Mohammed Hersi . A hotelier passionate about Tourism & Governance in Africa

This week we came to learn that several Kenyans are hiding their wealth both lawfully gained and some illegally made in foreign secret accounts across several countries with the bulk domiciled in Europe.

When I teach Governance I give the dogs analogy matters corruption in Africa. A dog and moreso the mongrels that you find in urban centres love scavenging . They will attack a weaker dog and take away the bone it has been eating. Instead of eating that bone as a start , it will go and bury it then come back to attack the next weaker dog. The Ill mannered mongrel is purely on a hunter gatherer mode driven by a serious scarcity mentality.

It will do this over & over again in the course of the day until there are no more weaker dogs with a bone . A dog has a habit of burying bones, it might be due to an intense hereditary survival instinct. Dogs in the wild buried bones as a means of storing them to use at a later time.

Well with nature sometimes it starts to rain the dog feels hungry & naturally it will remember that oh I had a bone somewhere . Now dogs are not very good with their sense of smell more so in a rainy wet environment. It’s muddy, messy & it finally goes to sleep hungry and cold. More often than not it may never find that bone & most likely it will be swept away by the floods.

Now the corrupt humans mostly from developing world holding public office will hide their loot somewhere in Europe. I have heard many times that no civil servants should have a foreign account . You certainly need good amount to sustain a foreign account. Most of the funds are wired to some secret accounts that even their loved ones including wife(s) do not know they exist . We are all too familiar with the Panama accounts.

In old age their memory is failing them & they are no longer able to remember where they stashed the loot ( where they hid the bone ) . Most of the accounts dont even bear their names let alone remember them . Sick ,frail with failing memory ordinarily the looter will recall nothing . Ordinary people ( smaller dogs that lost their bone ) will then be asked to contribute for their medical & even for their funeral. Why are you surprised to see a ” Big man ” on his demise family harassing us for mchango .

Hiding their loot is very similar to what the dog was doing. The weak dog is Eg funds for free primary school , youth fund , funds meant for ARV’s , hospital funds , water projects etc. If only the dog enjoyed that one bone , if only the real looters could be limited to that one bone , if only the loot could have been invested in Africa to create employment etc it would have made a huge difference.

At some point close to £360M stashed by one Sani Abachi was sent back to Nigeria at least this was not marked as unclaimed funds. Please don’t be that dog attacking weaker dogs. If you must please when you hide that ‘ bone’ share the location so that it does not go unclaimed .