Do we really need another corruption survey?

Let's talk about the war on corruption – that is, if it can still be called a war. From the various discussions I have had on my Sunday night show #Checkpoint, it is clear that there is no greater challenge, no greater threat to the presidency of Uhuru Kenyatta than corruption. It has already cost him one third of his cabinet, it has disrupted the gender credentials that his cabinet once had and no one can keep count of just how many scandals have been recorded in just three years. At any rate that number would be bigger than that of all the scandals recorded in the previous three administrations. And the irony couldn’t be more apparent. This is a government that came to power on the platform of giving Kenya a fresh start. As a matter of fact, one of the key pillars of the Jubilee manifesto was Uwazi or transparency. Under this lofty idea was a big promise, that of giving the EACC prosecutorial powers. That is a pledge that the president made without any prompting. Three years on, that pledge continues to ring hollow. Instead, the EACC still hobbles from one investigation to another with no sign of any of the proverbial big fish ever being brought to book. Is it any wonder that the anti-corruption body has now joined Kenya’s list of pollsters to find out just how corrupt we think we are. Isn’t the EACC supposed to hunt down corruption wherever it is found rather than engage taxpayer cash in measuring the mere perception of it? I wonder how the EACC sponsored survey would rank a media house whose coverage has focused squarely on how ineffective the anti-graft body has been? Will the police now conduct their survey on what Kenyans think about crime? Corruption is not a joke, no one needs a survey to know that it is rampant. But as long as the message coming from the top is not unequivocal, so long will the dragon continue to roam the land undeterred and so long will Kenyan continue to live way below its potential.