This step could help guard national assets
By Levi Obonyo, July 25, 2025A refrain sometimes heard among Kenyan bureaucrats when caught with their hands in the national till is to rebuke their detractors and tell them that the national resources, which they are accused of misusing, do not belong to those who complain.
A minister once told the public that the nation’s resources could be used freely since “si ya mama yako”. It is this sense of entitlement that probably once prompted a minister to state that he “would rather die than resign” when concerns about his handling of the office were raised.
It is rare to hear a government functionary in Kenya, or Africa for that matter, take responsibility for mismanaging national resources. Michela Wrong’s call, “it is our turn to eat”, appears to be the reigning principle. This may be at the heart of the negligent and gluttonous way those appointed to public offices handle state resources.
While Kenya may have a national plan that is supposed to serve as a blueprint for managing national assets, for many, this is no more than a floating document with little bearing on reality.
This may mark the difference between the nations that are developing and those destined to remain at the bottom of the development pile. However, in developed countries, the misuse of state resources can lead to serious repercussions.
For example, a former US senator from New Jersey, Bob Menendez, last month started serving an 11-year prison sentence after being found guilty of using his influence and political power to receive bribes in the form of a luxury car, gold bars and cash from those who wished to influence policy. He is 71.
A similar fate befell a Singaporean minister, who was convicted and barred from holding office for a time after being found guilty of, among other things, accepting a ticket to a football game in the UK from a group that could have had an interest in infrastructure projects in the Asian country. The 63-year-old Subramaniam Iswaran was jailed for 12 months and has since been transferred to continue serving his sentence from home.
In a recent address to teachers of the Catholic Church faith persuasion, Prof Laban Ayiro, an educationist who was for a long time a high school principal before transitioning into university administration, pointed to a lack of values at the core of the handling of national assets.
Referencing his current position at Daystar University, as vice-chancellor, Ayiro stated that his charges are tasked with owning the assets and viewing them as belonging to the collective society and therefore applying them for the common good.
A hierarchical structure that divides the community into “them” and “us” leads to one group treating the assets associated with the other group as outside their domain of influence and therefore not of their concern. Such assets can then be cannibalised for personal use, which would be more beneficial to the individual and their community.
Can a leaf be borrowed from Ayiro’s stated playbook of value-based education, as exhibited in individual ownership within an egalitarian community, where resources and assets serve the common good? This could reduce the national asset cannibalism that is prevalent in the land.
Kenya has taken steps in this direction by incorporating values into the Constitution. But then stopped there, and little has been done to translate this aspiration into reality. Education plays a crucial role in shaping people’s conduct.
The writer is the Dean of Daystar University’s School of Communications.