We are staring at the biggest maize scandal in Kenya’s history.
So
far, the following facts have emerged. First, maize worth billions of
shillings, and purchased by monies from the taxpayers have rotted in
stores belonging to the State-owned National Cereal and Produce Board
(NCPB), rendering it unfit for human consumption. This fact has been
confirmed by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs).
The
Senate’s Agriculture Committee, which has just completed a first hand-
inspection tour of NCPB stores throughout the country, - reported that
at a place called Nyansiongo in Kisii County, members found thousands of
bags of beans that had been lying in a store for more than ten years.
Secondly,
it emerged that the government imported an extra four million bags over
and above the six million bags that had been approved by an
inter-ministerial committee.
Thirdly, it has been
revealed that when the harvesting period for locally produced maize
arrived, the NCPB decided to concentrate on buying maize from traders
instead local farmers thus denying lthe latter access to the only
marketing outlet for their produce.
Fourthly, in
October, 2016, the Strategic Food Reserves Oversight Board entered into
an agency agreement with NCPB for the purchase of two million bags of
maize for a period of two years on a budget for Sh6 billion.
However,
the NCPB went ahead and spent a total of Sh 11 billion, way above the
budget set for strategic maize reserves. Clearly, the NCPB is firmly
under capture by traders and the politically- influential maize millers
lobby. The maize market is especially vulnerable to dodgy dealings
because of the existence of parallel markets. There are cereals that
come in duty-free during food shortages then you have those purchased
from farmers.
In addition, the NCPB stores and manages imports and locally purchased maize for the national strategic reserves.
It has also emerged that-away from the public limelight NCPB has
been engaged in a shady business of leasing stores and silos to private
millers. The senators found that some of the maize in NCPB stores
belonged to private individuals while others belonged to traders and
millers.
It is a perfect setting for arbitrage and
dodgy dealings between NCPB and unscrupulous millers and traders. We all
know that there are many occasions when the NCPB has had to buy maize
from traders and millers.
It does not surprise that
forensic audits have revealed cases where unscrupulous individuals
posing as farmers were purporting to have delivered to the NCPB
quantities that were way beyond what the acreage of their farms could
produce. One case is where an individual with a 10 acre piece of land
planted with maize was claiming to have delivered 1,800 bags yet the
known standard rate is 25 bags of maize per acre in most maize growing
areas. The maximum such a farmer would have delivered to NCPB was 250
bags.
There is a big chance that unscrupulous
individuals have been delivering air to the NCPB even as they claim
millions. Another possibility is that millions of bags of duty-free
maize imported with taxpayers’ money to stabilise domestic flour prices
or for the strategic grain reserves ends up in the hands of traders and
private millers and is sold back to the NCPB.
So, when
the Ministry of Agriculture insists that the taxpayer did not lose any
money in the maize scandal, they are engaging in blatant lies.
How
can you insist that the taxpayer has not lost money when maize brought
into the country duty-free ends up being sold at huge margins to
consumers? The grain imports business in this country is dominated by a
politically- well-connected clique. A few years ago, the government
introduced subsidised maize into the market and the cartels reaped huge
margins.
This maize scandal should not end with public
officials being arrested and prosecuted. It is time to dismantle the
NCPB and to abolish this remnant of the control era and thus consign the
entity to join its predecessors, the defunct Maize and Produce Board,
the defunct Sugar and Cereals Finance Corporation and the Kenya National
Trading Corporation.
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