The Main Cause of Insecurity in Kenya is Endemic Corruption Perpetuated from the Top

By Ndungu Wainaina

The main cause of the frightening insecurity and instability that continues to engulf Kenya is a deeply corrupt state and endemic corruption. Government is protecting thieves of state.

Corruption has reached such an extent that government resembles glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These thieves of state and their state protecting criminal kleptocracy drive indignant Kenyan population to extremes.

A small a clique has hijacked the Kenya state. The clique is rewriting the laws, awarding themselves privileged access to land and crucial public resources. To sit back and dismiss Kenya state as weak or failing is self-illusion and naïve. Kenya state is in fact powerful and organized but for crime rather than providing critical public services to the people.

It is crystal clear from horrifying Lang’ata Road Primary events and state answers; Kenya state core activity is not in fact exercising the functions of a state but rather extracting resources for personal gain. It could as well be understood not as a state at all but as a vertically integrated criminal enterprise. It is therefore imperative for people of Kenya to quote Einstein ‘formulate the correct question rather than solution’.

The ability of state to mobilize and execute an unacceptable police operation of magnitude witnessed in Langa’ta Rdoad Primary tells us that corruption deep inside the compromised state institutions is an insidious force that is causing the most dangerous challenges Kenya is facing.

Kenyans remarkably underappreciate the extent of systemic corruption and carefully structured kleptocracy in Kenya and its enormous adverse impact on their lives.

Langa’ta Road Primary School state response provides a vivid, ground-level view on how pervasive corruption undermines Kenya governance and security breeding insecurity and instability. This barbaric incidence helps to cause proper understanding to Kenyans of the major source of insecurity, violent extremism, inequalities, poor public services and socio-political instability and the role state in fueling these causes.

The government, Kenyans have been relying on to fight corruption, is itself one of its most potent and insidious source. It also illustrates how corruption not only impacts ordinary people but also connection between deep corruption and civil violence. The real danger is that an abusive government elicits violent responses and putting the survival of the state at risk.