From left, Kenya Revenue Authority Commissioner General Michael Waweru, Domestic Taxes commissioner John Njiraini and Wambui Namu, Customs Services Commissioner
Michael Waweru, the taxman-in-chief who has presided over the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) for the past eight years, is stepping down from the high office early next year, opening a window for the hiring of a successor who will move the country into the post-Kibaki era.
KRA is from Wednesday expected to begin the search for Mr Waweru’s successor with advertisement of the top job and two others.
Mr Waweru has held the position since March 2003, having been appointed only two months after President Kibaki came to power after winning the December 2002 elections.
Mr Waweru, a former chairman of the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK), is retiring on March 3, 2012 in accordance with KRA rules. The two other senior positions falling vacant are the Commissioner for Domestic Taxes (Large Taxpayers Office) John Njiraini and Customs Services Commissioner Wambui Namu.
KRA rules allow commissioners to serve for a three-year term that is only renewable once.
That means Mr Waweru should have retired in 2009 had he not benefited from a special dispensation from President Kibaki.
Commissioners who have left so far under the rules include Mumo Matemu, who headed Support Services, and Simeon ole Kirgotty, who was the Commissioner of the Motor Vehicles Department. The Commissioner of of Domestic Taxes, Mr Fidelis Mulei, left after one term having served KRA for 26 years.
Mr Njiraini, also a former ICPAK chief executive, leaves Times Tower in April next year while Mrs Namu will vacate her position a month earlier in March.
The three positions have the most clout at KRA and are expected to attract intense lobbying during recruitment.
However, the fact that the three officials are leaving under the rules Mr Waweru himself formulated is likely to set a clear change of the baton trend at KRA.
The KRA board is expected to invite applications for the three positions and to present three names for each position. Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta will appoint the two commissioners while the President appoints the commissioner-general.
“I hope existing staff will contest the positions and get them. Personally I would prefer someone who has grown here to take these positions,” Mr Waweru told the Business Daily.
The outgoing commissioners are however eligible to contest the position of commissioner-general.
Mr Waweru’s position is expected to attract the most intense contest given the clout that goes with it in both business and political circles.
The KRA board is looking for a person with a university degree, a Masters degree and at least 10 years experience in senior management in a large organisation.
But the fact that the country is going through a political transition that has earmarked KRA as the main financier of devolved government means the board under Major (rtd) Marsden Madoka have to get it right on both competence and political fronts.
Mr Waweru’s successor will however have to face up to the reality of the immense challenges that KRA has faced in recent months that tax revenues have been constrained as external financing and domestic borrowings became harder to secure.
Contenders for the CG’s position will generally have to meet conditions that most selection panels require of CEOs plus tax compliance.
The requirement under the Integrity chapter of the Constitution has become a must for recruitment to top government offices and has seen a number of candidates thrown out at preliminary stages of recruitment.
Some of the requirements for the top jobs, however, appear to put KRA workers on the inside lane. “Experience in tax administration will be an added advantage,” says an ad seen by Business Daily.
Mr Waweru was appointed to the position on March 3, 2003 and assumed office the next day.
His appointment came in the wake of the sudden departure of his predecessor, Mr John Munge, who had been recruited by Dr Richard Leaky during the last years of President Daniel arap Moi in power. Mr Waweru has seen KRA’s annual revenue collection grow from Sh183 billion in 2002 to Sh635 billion last year.
This has come on the back of renewed if checkered economic growth and relative return to the rule of law under the Kibaki administration.
On Tuesday, Mr Waweru said he was proud that KRA performance had supported Free Primary Education and extension of the regime to secondary school, funding of the health sector and infrastructure projects without undue pressure from external financiers.
Apart from the reform programme, that has in his time seen the filing of tax and customs returns and now manifests go online, Mr Waweru says he is proud of the strong HR culture that has developed at KRA under his watch.
KRA has often been criticised for ethnic imbalance but he noted that all the remaining commissioners have grown within the KRA system unlike when he came to office when outsiders occupied nearly all the positions.
Mr Waweru says his only regret is the fact that the massive infrastructure projects will not have been completed before he leaves.
