Scaling the wall of Mandera should be an exciting military drill and adventure

NAIROBI: Good morning Mr Joseph Kasaine ole Nkaissery, our spanking new Cabinet Secretary for Interior. My apologies for belated congratulations – I hear such messages started trickling in well before your appointment was confirmed.

That’s what I think clever people call strategic positioning, and the reasons are pretty obvious: Your ministry offers good tidings for those with an appetite for public funds, especially because little accountability is demanded, given the “sensitive” nature of security hardware and equipment procurement.

Unsurprisingly, I hear nearly Sh3 billion is unaccounted for in your ministry during the last financial year.

But that’s not my problem; in this man-eat-man society, I have had very little expectations.

So you can imagine my surprise, and utter delight, when I heard that you had declared it wasn’t going to be business as usual in that docket; specifically, you said there will be nothing like free lunch under your watch – even inmates have to earn their keep by working on national projects like road construction.

Of course you might be privy to inmates’ skills level than I, but the last time I checked, the only technical skills they had developed, to a fairly advanced level, was sending threatening SMSs incognito, or even placing calls to select numbers using codes that made the calls seem international.

For a country keen on digital technologies, that’s a step in the right direction.

The other demonstrable skill among our inmates is the art of smuggling contraband using the human “boot.”

But the pronouncement that followed is what one might call a stroke of genius; you have lined up the construction of the great wall of Mandera, and which was scheduled to be inaugurated this week.

Yes, there was the wall of Jericho in Biblical times; the wall of Berlin that lasted through to the Cold War era, and of course there is the Apartheid wall on the West Bank that separates Israel from Palestine.

Again, I cannot tell, for the wits of me, why nobody thought about a creating a wall between us and Somalia, the hotbed of Islamist militants who have made our life nightmarish.

I suppose only Nkaissery could think of such innovations! This is what visionary leadership is all about.

Why, while the rest of us feel an evolving threat like the Shabaab cannot be fixed using physical barriers like walls, you have brought military zeal to the process.

And while many of us feel one has to win the hearts and minds of the citizens, you insist this thing can only be won kijeshi.

If ever you were in doubt, Bwana Waziri, look no further than our prisons where fortified walls, replete with armed guards, have not prevented top crooks from enjoying Chinese meals and newspapers and mobile phones.

Only this week, your officers were busy dining with a rape suspect and escorting him home. These are structural issues that you haven’t dealt with.

But you are heading in the right direction: The creation of walls around the country is a timely value addition to corruption networks in the security sector.

Again, that’s not my problem, a country as rich as ours can well afford not just the cost of putting up the wall, or managing it, but also sparing rich pickings for those hungry procurement folks.

But the greatest test in this wall business will be in the contest for the hearts and the minds of those border communities.

If water bowsers are used to deliver what the residents have had to walk for kilometres to fetch, or even that rare kibarua (contract work) goes to an inmate serving time for crime, instead of jobless youth trying to fend for themselves, Bwana Waziri, you will have another thing coming. The writing is definitely on the wall.

Finally, although I did not talk about it, the foreigners you are trying to keep out of our land already possess identification cards just like you and me, which were given ovyo ovyo to those with money to spare. Still, let’s scale the wall of Mandera, it should be quite some adventure!