Controversy is Joseph Nkaissery’s middle name

Nominated Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery when he appeared for Vetting before the panel of the National Assembly Committee on Appointments led by SpeakerJustin Muturi at County Hall, Nairobi on Thursday 11/12/14.PHOTO:BONIFACE OKENDO

He rarely talks without wagging his finger and menacingly blinking fast in between his words, which many a time are threats.

Cut from the old philosophy of “talk to scare” and “scare to talk”, Major General (retired) Joseph Nkaissery, Kenya’s Internal Security Cabinet Secretary is seemingly a man at war — with his conscience.

An old boy of Ilbisil Primary School before joining Olkejuado High School in 1967, Nkaissery later joined Kenyatta University for his academic degree but quit for military training in Lanet a year into the studies.

He would later rise through the ranks of military service as Commandant Battalion, Second in Command, Combat Instructor, GOC Western Deputy Commandant/Chief Instructor Brigade, Commander Chief of Personnel, Military Assistant to the Chief of General Staff to retire at the position of Major General in 2002.

In between his military service, Nkaissery was privileged to attend military academy in Dehra Dun, India; Harvard University’s John F Kennedy school if Government in USA for a Leadership and Development course and United States Army College for a Post Graduate Diploma in Strategic Leadership and Management.

CONTROVERSIAL LAWS

By the time he was joining politics in 2002, he had a wealth of operational experience and public leadership. It is little wonder then that he was appointed assistant Minister for Defense in the Kibaki-Raila Government in 2008. Many thought he was worthy a full ministerial posting at the time.

In 2013 elections, he was re-elected to Parliament for a third term but resigned upon nomination by President Uhuru Kenyatta in late 2014.

When he took over the security docket in December 2014, few among the political class distrusted his capacity, diligence and commitment to duty.

His nomination was endorsed by Kenyans of all walks of life — including his erstwhile ODM party from where he had been a long-serving “general” to CORD leader Raila Odinga’s political career.

“I will not let you down,” he thundered in a staccato prose in his first press conference on the steps of Harambee Office, hours after he was sworn in.

Taking over at a time when controversial security laws had been forced through an uncharacteristically unruly Parliament by an overzealous Jubilee Administration, Nkaissery was all promises on his tenure: “One thing I can assure you is that we are not going to infringe on human rights of Kenyans in our work.

“We are going to look into the law to ensure that the laws assented to by the President only work to improve Kenyans’ security.”

He also promised to be a “good friend” of the Fourth Estate as long as they do not require him to reveal his security strategy.

One and half years later, the chickens have come home to roost on the Cabinet Secretary whose ominous pronouncements tend to be followed by brutal force as day follows night.

Whereas internal security appears to have improved in the last one and half years of his stewardship, attention has shifted to internal security operations which appear to be sowing more seeds of insecurity into the future.

Last year, Nkaissery made history when primary school children were tear-gassed by police for demonstrating against the grabbing of school land by some fat Joe. That was a first in independent Kenya.

Granted, he apologised to the pupils and admitted that the action was a new low. With that simple masterstroke, Nkaissery won many hearts early into his tenure.

But what he won so easily he has lost in a few months of brutal crackdown on demonstrators.

Enough Tear Gass

In the run up to CORD’s anti-IEBC demonstrations, Nkaissery was publicly quoted daring the leaders and their supporters.

“I want to dare them. I have got enough tear gas. The police we have not trained in a while and they will train with you,” he dared on camera.

His aide Mwenda Njoka has since clarified that it he did so in jest: “It was in jest, really. You may also need to appreciate that there was a court order against the demonstrations.

“On top of that, some demonstrators came armed with stones and were generally oblivious of the rights of the people not taking part in the demo.”

True to Nkaissery’s jest, the police “trained” on the demonstrators with blows and kicks earning themselves gory headlines locally and internationally.

He maintained a studious silence as institutions, activists, media and prominent personalities criticised the government for mishandling an ordinary demonstration.

“People do not appreciate the tricky position this docket places the CS in as a highly experienced security person and a progressive politician who is now serving government,” Njoka says.

“He has to balance between human rights and security and sometimes, inadvertently, the balance may shift on either side.”

No stranger to controversy, if the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission Report of 2013 is anything to go back, what he is presiding over at the moment is nothing surprising or out of ordinary.

Between February 22 and May 22, 1984, Nkaissery “spearheaded” Operation Nyundo military campaign against Pokots in which “many people lost their lives and over 20,000 animals starved to death,” the report says.

The operation was “also punctuated with rape and beating of the locals.” The disarmament exercise resulted in deaths of civilians in what has come to be known as Lotiriri Massacre.

“The security operation also resulted in numerous other gross violations of human rights, including torture, and sexual violence,” the report documents.

“The security agents used heavy artillery and bombed the following areas in West Pokot District: Kadam Hill; Achalau Hill; Lorusuk Hill; Kasei Hill; Chepyomot (Cheloboi arear); Tarakit Hill; Alale; Nauyapong; and Kishiaunet.

“Moreover, the security agents confiscated or killed livestock belonging to the local population.”

In its final report handed to President Uhuru Kenyatta in June 2013, the commission said Nkaissery failed to appear before it on February 23, 2013 and again on April 8, 2013. It recommended that the Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko prosecutes Nkaissery.

Tricky Balance

The recommendation is still pending at the in-tray of the DPP, alongside many others of former senior government officials implicated in past human rights violations.

Njoka says nothing could be further from the truth: “It was not a recommendation. It was all siasa. How comes we never heard of this recommendation until at the time of his nomination to the cabinet?

“It is true, at his time in military service he led this security operation whose details have since been blown out of context and truth obscured by interested parties.”

He says the narrative of the operation falls within the tricky balance every security man has to confront at some point in their service — the balance between accommodating individual rights in the pursuit of the greater good of the greatest majority, a utilitarian venture.

To Nkaissery, the adverse mention may be just but an unfortunate and unnecessary blot to his otherwise illustrious career in serving the nation.

It may as well be the work of his political enemies at the time.

To him, the current spate of criticism may as well be the product of people who do not know or do not appreciate what it takes to secure a country with a complex history as Kenya.

What may never be apparent to him, with his vast experience, is the long term effect of continued disregard for fundamental human rights and freedoms to the collective security of the country.

For a nation secured through fear, as opposed to collective appreciation of common destiny, is a nation living in a fool’s paradise.

“On the contrary, his tenure at the interior docket has by and large struck the delicate balance between the competing needs placed on his shoulders,” Njoka says.

“He’s resolute in decision making, firm in implementation and committed to the task of securing the nation.

“Under his tenure, police are better equipped, cartels have been smashed and in the process enemies created.”