The National Police Service is synonymous with corruption and virtually every adult Kenyan has a story to tell about it. However, an audit by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) has revealed the true extent of the rot. And it runs deeper that the public eye can see.
According to EACC, the junior police officer who asks you for kitu kidogo on the road does not singularly represent the evil that is corruption. Such officers are deployed there by their seniors with daily targets of the bribes they must collect. But what is positive about this shocking report is that it was commissioned by none other than the Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja.
That it is the police boss who called in the EACC and asked them to do a thorough audit of the National Police Service shows that Mr Kanja, just like the general public, is concerned about pervasive corruption in the institution that he heads.
But unlike the members of the public who have limited powers to tackle this monster, Kanja is in a position to take it head-on. And he has no reason not to now that he has confirmed how menacing and brazen it is.
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There have been attempts to clean up the police service, including the much-hyped National Police Service Commission vetting which began in 2013 headed by Johnston Kavuludi, the then chairperson of the commission. The exercise led to the sacking of scores of officers who could not explain their wealth. EACC has also been arresting and charging police officers, particularly traffic police officers, whom they find engaging in corruption.
But such actions have done nothing to deter corruption among police officers and NPS continues to top the corruption charts. The vice has been normalised to an extent that the officers even ask for bribes in order to respond to cases of crime.
Now, Kanja has the results of the audit that he commissioned and they are damning. We believe he was not asking for the audit for the sake of it. We expect him to take action in conjunction with the EACC, which now also understands the extent of the rot, to clean up the police force. By force if necessary.
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By Editorial