The common reason for bribing the police is to avoid dealing with the court system. PHOTO | NMG
Corruption is not simple; it is not black or white, it is grey.
There is no way we are going to deal with corruption without being
honest about how we interact with the beast.
Often
times, when I attend conferences where the main topic of engagement is
corruption, I experience internal turmoil. When looking at corruption we
often simplify the phenomenon, acting as though the choice of doing the
right thing is a straightforward one.
A friend of mine
once told a story of taking a way back to Nairobi from her village in
Western. Several times on the way, police pulled over the vehicle, and
every time the driver was asked for his driving licence, which he handed
over after slipping Ksh100 ($1) into it, and he was told to carry on.
Sitting
at the front, in the middle seat next to the driver, she asked him why
he was paying every time. The driver responded, “That’s how things are.”
She
then asked him to give her his licence. And when they were next pulled
over, she handed it over without any money in it. The police officer was
so shocked at her audacity that he handed back the licence without
asking for a bribe. The driver was amazed that one could actually refuse
to pay a bribe. This continued for about two more stops.
When
they got to Nakuru, a police officer had obviously been clued in on the
radio and was waiting on them. He pulled them over. She handed over the
licence as she had been doing, and he retorted, “You think you’re
smart, don’t you, young lady?”
He asked the passenger
seated at the front next to her, to move to the back, as he hopped into
the front seat, squeezing her in the middle. He told the driver to drive
to the police station. My friend was arrested. Luckily, the driver of
the vehicle refused to leave without her, making other passengers in the
bus agitated, so they eventually let her go after a few hours.
It seemed they had just wanted to teach her a lesson.
As
we talk about corruption, we have to be cognisant of the fact that
there are young men who have to be careful when walking the streets of
Nairobi, because they can all too easily be arrested for loitering; it
is not uncommon for them to be rounded up, thrown into a police vehicle,
taken to a station and locked up. The “lucky” ones have a few shillings
in their pockets and hand over all that they have in order to be
released.
Fear of police
There
are also young people in Eastleigh (often referred to as Little
Mogadishu because of the high population of members of the Somali
community) who fear the police because identity cards are demanded
randomly and even those who have them usually have to pay a bribe to
avoid being charged with having links to an extremist group.
Such
stories are playing in my mind as I watch a panel discussion where a
minister speaks about how we lack moral values. Perhaps the accusation
should be more specific.
People in places of power and
privilege lack moral values because they actually have a choice.
Because it is difficult for me to teach an individual about moral
values, to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong when
they hardly have access to basic needs.
We are
religious people and all religions preach morality and uprightness,
whether Christian or Muslim. A hungry man will do what they can to eat.
And besides what rewards exist for doing the right thing?
How
many stories have we heard of people taking cases to court, knowing it
was the right thing to do, but because they did not pay a bribe, the
case was prolonged for years, evidence disappeared and they lost in the
end?
The common reason for bribing the police is to
avoid dealing with the court system. The simplest thing if this happens
is to just pay your fine and go.
Why is it that when we
have an advanced mobile payment system like M-Pesa, which we use pay
for anything and everything including parking fees, we cannot pay fines
using it? Rwanda and Tanzania have mobile payment options, can we not
replicate them?
If we really wanted to fight
corruption, there would be severe consequences for those charged with
corruption – actual convictions, especially in high-profile cases. We
cannot just have the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) as the
only department. Shouldn’t there be an office in every institution
since corruption is everywhere?
Nerima Wako-Ojiwa is executive director at Siasa Place. @NerimaW
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