North Rift: Government steps up war against banditry, to deploy more personnel

Interior and National Government Administration CS Prof Kithure Kindiki. [Maxwell Agwanda, Standard]

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki has sent warning shots to perpetrators of banditry in the North Rift region.

Kindiki, in a statement on Saturday, January 28, said the Government is scaling up efforts to end decades of the crime and will leave no stone unturned, including the use of brute-force incapacitation, to make banditry a costly undertaking for the perpetrators and its sponsors.

"The government has declared banditry an existential threat to our country's future. We are going to move in and apply every human resource and weapon we have. We will get out all the armory; we will go by land, air...we will follow them to wherever they go, and we are going to smoke them out of the caves and the forests," the CS stated.

In this light, the Ministry says it will deploy more armory and security personnel to bandit-prone zones in the North Rift.

Kindiki's visit comes on the back of a joint operation by the Rift Valley multi-agency security team amid the re-opening of schools.

In December last year, President William Ruto directed the Regional and County security teams to see to it that all the schools reopen in January.

"The country will lose a whole generation of young people if schools are closed because of insecurity. It is the worst crime we can commit against our children," Ruto said.

Earlier this month, Kindiki said the State would deploy 450 National Police Reservists in Kerio Valley to boost security following the killing of two people.

The Interior CS while on a tour of Ketut village where two school girls were killed, directed the reinstatement of 300 NPRs withdrawn in 2019. He also ordered the recruitment of one hundred and fifty (150) more.