Between the years 2014 and 2016, I worked in the IT department of one of the key Kenyan government organizations. I then left the country to look for life. It was after few months (around March 2017) when I tapped into the Kenyan news one evening and found a very interesting headline circulating. My former employer’s systems had been allegedly hacked and millions, no, billions of taxpayer’s money siphoned by the hackers. This came just months after the management of the said organization was accused of mismanaging public funds. Now, in case you are not aware, ‘mismanaging’ in Africa is a term used when we don’t want to say ‘stealing’ because we are afraid of stepping on a big man’s toes. The consequences are fatal.
Anyway, the ‘hackers’ were caught before they could cover their tracks, and the organization management, in an excited move, publicized their names through the media stations, and hurried them for prosecution. So when I saw the headline ‘Xxx Loses KShs 4 Billion to hackers’, I was very much interested in the story because of two main reasons. First, it was involving my former employer, and secondly and more importantly, one of the nabbed ‘hackers’ was a young man from my village who we attended the same school with, him two classes ahead of me. He further joined college and graduated a year before me with a degree in a business related course. So when I saw him arraigned in court two days after the news, I was shocked, to say the least.
There was something unconvincing about the case, several things actually. One was where a business graduate and two Diploma-in-IT certificate holders could get the skills to hack a whole government organization’s systems. Well, am not ignoring the fact that we have a lot of tech savvy guys and hackers who never stepped into an IT class. However, we are talking about my former employer and having been in the IT department for two years and just months before this incident, I had reasons enough to look at the whole thing with skepticism. We had just acquired a state-of-the-art cyber-security package from the Israel based Checkpoint company, and I didn’t at least expect such a quick break-into the system. Secondly was the timing. If today I am accused of stealing public funds with undeniable evidence then within one month I point a figure at another person without presenting substantive evidence on why I think s/he is the thief, there is something amiss. That was the case here. Anyway, the three ‘hackers’ took a plea before a magistrate and were convicted with a cybercrime offence (at least that’s what we saw on cameras), and we forgot about them.
Fast forward to December 2018. I had come back home and was taking a walk along one of the village streets reminiscing my childhood life, and guess who I ran into? The convict. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I almost ran away thinking that it was a ghost. I went straight into the matter, I mean, how could he be loitering freely in the village when the whole country thought that he was behind bars? And by the look of things, he was living large. Well, the story I got from this guy left me confused. “The same organization that took me to court is the same one that secured my release after all that sensational coverage. Then I was given a token as a compensation for the bad publicity I received. “ He told me. In case you don’t get the gist of it, the said money was stolen by ‘big men’, then they looked for a scapegoat, and how better to explain a mysterious loss of such a huge chunk of money if not by pointing fingers to ‘system hackers’. Anyway, the three young men (who had no clue what hacking is) were available. They were given a short tutorial on how to act as hackers before cameras and how to respond to questions both in the courts and outside, then they played perfect ‘cyber-criminals’ and scapegoats for the loss of the billions.
Well, when chitchatting with two of my friends and former college mates – a Zambian and a Nigerian – and I lamented how I am unable to draw the line between corruption and the many reported cases of hacking and cyber-crime in my country Kenya , they both laughed at me. “You haven’t yet seen corruption disguised as systems hacking and banking fraud. I suggest that you come to Zambia. The Kenya’s cases are a child-play.” The Zambian contented. “No, you people don’t know what you are talking about. Your countries lose money in millions and billions, we Nigerians lose it in trillions, thanks to ‘hackers and cyber-criminals’, and we no longer make fuss about it” the Nigerian said with a helpless resignation.