KENYA'S PUBLIC LECTURE ON CORRUPTION BY DR.MOKAYA ONSASE, FIND OUT IF YOU ARE CORRUPT OR NOT.
KENYA'S PUBLIC LECTURE ON CORRUPTION BY DR.MOKAYA ONSASE, FIND OUT IF YOU ARE CORRUPT OR NOT.
What is Corruption?
Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by an individual or those in power or possession of an entity, that may involve bribery.
Its synonyms include: palmgreasing, Knavery, malvarsation, payola or graft.
Categories of Corruption
Experts on the study of corruption have categorised corruption on to two broad categories: Political corruption and Bureaucratic corruption.
Political corruption
Involves vote-rigging, registration of unqualified voters, falsification
of voter registers and election results, selling and buying of votes, and wiretapping the phones of political opponents. All this is aimed at helping politicians capture and/or maintain political power.
With particular reference to Kenya, political corruption also involves instigation of “ethnic” violence in opposition regions by incumbent political parties in order to scatter voters and minimise their turnout on election day.
Bureaucratic Corruption
Bureaucratic corruption, on the other hand, is used by political leaders and civil servants – the bureaucrats – to extract extralegal incomes for themselves, their relatives, and associates.
This involves extraction of bribes and rents in the distribution of public goods and services, theft of public resources, embezzlement of funds from state coffers, nepotism, and the granting of patronage to
cronies and relatives, illegal taxation by bureaucrats with benefits accruing to them and their associates, capricious and selective enforcement of state laws and statutes in order to generate benefits for the bureaucrat, and differential treatment of private enterprises with the expectation of
kickbacks from the favourably treated enterprises.
Sub-categories of Bureaucratic Corruption.
There are four categories of bureaucratic corruption in the literature on the subject, according to John Mukum Mbaku, an expert on the subject.
(1).Cost-Reducing Corruption.
It involves actions by civil servants to reduce the regulation-induced costs of an enterprise below their normal rates. An example here is the illegal reduction of a private firm’s tax obligations to the government and exemption of a business from compliance with certain rules and regulations. In this way, a firm’s
transaction costs are reduced and the finances thus saved are shared out between the bureaucrat and the firm owner.
(2). Cost-Enhancing Corruption.
It is the second type of Bureaucratic corruption. This occurs in situations where governments place controls on the prices of foodstuffs, which normally leads to hoarding and severe food shortages. Herein, civil servants who control government food stocks extract rents from potential consumers by charging them prices that approximate free market prices. Another way is the extraction of bribes by civil servants from entrepreneurs seeking for licences, including import/export, and investment licences. Yet another is where civil servants simply use the state’s coercive power at their disposal to appropriate private property for their own use, for instance through illegal taxation. In Kenya, the public procurement domain is the arena in which cost enhancing corruption has been most pervasive. This is the situation in which public officials extract rents from their control of the public procurement process. They do so by demanding kickbacks from
tender awardees and by inflating the same and skimming off the excess.
(3). Benefit-Enhancing Corruption.
It is the third type of bureaucratic corruption. Herein civil servants may permit more public benefits such as bursary funds to public schools, or development resources to a particular region, to accrue to an individual or group than is legally permitted. Recipients of such benefits then
share them with the bureaucrat on the basis of a prearranged formula. This type of corruption is quite pervasive in Africa and many other developing societies because it is relatively easy to execute and not so easy to detect.
(4). Benefit-Reducing Corruption.
The fourth and final type of corruption is benefit-reducing corruption. This is where bureaucrats simply appropriate for their own private use public benefits that are intended for other private citizens. One example of this is a civil servant manager of a pension fund who can delay the
transmission of retirement benefits to pensioners, deposit such funds in a high interest-earning bank account, and subsequently skim off the accrued earnings. This type of corruption is also very easy to
undertake because of information asymmetries in much of Africa and elsewhere, with bureaucrats having more information about public benefits programmes than the ordinary citizens. In Kenya, the problem of employers, especially in the private sector and within state corporations, making statutory deductions from employees, such as pensions, health insurance, and income tax, which never reach their legitimate destinations is a perennial one.
Dr.Mokaya Onsase is a Kenyan trained medical doctor and medical journalist, a novelist, public speaker, short story writer, blogger and an opinion shaper on contemporary societal matters.
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| Dr.Mokaya Onsase |
What is Corruption?
Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by an individual or those in power or possession of an entity, that may involve bribery.
Its synonyms include: palmgreasing, Knavery, malvarsation, payola or graft.
Categories of Corruption
Experts on the study of corruption have categorised corruption on to two broad categories: Political corruption and Bureaucratic corruption.
Political corruption
Involves vote-rigging, registration of unqualified voters, falsification
of voter registers and election results, selling and buying of votes, and wiretapping the phones of political opponents. All this is aimed at helping politicians capture and/or maintain political power.
With particular reference to Kenya, political corruption also involves instigation of “ethnic” violence in opposition regions by incumbent political parties in order to scatter voters and minimise their turnout on election day.
Bureaucratic Corruption
Bureaucratic corruption, on the other hand, is used by political leaders and civil servants – the bureaucrats – to extract extralegal incomes for themselves, their relatives, and associates.
This involves extraction of bribes and rents in the distribution of public goods and services, theft of public resources, embezzlement of funds from state coffers, nepotism, and the granting of patronage to
cronies and relatives, illegal taxation by bureaucrats with benefits accruing to them and their associates, capricious and selective enforcement of state laws and statutes in order to generate benefits for the bureaucrat, and differential treatment of private enterprises with the expectation of
kickbacks from the favourably treated enterprises.
Sub-categories of Bureaucratic Corruption.
There are four categories of bureaucratic corruption in the literature on the subject, according to John Mukum Mbaku, an expert on the subject.
(1).Cost-Reducing Corruption.
It involves actions by civil servants to reduce the regulation-induced costs of an enterprise below their normal rates. An example here is the illegal reduction of a private firm’s tax obligations to the government and exemption of a business from compliance with certain rules and regulations. In this way, a firm’s
transaction costs are reduced and the finances thus saved are shared out between the bureaucrat and the firm owner.
(2). Cost-Enhancing Corruption.
It is the second type of Bureaucratic corruption. This occurs in situations where governments place controls on the prices of foodstuffs, which normally leads to hoarding and severe food shortages. Herein, civil servants who control government food stocks extract rents from potential consumers by charging them prices that approximate free market prices. Another way is the extraction of bribes by civil servants from entrepreneurs seeking for licences, including import/export, and investment licences. Yet another is where civil servants simply use the state’s coercive power at their disposal to appropriate private property for their own use, for instance through illegal taxation. In Kenya, the public procurement domain is the arena in which cost enhancing corruption has been most pervasive. This is the situation in which public officials extract rents from their control of the public procurement process. They do so by demanding kickbacks from
tender awardees and by inflating the same and skimming off the excess.
(3). Benefit-Enhancing Corruption.
It is the third type of bureaucratic corruption. Herein civil servants may permit more public benefits such as bursary funds to public schools, or development resources to a particular region, to accrue to an individual or group than is legally permitted. Recipients of such benefits then
share them with the bureaucrat on the basis of a prearranged formula. This type of corruption is quite pervasive in Africa and many other developing societies because it is relatively easy to execute and not so easy to detect.
(4). Benefit-Reducing Corruption.
The fourth and final type of corruption is benefit-reducing corruption. This is where bureaucrats simply appropriate for their own private use public benefits that are intended for other private citizens. One example of this is a civil servant manager of a pension fund who can delay the
transmission of retirement benefits to pensioners, deposit such funds in a high interest-earning bank account, and subsequently skim off the accrued earnings. This type of corruption is also very easy to
undertake because of information asymmetries in much of Africa and elsewhere, with bureaucrats having more information about public benefits programmes than the ordinary citizens. In Kenya, the problem of employers, especially in the private sector and within state corporations, making statutory deductions from employees, such as pensions, health insurance, and income tax, which never reach their legitimate destinations is a perennial one.
Dr.Mokaya Onsase is a Kenyan trained medical doctor and medical journalist, a novelist, public speaker, short story writer, blogger and an opinion shaper on contemporary societal matters.
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