Kenya rocked by maize scandal

Press, 17 September 1980, Page 31

Kenya rocked by maize scandal

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ALASTAIR MATHESON

in Nairobi

'5 Kenya has been rocked <7 by a series of disclosures indicating mismangement » and possible corruption at s a high level. Amid the country’s worst food shortage since independence, evidence has emerged of huge exports of maize in the last two years which have left Kenyans without their staple food. Only help from the United States has. averted a catastrophe. The Government of President Daniel arap Moi reacted sharply when the local press published documents showing how the Government itself had authorised the export of nearly 200,000 tonnes of maize to bring in badly needed foreign exchange. One senior Minister dis- ; counted the evidence because it came from “stolen documents.” The suggestion is that even the strategic reserve of maize, held for emer- , gencies such _ as the present one, 'has been

shipped abroad, apparently by influential individuals

able to get around the « strict controls imposed by the President against illegal transit of food. One member of Parliament, Miss Cheluget Mutai, has alleged that there might be a “Mafiatype group” stronger than the Government itself. She has called for full and frank disclosure, but

in spite of similar calls from members of Parliament and the newspapers, the Government has not revealed why in. May Kenya had exhausted its huge stocks of maize, and rice and wheat were also scarce.

Emergency shipments of grain arrived just in time to replace the deficit, and five more chartered ships are due in Mombasa soon with more than 75,000 tonnes of maize and wheat from the United States.

Kenya’s exports of maize were first made known several months ago, when a former Minister of Agriculture, Mr Jeremiah Nyagah, admitted in Parliament that he had signed the export permits. Later it was explained that the exports were the result of a Cabinet decision to make room for storing maize from two bumper harvests in 1978 and 1979, since maize was beginning to rot in the fields.

The new documentary evidence shows that over a million bags of maize were exported, mainly to West African countries and Middle Eastern ports. Some went to Japan and Venezuela, and 10,000 tonnes was sent to Ethiopia as a famine relief gift. Some-of the permits did not specify destinations, only naming the ships, on which the maize was to be loaded. This has given rise to rumours that some of the consignments were

kept on the ships for months and returned to Kenya to be sold at vas-tly-inflated prices. There is no confirmation of this. What Kenyans want to know is where the balance of the maize went. Mr Nyagah has asked the Government to divulge this information, suggesting that he knows more than he is prepared to state in public. There was a surprising sequel to his disclosures in March when, after a hastily-sum-moned Cabinet meeting, he told Parliament he had given members of Paniament wrong information, based on inaccurate and out-of-date facts.

Apart from land, there are few more emotive issues in Kenya than maize, since most of the people live on ugali, cooked from maize flour. Most of this year there have been long queues fcr the elusive maize meal, in spite of the emergency shipments that began arriving in June. There was uproar in Parliament when one assistant Minister alleged that some of . the relief supplies had been shipped on to other countries. He has not furnished Parliament with any proof, and the Government is showing signs of clamping down on further revelations about food supplies on the ground that it would be “digging into the past.”

— Copyright, O.N.S.