By Frank Bray
A while ago, a certain individual in Mti Moja, near Kuinet, Eldoret, experienced an altercation with locals that turned to their disadvantage. They got assaulted. At first, their decision was to not report it, but their eyes were injured, so they got counsel from a local.
“You’ll just buy them fuel and the people involved will really regret their actions,” the counsel was given.
Being at an unfavourable financial state then, they got discouraged from following up on the case. However, what they’d heard wasn’t an unfamiliar hurdle in their world.
CS Kipchumba Murkomen once cited underfunding as a cause for the demand for ‘fuel.’ However, some anticorruption bodies like Transparency International dismissed it as a form of bribery.
In a 2016 report by the same body, about thirty-eight percent of people said they paid money to facilitate police fuel and airtime. Most importantly, most people didn’t even get a receipt for these payments, hence raising issues about accountability in such matters.
Whereas the report is outdated, its findings still linger.
One youth recently told me they once went to a government institution and ended up being told to pay for a service at a particular counter. When he asked to pay electronically, the then attendant sternly stated that they only accepted cash, even though a cashless option was available.
Truth is, this informal kind of facilitation can be exploited for corruption. For example, Transparency International Kenya’s 2025 bribery index showed that police remain the most bribery-prone institution, with a likelihood of bribery with police being cited at 72%.
But how do we address such an issue? How do we prevent the cost of seeking justice from becoming the barrier to justice itself?
Actually, we’re not short on solutions, but on accountability: on willingness to enforce the change that citizens of a sovereign nation deserve. For instance, receipting every transaction and rendering any informal transaction as illegitimate would be a good start.
Until those responsible are held to account, the public will continue footing both the bill of justice and carrying the burdens of finding it. They will keep paying twice, through taxes, then again through bribes and informal costs.
In hindsight, justice shouldn’t come at double costs, yet for some, it does. It’s still a commodity tendered for the most fortunate bidders.
