Prime
Wanted: Successful CEOs willing to be humiliated and lynched in public service
Mr Daniel K. Kalinaki
What you need to know:
- Many of the claims made against NSSF and its management were outlandish but they were never going to fly – which is exactly what they were meant to do: sting, but never fly
The report of the Inspector General of Government’s investigation into allegations of corruption and mismanagement at NSSF was supposed to sting like a bee. Instead it crawled unsteadily into view, like a lazy caterpillar that couldn’t be half-arsed into ever becoming a butterfly, let alone flying.
Look closely enough and you will find faults in any organisation. The bigger the organisation, the more faults potentially. The IGG found that payments made to two board members to resign so that they could be replaced by women, and to employees who took voluntary early retirement were irregular.
The resulting recommendation that former MD Richard Byarugaba and Finance Director Stevens Mwanje pay back the money or face prosecution was bewildering. Ordinarily, you refund that which you received but were not entitled to; you can’t give back what you have not received. Those who pay out money wrongly to third parties are charged with causing financial loss.
The recommendation to refund has the effect of snaring the two officials in litigation to clear their names and save their shirts, without opening up the whole decision to wider scrutiny, as would happen during prosecution. Others involved in the decisions, including management, the board and even the minister, walk scot-free.
Until, that is, courts find that it was unfair and poorly considered and throws out the recommendation, but by which time the train would have long left the station, with a new driver. Little wonder that the minister, in receiving the report, said she would disregard the earlier board recommendation to reappoint Byarugaba. She did not say whether the deputy MD, who was also in post when these ‘crimes’ were committed, would have his own reappointment rescinded.
For Byarugaba it is a lose-lose trap. Accept the findings and fork out half a million dollars you did not receive. Or challenge it in court and rule yourself out of contention, after all who will appoint someone suing them?
These schemes look clever from far, but they are far from clever. Many of the claims made against NSSF and its management were outlandish but they were never going to fly – which is exactly what they were meant to do: sting, but never fly.
Of the many disagreeable things about the whole affair, two stand out. The first is that a precedent is being set where whistle-blower platforms and structures are used to unfairly smear and spoil people’s reputations.
Whistle-blowing channels give the ‘small’ people in organisations an opportunity to call out executive excesses and abuses of power. And executives who are found to have abused their power should be held accountable.
But serpentine types, slitty eyes half-green with envy and half-red with the frustration of just never being good enough, can abuse them to undermine their betters, or those who stand in their way to better. They should be held accountable if their claims are found to be manufactured and malevolent falsehoods.
Our public sector desperately needs the competence and talent of self-made men and women in the private sector. But after witnessing such a public lynching, which executive wants to volunteer next to jump into this gladiatorial theatre?
Your columnist can reel off a dozen retired-but-not-tired folk whose decades of corporate experience would significantly upgrade the intellectual bandwidth and execution capacity in Cabinet. But they would rather stab themselves in the eye with a rusty folk than sit next to iron sheet thieves.
Secondly, using investigative processes to pursue narrow personal goals – like getting rid of strong-willed but capable executives – is often at the expense of real reform.
The parliamentary select committee led by Hon. Mwine Mpaka that looked into NSSF made many insightful observations and recommendations. These included clarifying the authority of the line minister, and the broader oversight of the Fund. These seem to have been disregarded or forgotten.
Almost a year after the noise started around NSSF, we are back where we started. With a board some of whose members are low-voltage but high maintenance. With a minister unrelenting in her vindictiveness and untamed in her wants. With a chastised management that is unlikely to speak truth to the board. With long but familiar hands in the shadows itching to get their hands into the Fund.
Looking on powerlessly are the NSSF members and savers who, sooner or later, will have to pick up the soap and the pieces. When will it stop hurting?
Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.
[email protected]; @Kalinaki
