Greedy Traders, Rich Farmers Fight for Control of NCPB Billions

Money is sweet. Money obtained corruptly seems even sweeter. But it is not. Like wearing a stolen jacket, one keeps looking over the shoulder fearing that the owner might spot it and embarrass him, but keeps hoping it won’t happen.

Wealth obtained through corruption is stolen property. And like all stolen property, culpability falls on both the thief and the beneficiaries. Ever heard of a crime called handling stolen property? That is what children, spouses, relatives and friends of corrupt individuals are guilty of whenever they drive cars, sleep in houses and even eat food bought with money stolen from the public through corrupt means.

So the next time you sell that towel at Sh100,000, remember that you are making your child, wife, husband and mother an accomplice of theft. And soon, you are going to get caught. And all your beneficiaries will be exposed for who they are - beneficiaries of the proceeds of crime!

You see, that whole system of corruption is about to fall apart. The house of cards is about to start crumbling, and the hidden cogs will be exposed.

Another mega has been exposed - the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) has been used to pilfer billions in public funds to private pockets again. I have a feeling that more scandalous enterprises will be brought to light soon and their architects exposed.

The unmasking of multi-billion shilling corruption scandals is not new. We have seen and heard so many. What is new in the latest trend is that the exposure of executives seems to be orchestrated by the Executive.

By the time the media highlighted the robbery at NCPB, the board’s chief executive and a few managers had already been pushed out of office, indicating that unlike in the past, the media are catching up with what the Executive is doing and not the other way round.

The Scam
The conspiracy of silence that bound greedy brokers, connected large-scale farmers and corrupt officials at the NCPB has been unmasked.

Background
It all started last year, or in late 2016, when the skies refused to open. A crippling drought that depressed harvests for the better part of 2017 saw the Government throw open the country’s borders, allowing for duty-free entry of white, non-GMO maize from as far as Mexico, South Africa and Uganda. 

According to official figures, between April and December 2017- the period when the maize subsidy programme was implemented - some 15 million bags of maize valued at Sh39.6 billion was imported taking up all the space in the 39 NCPB depots around the country. The uptick was unprecedented.

Although most of the imported maize was absorbed by millers, a good chunk of it remained in the Government stores. Experts have questioned the validity of these figures as given by KNBS but signs of a maize glut were unmistakable.

As soon as the subsidy programme came to an end, it was the turn of local farmers to take their produce to the Government stores. Spurred on by an irresistible offer of Sh3,200 per bag from the Government large-scale farmers loaded their produce onto trucks, others hired more lorries and went round mopping up much of the harvests from their poor neighbors who had no muscle to reach the nearest NCPB depot.

Meanwhile, a few opportunistic brokers, not registered with NCPB, hastily crossed the Kenya- Uganda border to Western Uganda where they snapped up any grain of maize they could lay their hands on.

Most of the depots, already filled with maize from Mexico and South Africa, were fast running out of space. But the queues outside of the 39 depots around the country were getting longer and longer. NCPB panicked. They needed to create more space if they were to avert any fall-out.

NCPB enticed millers with a price of Sh2,300 per 90-kilogram. Unfortunately, the scheme floundered. Millers were not interested. They already had more than enough stock of imported maize in their stores.

Kenya Farmers Association Director Kipkorir Menjo, says that a cornered NCPB is only going after “well-off” Kenyan traders who have perfected the art of doing business. “The real cartels,” says Menjo, “imported maize last year between October and December, 2017 from Mexico.”

Players in this sector are also not buying into the narrative that it is the maize from Uganda that is distorting the market. Traders have been getting maize from Uganda. It is not so significant to distort the market.

Timothy Njagi, a research fellow at Tegemeo Institute, an agricultural policy think-tank affiliated to Egerton University, feels that the current NCPB structure “creates a huge incentive for corruption.”

Dr Njagi explains that because the Government is always giving a price that is higher than the market price, it creates a situation where everyone wants to cash-in, including those who are not farmers.

He does not understand why the Government has not been keen on changing this structure. “Why doesn’t the Government, for example, want to buy directly from farmers?” he wonders. “There is no political goodwill to try and change the current structure,” says Njagi, noting that the subsidy programme has failed to live up to expectations.

Dr Njagi says it creates the notion that the Government is about to mop up every maize from the market. Some farmers believed the Government was supposed to pay them about Sh3,600 for a bag of maize.

The current system, says Dr Njagi, creates a culture of dependence. For example, last year, even when the rains had started, most farmers delayed planting as they waited for cheap fertiliser from Government. “The Government has to choose whether to subsidise from the production side or market side,” he said. “Or they can subsidise consumers, which is easier to implement,” said Njagi.