Kenya’s election: Your questions answered

In its 2016 report Transparency International ranked Kenya at position 145 out of 176 countries.

It blamed Kenya’s low ranking on the incompetence and ineffectiveness of anti-corruption agencies, saying that the failure to punish individuals implicated in graft had been a major stumbling block.

Anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo has called President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration “the most corrupt in Kenya’s history”.

Mr Kenyatta has, however, said his anti-corruption efforts were being undermined by the courts, who were slowing prosecutions and the anti-corruption agency, who he said were “sluggish”.

Mr Githongo cites several reported scandals involving alleged inflation of costs of projects and payments to phantom companies.

In 2015, Mr Kenyatta suspended and eventually removed five ministers and other high-ranking officials on corruption allegations. Another minister resigned after public pressure.

Opposition members have also been named in several scandals but some have accused the government of scapegoating.

Constitutional bodies set up to fight corruption have been accused of being partisan and lacking independence.

Kenyan political analyst Barrack Muluka blames ordinary Kenyans for the corruption problem, saying that they are blinded by their ethnicity: “A government can steal as much as it wants and Kenyans will be happy as long as it’s ‘our thieves’.”

He points at the April party primaries where candidates of questionable integrity and those accused of being involved in corruption won their races.

Mr Githongo, calls it “normalisation of the absurdity”.

He says that theft has become normal: “Those we used to call thieves are now hustlers,” he says.