Prof Kindiki, the man after Ngorokos’ AK 47 riffles
The Professor of international law coupled with human rights law, Interior and Coordination of National Government Cabinet Secretary (CS) interior Kithure Kindiki is the new sheriff dribbling for Ngorokos riffles.
He is determined to silence the guns in the gorges and sunbaked rocks of North Western Kenya. Many authorities in the security sector are asking will the professor of international law win this nefarious war where his predecessors have failed to end the conflict milieu? It’s only time that has answers underbelly.
The CS time without a number has said the inevitable focus is on snatching rifles from the marauding bandits and hundreds have so been surrendered. ‘This time round, no one will be allowed to herd while armed with firearms because they belong to security agents’ the CS asserted.
Professor Kindiki has insisted the North Rift banditry quagmire is a symmetrical interplay between poverty, politics and infectious lawlessness. Is it ecological factors, community economic survival wars, or civil or domestic strife? The threat requires a multi-pronged approach.
Who is the Ngorokos? The term was coined first around 1975 referring to armies of heavy bandits who hailed from Northern Kenya in general.
They occupied the famous Ilemi Triangle meandering into the Turkana and Pokots districts. The Ngoroko got ammunition, particularly AK 47 riffles from the neighbouring Sudan and Somalia.
They used the procured riffles to raid and re-raid each other. The region has braved this inter and intra-ethnic cattle rustling since independence and successive governments have instituted knee-jerk curative measures in vain.
Dangerous and disturbed
The archaic practice has led the region to be gazetted as dangerous and disturbed by Prof Kindiki.
Banditry has caused wanton destruction of properties, loss of innocent lives, displacement of population and human rights violations like rape leading to the virtual breakdown of social order.
Those bearing the biggest brunt are women and school-going children. However, a new trend has emerged where these gangs are targeting motorists plying some routes in the area.
In 1994 UNDP human development report documented in a more concise and broad spectrum that human security is as paramount as state security and therefore cattle rustling may have been aggravated by issues with nexus to food security, economic security, personal security, environmental security and political security.
The report asserted “human security is an approach to assist countries in identifying and addressing widespread and cross-cutting security challenges threatening human survival, livelihood and dignity of their people.”
This requires a government approach that addresses a wide array of development challenges and institutes well-placed mechanisms to prevent and strengthen the capacities of all people.
The cattle rustling among the North Rift communities are as old as the republic and keep mutating with every rising sun.
1970s
History records that warlords emerged from West Pokot and Turkana in the early 1970s. Once warriors were trained they were sent on raiding missions against the Tugen, Marakwet and Keiyo ostensibly to replenish their stock.
The CS says the net has engulfed wealthy and influential personalities promising bandits’ good tidings and protection.
The state of anarchy and lawlessness the malefactors have unleashed has created anxiety complicating government and Non-governmental organisations in implementing the life-changing programs because the officers aren’t free from freedom of fear.
This problem has been compounded by high levels of illiteracy among the North Rift counties.
According to the Kenya Bureau of Statistics, report 2018 Turkana County has less than 578 graduates,
West Pokot 536, Baringo 1,822, Samburu 318 and Elgeyo-Marakwet 895.
A worrisome trend that also records low learners enrolment in schools as boys are used as herders.
Pundits in the security sector including government statecraft have argued that banditry activities should be classified as terrorist acts attracting life sentences in jail.
In the recent past bandits have killed government officers, torched police vehicles, burnt down villages and schools and driven away hundreds of livestock.
CS Kindiki has said that he is pursuing multiple angles in a bid to permanently disable trigger-happy miscreants from the North Rift. He has vowed to stifle the network that includes financiers and other intermediaries.
Pokot South MP, Hon David Pkosing has been undergoing interrogation at the Directorate of Criminal Investigation and his Chopper has since been impounded by police and is undergoing forensic investigation.
The CS has rubbished acts of ordering terror and massacre of innocent civilians under the guise of famines, droughts and competition for resources like water and pasture and has declared to ruthlessly confront the bandits in their hideouts.
Prof Kindiki has stated that the new banditry trend can’t be trivialised because it has been commercialised.
The man who hails from Tharaka North Sub County has grown to witness banditry attacks that have ravaged Tharaka Community since 1964 and has seen it all on matters of banditry.
Will that be the point of departure from his predecessors? Prof Kindiki has tentatively vacated the luxurious Harambee office won police fatigues and literally taken operational and tactical combat instructional roles in the field away from the known norm of previous Interior Cabinet Secretaries issuing policy directives while in Nairobi.
Currently, a Multi-agency police led operation is undergoing in the region comprising of police and military.
Prof Kindiki has intimated that they shall be there for the long hog until the issue is wiped out and normalcy returns.
The successive regimes appear to have lost effective control over bandits and cattle rustlers, who over the years have become more militarized, predatory and destructive in their operations posing a real threat to national security.
Prof Kindiki insists for the first time in history he will disarm them and it’s high time they acclimatized themselves to other ways of survival.
The operation has incorporated digital media to get real-time information on bandits’ routes and reorganization of their assembly through drones.
This is billed as the sure way to maximize efficiency and reduce casualties. Prof Kindiki has said that the government will set aside 20 billion to deal with insecurity.
The President weighed on the issue saying the 20 billion will help the officers to get state-of-the-art equipment to help them better deliver on their duties.
The CS has broken records by visiting the region for myriad intervals in a bid to seek solutions and assess the situation himself.
Mr Sabastian Mwangangi.
mwangangisab82@gmail.com
