LIKE GERMS, CORRUPTION WILL CONTINUE TO LIVE BUT CAN BE TURNED POWERLESS!

Notably in public policy, there is a concept called broken-window theory. In a street for instance, if there are street lights broken by villains and not acted upon, it sends signals to the other rational citizens that rule-enforcement is weak. Crimes will fester in those areas. In the same way, you tend to put garbage in those areas where there are already piles of garbage. You are less likely to throw garbage in a clean place. Like a lot of crimes, corruption is a disease. To solve corruption, we need to create zones of "cleanliness" - where rules are both straightforward and enforced strong. Government could start these in specific ministries and departments, say passports processing office at Nyayo House or the Lands ministry and do a complete review of the rules and enforcement. Make it impossible for anyone to break the small list of logical rules you set. Eradicate the disease in that zone, quarantine it and go to the next zones. You cannot fight corruption in the whole nation at once. What we need is to change the environment and make it conducive to obey the rules. This will not eradicate corruption; like germs corruption will continue to live, but can be turned powerless.

Fighting corruption is a complex, long slog. It involves everything from building a strong economy to creating the right policies that makes sense. It is not a switch that you can turn on and off. Even if you have honest police officers and leaders, an anticorruption agency, you cannot solve it without fixing the underlying problems. Even if you give death sentence to bribe givers or takers, you cannot solve it. Our focus should primarily be on how to prevent honest and rational citizens from corruption. Once you get the majority honest Kenyans out of the corruption ring, you will get the power to fight the small fraction of bad citizens. And this is a journey we all must be willing to travel.