Caleb Amisi: Digitisation of services has centralised corruption
Saboti Member of Parliament (MP) Caleb Amisi has raised concerns that while centralisation and digitisation of government services were intended to improve efficiency, they have instead created new avenues for corruption.
Speaking at a local TV station on Thursday, September 18, 2025, Amisi pointed to the e-Citizen platform as an example, noting that although it is a centralised system through which billions in revenues are collected, questions remain over the accountability of the funds.
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“When you look at the history of Kenya, the more you centralise things, the more you centralise corruption. While centralisation and digitisation were meant to improve efficiency, they have, in some cases, only centralised corruption. For instance, the e-Citizen platform is a centralised system, yet despite the revenues collected, funds are missing,” Amisi said.
The audit
This comes after the eCitizen platform was exposed in a special audit as a fertile bed for fund diversions, massive overcharges, and systemic governance failures.
The audit exposed a Ksh9.4 billion scandal in Kenya’s eCitizen platform, revealing overcharges, missing payments, and governance lapses, triggering public outrage and parliamentary action.
Even when funds were not syphoned off, the audit found Ksh7.05 billion sitting in eCitizen’s collection and settlement accounts as of June 2024. Within that amount, Ksh2.57 billion could not be matched to any invoices.
These findings pointed to direct breaches of public finance principles, creating a scenario where funds collected from citizens for essential services were exposed to misuse before even reaching government accounts.
The platform’s reliance on manual settlement processes resulted in an average eight-day delay before revenue reached ministries, departments, and agencies.
These lags left numerous public entities underfunded, even as commercial banks and intermediaries held significant public funds without clear service-level agreements.
Other findings
The audit also found that Ksh1.8 billion and Ksh426 million were improperly collected as convenience fees.
Rather than applying the pro‑rated charges required by government notices, the platform levied a flat Ksh50 fee per transaction. This approach led to overcharges totalling Ksh30.73 million on the old payment gateway and Ksh319.03 million on the new one.
The structure punished low-value transactions, making some services up to 250 percent more expensive.
“The cumulative effect of this fee, for each service a patient requires in a day, becomes costly and may disproportionately affect low-income patients or those requiring regular healthcare services. This is contrary to the government agenda to improve healthcare quality and affordability as per the Bottom-Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA),” the audit report said.
