A NATION NUMB TO NUMBERS
There was a time when a single missing million would have provoked outrage. Today, billions vanish in broad daylight and the national pulse barely shifts. The figures roll off press conferences and audit reports with chilling ease. They are debated for a week, perhaps two, then quietly absorbed into the background noise of governance.
The Senate County Public Accounts Committee has recently peeled back the curtain on county spending that reads less like public administration and more like theatre. Funds meant for development have been funnelled into vanity events and political mobilisation. Meanwhile, since 2013, county governments have received about Sh4.67 trillion in allocations. In the financial year ending June 2024 alone, the Auditor General queried Sh87 billion in county expenditure. That is close to a quarter of the annual transfers. Devolution was designed to take services closer to the people. In too many places, it appears to have taken money closer to private pockets.
The rot is not confined to the counties. At the national level, the Social Health Authority lost Sh11 billion between October 2024 and April 2025 through fraudulent claims, a loss acknowledged by Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale. The fertiliser subsidy programme released tens of thousands of bags that failed to meet required standards before intervention by the Kenya Bureau of Standards. The mosquito net tender controversy at Kenya Medical Supplies Authority reignited long standing concerns about procurement integrity. Job seekers pursuing employment through the Teachers Service Commission were fleeced by cartels trading in forged appointment letters, exposing how desperation has become an industry.
These episodes sit against a backdrop of stark admissions. In 2021, former President Uhuru Kenyatta publicly stated that billions were stolen daily. Years earlier, the chair of the Ethics and Anti Corruption Commission estimated annual losses to corruption in the hundreds of billions, describing a system that consumed a third of the national budget. With the 2025 to 2026 budget set at Sh4.3 trillion, the implications are staggering.
President William Ruto has advanced a different script. His administration points to digitisation, automation and the expansion of services on the e Citizen platform as structural reforms aimed at eliminating discretion and cash handling. The Anti Corruption Commission reports increased asset recoveries and a rise in convictions. On paper, the machinery of accountability is active.
Yet law is measured not by speeches or systems, but by consequence. Senate committee leaders have voiced frustration at the slow pace of investigations and prosecutions. Transparency advocates continue to warn that weak enforcement and limited whistleblower protection nurture impunity. Each unresolved scandal deepens the suspicion that accountability is selective.
Corruption is often described as theft. That is accurate, but incomplete. It is also a transfer of opportunity from the anonymous many to the connected few. It is a quiet tax imposed without legislation. When the public grows accustomed to staggering losses and minimal punishment, the greater danger is not merely financial haemorrhage. It is civic fatigue.
The Constitution provides tools. The statutes are in place. The institutions exist. What remains uncertain is whether the country still possesses the collective intolerance required to make those tools bite. Until consequence becomes routine rather than exceptional, the numbers will continue to grow, and the silence will grow louder still.
