Mr General, Kenya isn't one big barrack

I read somewhere that one of the worst jobs one can do is at a sperm bank, but I am reviewing this persuasion after watching our new Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Ole Nkaissery go about his new job.

His is an office within the Presidency that appears either jinxed or is deliberately left to operate as an appendage of the colonial paramount chief, so as to deflect the dirt from getting to the big man or woman.

Now this office, which has had many names in the past, has just shrunk the career of one Joseph Ole Lenku into that fictional Simon Makonde, but let us leave the younger man alone and focus on the retired General against whom some human rights groups have something unsavoury to claim about his past.

Nkaissery seems eager to turn Kenya into one big military barrack where everyone must shut up, jump, or cringe when he shouts or even sneezes, especially when he invokes the President's name.

Three things we must now declare. First, ordinary Kenyans began suggesting on Twitter and Facebook that Ole Lenku was clueless and too green, and the retired General was best suited for the job.

So in his appointment, many said the President was indeed 'digital' and must have read this.

Secondly, Nkaissery is a General Uhuru borrowed from the 'enemy' camp. He never voted for Uhuru and his deputy Mr William Ruto, and ran for and clinched a parliamentary seat on Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement party ticket.

We can therefore assume that not everyone in Jubilee smiles when he walks around the corridors of power.

On this score, public sentiment at a time when Kenyans were falling dead in the hands of Al-Shabaab demanded that someone who displayed some experience and brutal efficiency to deal with murderers steps in.

Uhuru needed to assuage public rage that his was an inexperienced bunch. He needed to give Kenyans a safety valve to let the rising emotions dissipate.

He also wanted to do it in a way he would not hurt the Maasai again by wiping their face off the Cabinet as he did in 2013. So things worked for Nkaissery because he was also a senior Moran from Kajiado, just like Lenku.

By picking Nkaissery, the President knew two things: he would get accolades for being a non-discriminative patriot, and he would still have a chance to bolster 'Jubilee' tyranny in Parliament because two years after Raila lost elections, it is unlikely the cosmopolitan constituency would pick an opposition MP – not with the way we know the Executive to use the whip of incumbency to get orphaned herds back to the fold.

There was also one certainty, the circumstances in Kenya - where many have the misplaced view that a measure of dictatorship is needed to keep the country together - at the time guaranteed that his nominee would not face problems getting approval from Parliament.

Yes, he came from a 'small' tribe and so the 'giants' like Kikuyus, Kalenjins, Luos and Luhyas would not maul each other over some 'small' things.

Nkaissery brought hope and energy into the office. He speaks firmly and he does not tie his legs with the tongue of contradictions as his predecessor did.

But then there is a worrying trend in the General's long strides that seem to suggest he was hired to do the 'dirty' work, to deflect blame from the 'digital' President and deputy, and help lead in the retrogressive backward walk to the days when serikali ilikuwa serikali!

Military guys generally are disciplined and lead a regimented life leashed onto laws and principles.

If you are not one of them, they would not understand why you operate on a different set of laws.

So you can be sure what Nkaissery meant when he banned public protests in Narok and 'ordered' that there be dialogue. Yes, it was with the same confidence God had when He said: "Let there be light", and there was light!

But to 'force' dialogue, and to use police to settle political disagreements won't work but inflame situations and create what one said of Narok yesterday: "Another Gaza".

The more you use police to deal with disagreements between leaders in a community like the Maasai that operates along the fault-lines of clans, the more Government turns draconian and imperialistic in tendency.

We told you last week Mr Nkaissery that the rogue police you saw at Lang'ata 'Singh' Primary School were acting on orders from above, most likely even above your head.

You condemned their actions then the next week you sent so many police, with so many guns to stand on the sidewalk of a peaceful protest. In Kenya this is not a pre-emptive strike but an act of provocation.

It simply created an object representing the State and its largesse, out to shield those with power and influence.

It seemed to suggest that if you couldn't as Narok leaders did, heed the President's advice to dialogue, then it would be forced even at gunpoint.

By so doing and then arresting the leaders and parading them as a message on how the 'digital' government would deal with disaffection and public protests, you proved to many that you could be driving what looks from outside to be a Jaguar but kumbe it is just the body - because the engine is Vitz' and the gear transmission a Nissan's analogue!

Nkaissery must be told barking orders will not win over mediation and peaceful means of conflict resolution. For now he seems to be dancing in that gale of illusion that comes with offices close to the Presidency.

In February 2013 in this space ran a piece titled, 'Kimemia remember those who came before you'.

Because Mr Francis Kimemia has learned this bitter lesson and is panting and whimpering in some dark corner after a pin was pushed through the bladder of his ego, perhaps it is time Nkaissery gives him a piece of his ear over a cup of tea.

Kimemia would know better because he wielded so much power when he wasn't even a Cabinet member.

So much power was 'loaned' to him and after the dirty work, he was stripped naked and sent to a nondescript corner to whimper in the cold.