ‘saved.’ That doesn’t factor the cost of fuel for lorries ferrying murram, which can be siphoned well with taxpayers picking the tab.

  Many projects follow similar patterns, that it’s no surprise to hear a market urinal in a village was constructed at a similar cost to that of a maisonette in a leafy urban address.

  Corruption is usually budgeted ahead of a project. And throughout the tenure of the incumbent, the same contractors are preferred. No wonder shoddy workmanship is witnessed in everything, with roads being on a perpetual maintenance without going for permanent solution like converting them to all weather ones.