Effective leadership needed in police service to stem incidents of insecurity

What has changed in Kenya since the spectacular Westgate attack? The short answer is nothing.  AFP

In Summary

• Instead, Kenya is still in the “island of peace” mentality of the 1980s where the main security focus was on internal opposition actors.

By Murithi Mutiga
 

 

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The good thing about Kenyans is that they see the funny side even of serious events.

Shortly after Police Inspector-General David Kimaiyo came up with his theory that the latest fire at the airport was caused by a light bulb that fell smack into a dustbin, triggering a loud bang and flames, e, someone came up with a hashtag on Twitter: Alshabulb.

It’s funny and witty. But Kenyan officials cannot continue to take security as lightly as they are.

America was changed completely by the September 11, 2001 attacks. Airport security became a whole new industry, intelligence services were merged and forced to share information more efficiently, police forces were overhauled to deal with the threat of terrorists, and extensive surveillance operations launched.

What has changed in Kenya since the spectacular Westgate attack? The short answer is nothing.

A friend points out that in mid-December, he went with his family to two prominent malls in Nairobi, and there were absolutely no uniformed security personnel in sight.

There were the usual askaris. Gallant — but entirely unequipped — people who are normally the first to be mowed down by the terrorists (or arrested by police whenever a crime occurs and the officers can’t find any suspects).

Securing premises like those is a psychological game. Terrorists will often scout targets and conduct extensive surveillance.

Positioning a few GSU personnel with their red berets at these attractive targets would do wonders in terms of deterrence.

Instead, Kenya is still in the “island of peace” mentality of the 1980s where the main security focus was on internal opposition actors.

Kenya Broadcasting Corporation

So instead of offering security to wananchi, a whole group of General Service Unit personnel are permanently stationed at the entrance of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, presumably to guard against a coup. (Memo to the Cabinet secretary: If anyone staged a coup and announced it on KBC today, no one would notice).

Kenya must wake up and recognise that in Al-Shabaab and other extremists, it faces formidable foes. Money from certain countries in the Middle East has flowed into the country for decades and helped Aboud Rogo and company radicalise a whole generation of fighters (witness the brazen behaviour of the youths in Mombasa who keep attacking sheikhs who do not support violence).

The country must rise to the challenge. And it needs effective leadership at the top––someone, for example, who knows elementary rules of communication, and who, on receiving a report on a suspicious airport fire would simply say that investigations have been launched without going into embarrassing detail.

The last time this country had a police commissioner was when Maj-Gen Hussein Ali called the shots at Vigilance House.

Within a few short months after he took office, Nairobians could pick their calls without fearing decapitation at the hands of muggers. He brought a calm assurance at the helm. He had his controversies.

But he would never have blundered like Kimaiyo or announced an electrical fault had caused a blast as occurred at Assanands House barely minutes after Mathew Iteere arrived at the scene in 2012.
Maj-Gen Ali should be recalled to get the ship of security back on course.

*****


Lupita Nyong’o has been rightly hailed for her role in 12 Years A Slave, the movie that has earned her an Oscar nomination. It’s difficult to watch. But it should be shown in all schools because black people have a very scant appreciation of history.

Kudos are in order, too, to the other East African nominee Barkhad Abdi, who was plucked from life as a limo driver in Minneapolis and offers a performance to equal that of Tom Hanks in the piracy movie, Captain Phillips.

Al-Shabaab is impossible to support because their mission is irrational. Piracy, on the other hand, started off as a protest by Somalis against illegal trawling by big foreign ships that were taking away all the fish. The waters Kenya and Somalia share have some of the richest fisheries in the world.

The two countries should cooperate and launch a fish exports business to rival that of the Japanese and others to show that relationships in this part of the world don’t always have to be about war.

The writer, an editor with the Sunday Nation, is a Chevening Scholar at the London School of Economics. mmutiga@ke.nationmedia.com