President Uhuru Kenyatta's recent call for lifestyle audit for all public officers is an exercise in futility if it doesn’t commence with his family.
It is widely accepted philosophy across the legal mind that: He who comes into equity must come with clean hands.
His attempts to push for the lifestyle audit may be perceived as a good move towards the right direction in the quest of eradicating the menace of corruption in Kenya but he needs to begin with his immediate family.
Any attempt to quash audit of his family, and failure to fully implement the findings and report of the Truth Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) report that adversely mention his family, makes the lifestyle audit a joke.
For critical thinkers, President Uhuru’s call for audit is nothing but a public relation exercise that he intends to sell to gullible Kenyans that he is committed to fighting corruption and thereby conceal the blatant theft of public resources under his watch.
To show commitment, President Uhuru Kenyatta should allow a private and independent audit firm to do the lifestyle audit beginning with his family. Kenyans should oppose any attempt at using the National Intelligence Service (NIS) to conduct what is termed as the audit. NIS major duty is to gather intelligence and counterintelligence.
It has no business to conduct an audit and better still, there will be a conflict of interest since it is a body that reports to the executive.
Recently, a story in which a female employee who worked at one of the government Huduma Center was found guilty of having received a bribe of Sh2,500 and was asked to pay a cash bail of Sh500,000 or face a jail term of 2 years may have passed a minor story but this revealed the double standard in the manner in which law is applied in Kenya.
It makes other Kenyans wonder why the same law has not been administered to the looters of the infamous National Youth Service(NYS) Saga, Kenya Power and Lighting Company(KPLC), National Cereals and Produce Boards(NCPD), Kenya Pipeline Company(KPC) and Standard Gauge Railway(SGR) that has rocked the country in the past few weeks while the accusers are still walking helter-skelter scot free.
President Uhuru Kenyatta needs to wake up and ensure that any suspect that is accused of corruption in this country is not only jailed but also they should recover all proceeds they have looted from the public coffers. Cash bail should be banned (with the recent case being NYS looters having been granted bail).
Thereafter the looted proceeds should be declared and those found guilty be blacklisted from ever conducting any business with the government without preference in all spheres.
Corruption needs to be fought from the top so that the public confidence can be restored and replicate the same at their respective areas of jurisdiction.
However, without the goodwill of the leadership, the public will continue engaging in corruption since they will buy into the saying that if you can’t beat them join them.