It is now a culture, Mr Bindra.

All this because we have allowed cheating to be rewarded. It’s a drag on our development and a stain on our national fabric. Whichever way we end cheating, end it we must. ~ Sunny Bindra, 17 November 2014

Maybe this is a conversation Mr Bindra and I will continue to have on this medium, and I hope that it is a conversation that public servants in key decision-making positions will follow. Mr Bindra is an avid student of management and I am somehow surprised he has yet to comment on the problem of cheating from a management perspective, especially when candidates are sitting for the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination. There are many moving parts to ensure a candidate successfully cheats in the exam.

First, there is an assessment of the candidate's chances in the exam. He, and his senior-most advisors and confidants (parents) have reviewed nearly four years of data and drawn disappointing conclusions. They have assessed the total amount of input and the expected results and drawn the conclusion that the chances of a successful KCSE must be bolstered by less than ethical means. Especially where a candidate and his parents make this decision, it means that the ends-justify-the-means mantra is an acceptable argument to the problem of the candidate's chances in the exam.

Second, there is the environmental assessment. For someone to successfully cheat, it is not enough for mummy and daddy to be on board with the whole enterprise. They co-conspirators must co-opt outside partners. For this they will need resources, whether it is money or some other form of consideration. So the parents will determine how much is available and how much can be committed to the plot. Then they must choose carefully who is likely to advance their plans. The right choice means victory; the wrong choice may involve the parents' criminal prosecution and a ban against the child sitting the exam for some years.

Third, is the preparation of an action plan. Even after identifying potential collaborators, one can't just approach them and whisper, "We want to cheat in the exam." It will require assessing the potential collaborators' weaknesses and strengths and past record in ventures of this kind. It will require intelligence-gathering which may require interpersonal skills capable of exploiting every morsel of information with the aim of persuading and influencing the potential collaborators. These may include the headmaster, the child's teachers, the invigilators, the education officers and the examination officials. The plan must account for the process of taking the exam, from the date the candidate registered to when the exam is taken to when the exam is marked to when the results are announced and certificates issued.

Fourth is the sheer logistics of the thing. The collaborators cannot be seen together. There must be go-betweens. These may be trusted lieutenants or blind messengers. The aim will be to ensure that everything looks on the up and up when the candidate sits for the exam, that his scripts do not arouse suspicion when they are marked, and that should suspicion inevitably arise - this is Kenya after all; everything is suspicious - that there is a contingency plan to defuse the situation. Each party must play their part, play it when they are required to and play it without communicating overtly with the others to monitor progress.

I may have missed one or two elements in the scheme I have described. Now consider how this scheme is applied at university or places of work. A candidate who successfully participates in a scheme to cheat to academic success will learn lessons from the scheme, which he will apply in life. Cheating has been a constant feature of the 8-4-4 system; perhaps even of the previous system. How many procurement managers learnt the dodgy bits of supply chain management from schemes to cheat in national or university exams? How many elected representatives learnt how to manipulate their potential voters from the lessons they learnt when manipulating collaborators? Did Victor Kanyari draw lessons from his mother's incarceration such that he did no have to prove them at the KCSE by dropping out of school in form 2?

Mr Bindra, we may have reached a tipping point. It is true that cheating may lead to the collapse and reform of the current system of assessing how much one has learnt and what one is capable of doing. I believe the bigger problem is that there are many cheaters in decision-making positions who are incapable of seeing the moral hazards of inculcating the same values, consciously or subconsciously, in their organisations. We have a culture of cheating. We may weed it out of the exam system but it has spread outside of the system and pervaded every other area. It is a mathenge, an invasive tree species we planted in Garissa to control desertification along the Tana, but instead became an environmental menace. We must now confront the challenge of weeding out cheating inculcated by successful cheaters who are now managers, teachers, MPs, lawyers, preachers, Ministers and parents.