Let Kimaiyo, Lenku be shown the way - out!

It is end month and Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku and Inspector General David Kimayio will, like other Kenyans, pop into the bank for their November salary.

But save for the two gentlemen and their bosses, 101 per cent of Kenyans, including school children, think they have displayed a level of ineptitude that is inexcusable.

That is not a bad thing in itself. Kenyan leaders generally exhibit appalling levels of ineptitude.

It is their unwillingness to take personal responsibility that gulls.

It is actually a rude reminder to Kenyans that they are better off studying some Arabic if they intend to stay alive and safe from terrorists - unless they have the fortune to be assigned Recce Company bodyguards.

The rest are best advised to write their wills. The government can longer guarantee your security. Take that to the bank.

This November alone, at least 50 young Kenyans, probably on their first government job, have died in the most gruesome manner.

 In civilised countries where human life is prized, that would have had the entire government resigning, repenting and frogmarching itself to jail.

Why we have not marched to police headquarters and proceeded to State House nude is something that reminds us that we don’t value our lives (and taxes).

Security is a relative issue. If you are not affected directly, you cannot be empathetic enough. All these bombings and killings seem far off, until scumbags throw a grenade at your matatu. Or that mall. Or in Gikomba when you are minding your own business. Well, at least the government will buy you a coffin and settle your funeral expenses!

The reality, however, is that both Kapedo and Mandera murders are a reflection of our 50-year-old neglect of northern Kenya.

To the best of my knowledge, other than the ill-fated and cash-strapped Ministry of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands, there has been no discernible policy process to bridge the poverty-stricken northern Kenya to the rest of the country.

All development indicators, such as access to water, health, education, child mortality and so forth, are so depressing in a region strangely endowed with massive resources - among them oil deposits and 70 per cent of Kenya’s livestock.

In the absence of government, terrorists and bandits of various shades have virtually made governance impossible.

It is a typical African problem. Every African country has that wretched, neglected step-child of a region that has never seen a single government project.

It is telling that most of the people slain in Mandera were teachers and medics from elsewhere in the country.

Fifty years after independence, the county does not have teachers and medical personnel of its own, and must ‘import’ them from hundreds of miles off.

It is also only recently that county residents saw a tarmac road and had the first caesarian section ever in the area.

These parts are, therefore, hardship areas in every sense of the word - both for residents and civil servants who are transferred there kicking and screaming.

It doesn’t help that many of them are frontier districts bordering Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan, with a border so porous, and a security machinery so severely outgunned, bandits and terrorists operate at will...even with soldiers in the area.

 Such places are perfect playgrounds for ruthless Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaeda jihadists. Even the moronic Boko Haram thrive in a similar environment.

The thought that ole Lenku and Kimaiyo are responsible for ensuring that crazed psychopaths don’t cross into Kenya to murder Kenyans is frightening.

It is John Maxwell who said, “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.” Someone needs to show gentlemen them the way - out!

 

@nyanchwani [email protected]