In July 1967, the British government announced shocking news to the relatively young nation of Singapore that it was withdrawing its military from the island that forms Singapore.
This was barely four months after Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew had declared mandatory military conscription, a move that angered the British government, which had colonised the country for more than a century.
The move, coming at time when Singapore only had a handful of military personnel, shocked the ever-indefatigable Singapore Prime Minister whose commitment to reestablish the Island nation run through his blood vessels.
The situation that Singapore founds itself in can be compared to where many African nations are today following the move by US President Donald Trump to suspend in definitely donor aids to developing nations in line with his campaign mantra of ‘America first’.
The only difference is how Kuan Yew responded to the military withdrawal as compared to how affected presidents are responding to aid withdrawal.
Immediately the British government declared its intention to withdraw its forces, Kuan Yew made an exemplary address to his first cohort of military cadets where he emphasised on the need for self-reliance.
He assured his troops that military might is not always measured in numbers but on the quality, discipline and leadership of the troops.
His aim was to motivate the officers and avert an evident loss of morale due to their limited numbers.
On the contrary, many African heads of states have responded to Trumph’s move with unending lamentation, pointing how their populace will suffer as a result of frozen aid.
This act of desperation is actually doing very little to tame graft and wastage of public resources. It points to a lack of strategy or commitment from developing nations towards attaining self- reliance.
Kenya, for instance, is expected to loss about Sh90 billion annually following America’s new policy direction.
The loss is reflected in sectors such as healthcare that has been among the greatest beneficiary of donor aid.
Whereas such a huge budgetary loss ought to invite a rapid response from the affected sector to re-strategise on how the deficit will be met, including sealing loopholes of graft and reducing extravagance, less seem to be happening from policymakers and the government.
Major global development partners have consistently cited corruption as among the key challenges affecting realisation of development goals among developing nations.
As a result, the partners have been showing sign of aid fatigue attributing this to a lack of commitment from government to tame run away graft.
In December 1996, the UN adopted a declaration against graft. The declaration invites member states to take appropriate measures and cooperate at all levels to combat corruption by putting in place mechanisms to slay the dragon.
These measures include embracing good governance, enacting legal instruments on anti-corruption and also enhancing cross boarder cooperation.
True to this, many member states have enacted anti-corruption legal instruments and even formed agencies to spearhead the fight but still corruption continues to ravage many nations. In Kenya, there exists a plethora of legal instruments starting with the constitution that sets very high standards of leadership.
Unfortunately, the country still ranks very poorly in corruption perception index, with Transparency International’s 2024 statistics placing Kenya in position 121 out of 180 with a score of 32 per cent.
Former UN Secretary General Koffi Annan in his book Interventions: A Life in War and Peace encourages people to link up and form a global community of activism aimed and bringing tangible change and make real difference in peoples lives.
Annan, who midwifed Kenya’s Grand Coalition government in 2008 following a disputed election, opines that for tangible change to be witnessed, a multipronged approach is required bringing together both state and non-state actors.
These include the government, private sector, NGOs, faith-based organisations, citizens and the youth. This means Kenya needs to adopt a broad-based approach in the war against graft.
The broad-based approach needs not to be peddled only when the country wants to mollify political adversaries-turned-friends but even when tackling major problem bedeviling the nation, corruption being among them.
The writer is
a media and
communication
specialist
Comments 0
Sign in to join the conversation
Sign In Create AccountNo comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!