Nkaissery denies Kenya is building Sh20bn border wall

Politics and policy

Interior secretary Joseph Nkaissery appears before the House team in charge of security on April 30. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA  

By EDWIN MUTAI, emutai@ke.nationmedia.com

In Summary

• Interior secretary Joseph Nkaissery said that a security barrier is being constructed on a small portion around Mandera town to help control and screen people crossing into Kenya.
• A wall, whose cost was initially estimated at Sh20 billion, had been touted as Kenya’s best bet in keeping Somalia-based terrorists Al-Shabaab from sneaking into the country.

Kenya is not building a wall on its entire border with Somalia, Interior secretary Joseph Nkaissery has said.

Mr Nkaissery told a parliamentary committee that a security barrier is being constructed on a small portion around Mandera town to help control and screen people crossing into Kenya.

“We are not building a 700-kilometre wall. We are only erecting a barrier between Bulahawa and Mandera towns, which have no man’s land,” the minister told the National Assembly’s Committee on Administration and National Security last Thursday, adding that the plan was to establish entry points with police checks, immigration and customs officials.

A wall, whose cost was initially estimated at Sh20 billion, had been touted as Kenya’s best bet in keeping Somalia-based terrorists Al-Shabaab from sneaking into the country.

Immigration Services Director Gordon Kihalangwa, who has been nominated to serve as principal secretary for Interior and Co-ordination of National Government, had indicated that the wall would be constructed along the entire Kenya-Somalia border to keep out illegal immigrants and to check the proliferation of small arms into the country.

Deputy President William Ruto affirmed Mr Kihalangwa’s position on April 7 when he declared that construction of the 700-km wall had begun, even as he brushed aside questions whether proper procedures had been followed in hiring a contractor.

The government has been weighing the option of erecting a security barrier in the wake of deadly terrorist attacks in its territory by Al-Shabaab insurgents.

The latest and deadliest of the attacks took place on April 2 at Garissa University College where 147 people were killed.

Mr Ruto had indicated that the wall would run from Border Point One in Mandera to Kiunga in Lamu. The project, however, runs the risk of reviving old border disagreements between Kenya and Somalia.

A surveillance road was also to be built, running parallel with the barrier, for easier monitoring of the border.

The barrier was expected to be modelled on the snaking structure that separates Israel from Palestine’s West Bank and would have seen bricks, mortar and barbed wire line the border.

READ: Building of wall along Somalia border to deter terrorism set to start

Mr Nkaissery’s declaration that there were no plans to erect the multi-billion-shilling wall followed criticism that the effort would not protect Kenya from attacks given the ongoing radicalisation of youths within the country’s borders.

It has also been suggested that using drones to monitor activity along the porous border would offer better protection against infiltration than building a wall.

The government has not disclosed the cost of constructing the proposed Mandera barrier but reports indicate it will comprise a concrete barrier with listening posts, surveillance stations and CCTV cameras.