Our anger over runaway insecurity is only natural

Your Excellency

Allow me a moment from the business of running this impossible country so that I can share a few thoughts on the Kenyan security situation.

Sir, the nation is in deep grieving. In the last couple of weeks, violence has visited us in all its horrid manifestations. If it is not young men celebrating stripping their sisters and daughters, it is old men raping their infant daughters while others sexually assault their grandmothers. Reports of robberies and contract killings fill our newspapers.

Even before we can mourn these dastardly occurrences, innocent Kenyans, including police officers, are being slaughtered on our roads from Mandera to Kapedo. Surely, Your Excellency, you must understand our fear, our annoyance, our frustration. In times like this, you must forgive our sometimes irrational response, like the one directed at your visit to Abu Dhabi and that infamous selfie.

Talking for myself, I think it is hypocritical for Kenyans to act like you committed the ultimate sin by taking a selfie with some happy go lucky Dubaian; that is the President we know and celebrate during good times. But these are not good times and we are a sensitive lot. At such a delicate season, Your Excellency, even your choice of words is critical. What you said on personal responsibility for security is on point but said in the wrong season.

We know there is no amount of policing that would guarantee our total security. We are aware that we are co-investors with you on security. We employ guards, watch the characters sitting in the matatus we are boarding, and have learnt defensive driving. Sir, we even pay to be walked home by estate watchmen!

We record videos of offences against women because it is the only way there will be sufficient outrage for your police officers to act; they would otherwise deny the occurrence.

We can obviously do more. But Your Excellency, that is only a small part of the problem and you need to appreciate what is informing our frustration. On the one hand, it is the apparent helplessness that your security organs seem to have as the slaughter and abuse goes on.

When scores of women are assaulted in neighbourhoods routinely patrolled by police, when terrorists strike in zones where no less than the Governor has warned of impending attacks, surely our anger is only natural. But at another level we are angry because the persons in charge of your security organs do not inspire confidence in us any more. The chief at the NIS is still new, so I will hold my horse for now.

Suffice to say that winning this war will require an effective and professionalised intelligence gathering process, and we are losing confidence on this front.

As for CS Joseph ole Lenku, I have no doubt he is a well meaning gentleman and a great public servant and I will not join the ranks of those who ridicule him. The same can be said of IG David Kimaiyo. I know him to be a committed and hard working police officer who genuinely cares for security.

But the reality is this team no longer inspires confidence in us. Your Excellency, you no doubt know winning this war is 50 per cent confidence building. We need to trust that these gentlemen and the teams under them understand the gravity of the crisis and are doing all it takes to deal with it.

If we were confident about that, we would bear the implosions when they occur for we all realise we live in a dangerous territory. But having lost confidence in this team, it honestly doesn’t matter what they do now.

And please, don’t join those who say you are hindered by the Constitution; that is a tired argument that may convince the light headed but not the majority of us.

Finally, Your Excellency, I wish you well. In the last year, even the skeptics grudgingly accept that you have what it takes to lead this country to greater heights. But on the security issue, we are starting to wonder.

Remember Jimmy Carter? Great President who accomplished much, until America believed he didn’t get it on their security.