We can eliminate corruption

Integrity Centre Nairobi

Integrity Centre that hosts the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) offices in Nairobi.

Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Most people think that eliminating corruption is akin to eliminating the human race.
  • Actually, most people are resigned to the idea that graft is here to stay.

Total annihilation of corruption has proved difficult since the dawn of civilisation because the chief beneficiaries of the vice, including governments, have deluded the citizenry that graft is a vice to be fought, not eliminated. 

Indeed, the delusion is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche to the extent that most people think that eliminating corruption is akin to eliminating the human race. Actually, most people are resigned to the idea that graft is here to stay.

Throughout history, politicians who run governments have constituted a core of the problem. A brief examination of the political personality reveals it wouldn’t be anomaly to describe most as greedy, corrupt and wanting in matters integrity and morality. 

Yet, the heavy duty of eliminating corruption has been assigned to to these people since the advent of governments. This explains why we are still fighting as opposed to eliminating corruption.

Still fighting graft

Politicians like fighting corruption because, unlike eliminating, fighting has no end point. That is why thousands of years since the idea of governance occurred to mankind, we are still fighting graft. 

Yet, available evidence indicates that corruption can, and should have been eliminated a long, time ago. 

The evidence here is that, if you haven’t attempted to do something, then you have no evidence that it can’t be done. Once you have attempted and failed, you have generated evidence that it can not be done. So far, no one has attempted to totally eliminate corruption. 

But near non-existent levels of graft in Scandinavian countries illustrate that corruption levels can be brought down where there is will. If the method(s) used to flatten the curve of corruption in these countries is perfected in a country like Kenya, graft will be a thing of the past. 

The commonly used methods are policing and appealing to peoples’ moral rectitude. But the challenge here is that these methods rely on human beings to do the right thing all the time, an expectation that can be unrealistic, given people’s penchant for short cuts.