Is it not the height of irony that poor and unwitting farmers were made to pay Sh 1,700 per 50-kilogramme bag of a strange substance that laboratory tests and scientists are unable to characterise?
What is a soil ‘conditioner’ and can such a substance be sold legally to farmers under the Fertiliser and Foodstuffs Act, Cap. 345?
How different is ‘organic fertiliser’ from manure and does it fit in the description and characterisation of fertiliser stipulated in the Fertiliser and Foodstuffs Act?
Is it true that one of the manufacturers named in the saga imported a whole container of cow dung from India into the country?
The National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB) and the traders it had engaged made a complete mess of the process of ascertaining the quality of the fertiliser sold to farmers. As it is, we are not even sure about the chemical content of what was sold to farmers.
We were all horrified last week when Kenya Bureau of Standards CEO Esther Ngari disclosed before the Senate’s oversight Committee on Agriculture that what was sold to farmers was some creepy substance that cannot even be described as fake fertiliser.
“It was not just fake fertiliser. It is not fertiliser at all,” she declared. The NCPB had lost control over the most critical parameters in the procurement of fertiliser—efficacy, health and occupational safety.
I say so because while perusing through the bundle of documents presented before parliamentary committees, I came across a letter by the managing director of Mems Distributors Ltd, Collins Ngetich, that illustrates the arbitrariness and sloppiness with which NCPB was handling quality and integrity of the product.
Addressed to the CEO and dated January 23, 2024, this is what the letter says: “We were awarded to supply SSP, but we are kindly requesting that you substitute these quantities with NPK 10-26—10. Kelphos NPK 10-26-10 has more plant nutrients, and we want to supply them to farmers who are currently planting.”
Since when did the NPCB start taking technical advice from a mere briefcase trader on a matter as technical as the integrity and efficacy of the fertiliser it buys?
Where did Mems Ltd get the audacity to pretend that it possessed domain knowledge and experience on matters to do with the efficacy and integrity of fertiliser?
The picture portrayed is an environment where traders and briefcase merchants had taken control and captured the procurement process.
Let’s all pray that the arrest and arraignment this week of the top managers of the NCPB and, secondly, the move by Parliament to commence impeachment proceedings against Agriculture Cabinet secretary Mithika Linturi will result in the punishment of the perpetrators of what counts as one of the most egregious cases of corruption and malfeasance under the current administration.
The subsidised fertiliser scandal reminded me of what happened during the subsidised maize scandal of 2010 that the NCPB also handled.
At that time, a well-intentioned maize subsidy programme was turned by the political elite of that time into a gravy train.
To play the game, all that a politically connected briefcase trader needed was a letter from Kilimo House ordering the NCPB to allocate a large quantity of subsidised maize.
One then sold that same letter to a manufacturer—in this case, a miller—in the secondary market at a huge profit margin.
Ministers, PSs, top government officials and MPs all joined the gravy train. In the current fertiliser scandal, the briefcase trader—Mems Ltd, was at first awarded a contract to supply 50,000 bags of fertiliser.
Because it could not perform, it flipped the contract to manufacturer Kel Chemicals of Thika.
Such was the influence of the trader at the NCPB that was awarded an additional and massive Sh2.1 billion contract to supply subsidised fertiliser to the State agency.
The corruption risks around the subsidised fertiliser programme are massive. To streamline things, the government must get out of the business of buying fertiliser and allow private companies to finance and conduct the imports.
As happens in Tanzania, the role of the state should be restricted to regulation of imports and paying the subsidy to importers.
In the long term, we should start implementing reforms to lead us to rethink the role and mandate of the NCPB and to consign this command-and–control body of the ancient regime to the place where its peers such as the Maize and Produce Board, the Sugar and Cereals Finance Corporation, and the Wheat Board of Kenya were dumped.
The writer is a former managing editor of The EastAfrican.
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