How the Provincial Administration is key in security

By Ken Opalo

The textbook definition of a state is that it is an entity that has the monopoly over the legitimate use of violence and force within a defined geographic area. This definition acknowledges that human societies do not always exist in harmony, and that for tranquility to prevail there is often the need to coerce people to behave in certain ways for the common good.

The presence of a strong state therefore serves two purposes: it is a deterrent against wayward anti-social behaviour and provides mechanisms of sanctioning the same. Weak states serve neither purpose, the result of which is often chaos and insecurity.

Applying this idea to the contemporary Kenyan context reveals two worrying observations. First, the Kenyan state appears to have lost its capacity for deterrence. Wole Soyinka once said that “a tiger does not need to shout about its tigritude,” since it should be obvious for all to see. When the state has to conduct misako to demonstrate its power, then something is wrong. It means that there are elements in society who doubt the real extent of the power of the state, and do not consider it to be a credible deterrence.

Secondly, the Kenyan state appears to lack local knowledge, which is critical for the maintenance of order and sanctioning of anti-social behaviour. You see, strong states are those that have the capacity to mete out targeted punishment on lawbreakers. When authorities engage in communal punishment, as did the colonial administration in our past, it is often a sign that they have no power at the local level.

Communal punishment is not only a sign of weakness on the part of the ruling authority, but is also inherently unjust and serves to alienate the governed by eroding the legitimacy of authority. In the same vein the ongoing misako across the country, even if justifiable on an abstract notion of preventing imminent attack, are inherently unjust and will only serve to erode the legitimacy of the Kenyan state in the eyes of wananchi irrespective of ethnicity or creed.

As a country, we must work to obviate the need for sporadic misako by having a strong state in the first place.

In 2010 we ushered in Kenya’s Second Republic, and in many respects did away with our colonial inheritance – including the much-loathed Provincial Administration. Events over the last 18 months suggest that we may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. We may not like to admit it, but Kenyan exceptionalism in Africa over the last 50 years was grounded on the strength of the Provincial Administration. It is the backbone that held the country together against the many centrifugal forces that threatened to tear the Kenyan project apart.

It is true that those in power abused the Provincial Administration. But the system maintained political order and security for life and property. Following the promulgation of the new Katiba, what we needed was serious reform to strengthen and democratise the system. Instead we conflated national administration with impunity and autocracy. What we failed to realise was that strong administration complements democracy. The most governed countries in the world also tend to be the most democratic. Freedoms and rights do not stick without a strong authority to maintain security and political order. Natural justice dictates that your liberties end where mine begin. Therefore for peace to prevail in free societies, there is a need for strong states to police the boundaries that preserve individual liberties.

I reiterate, we should not conflate public administration and law enforcement with tyranny.

Restructuring the former Provincial Administration will require political maturity and goodwill on the part of both the Kenyan right and left. Yes, we don’t want a system in which Nairobi lords over the counties. But we also don’t want routine cases of government installations being attacked by bazooka wielding bandits, robberies and packed churches and mosques getting sprayed with bullets.

Understandably, this reform process will entail the depoliticisation of the Public Administration. This is the challenge for the Jubilee Administration: to shift the locus of politics from the national administrative structures to County political systems. We cannot erase politics from the equation; so let’s shift it to the domain of Governors and County Assemblies.

Playing political football with security and public administration is not an option. We nearly got burned in 2007-08 on account of the ethno-political gangs that we incorporated into the Kenyan political landscape after 1991. Nigeria’s handling of Boko Haram is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians fail to act decisively, imagining they can control anti-state agents of violence and destruction.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Stanford University and consultant with IPRE Group