On terrorism and Kikuyus, Ngunjiri got it all wrong

 By John Onyando

Star columnist Ngunjiri Wambugu should have let sleeping dogs lie over the abysmal failure of the government to protect vulnerable Kenyans from last week’s terrorist attack in Mandera, which was executed in the same area, and aimed at the same community, as an earlier attack in December. The government astonishingly took no steps to protect the area, thereby making it is easy for terrorists to strike again.
In seeking to deflect attention from this indefensible security lapse, Ngunjiri resorted to some of the most bizarre assertions ever published by a Kenyan columnist to explain terrorists’ motivations. By calling the terrorist attacks as “ethnic cleansing,” his goal, as in many of his other columns, was to build support for the government among the Kikuyu community. From the very first sentence of the article, he looks at the terrorist attacks entirely from a tribal perspective and therefore fails miserably in trying to understand ways to tackle it.
The thrust of the column was based entirely on Ngunjiri’s belief that the 2009 Population Census result for the Somali community was inaccurate, since, “considering NEP is an arid and highly impoverished region,” the registered annual population growth rate of about 15 percent was not possible, as more developed parts of the country grew by only about four percent. This contention is, at best, ignorant. One of the cardinal realities on the nature of population growth established by experts decades ago is that as countries or communities develop economically, and more women begin working outside the home, population growth rates fall drastically. A number of countries in Europe therefore have negative population growth, while many developing countries register very high rates.

Evidence for this well-known phenomenon abounds in the recently released 2015 Kenya Demographic and Health Survey, which shows that the former North Eastern Province has the highest fertility rates, averaging 7.8 children per woman, followed by West Pokot (7.2), Turkana (6.9) and Samburu (6.3). In contrast, counties with the highest standards of living, and which Ngunjiri is most concerned about, have fertility rates three times lower: Kirinyaga (2.3), Nyeri (2.7), Kiambu (2.7) and Nairobi (2.7). Arid regions are clearly the leading source of Kenya’s current population increases.
Whatever one thinks about the Somali census figures, the controversy was settled by the court in 2009. It says much about Ngunjiri’s propagandizing that even as he condemns the institution of the Judiciary for validating the NEP census figures, he criticizes Raila Odinga for condemning the IEBC, urging the former prime minister to respect “institutions.”
Without concrete evidence indicating fraud, we should consider that the Somali population growth was consistent with other government data. The overall growth in NEP’s population between 1999 to 2009, from 960,000 to 2.3 million, was in fact slower than in the previous 1989-1999 period, when the region grew from 371,000 to 960,0000. And the significantly increased Somali population is reflected in every sphere, from their enrolment in schools and universities to the evolution of land use in North Eastern.
Another fiction Ngunjiri pandered is that the 2009 population statistics inform the distribution of national resources. “Today the Kenya Government has to use data that the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics does not believe is factual to allocate resources,” he wrote. On the contrary, the Jubilee government has strenuously fought this ideal. Recruitment to the military, police, Public Service and even the National Youth Service is skewed in favour of some tribes, which is why the government has repeatedly refused to publish a tribal breakdown of these figures. But the distribution of jobs whose statistics are publicly available, such as of cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries and chief executives of state corporations shows how certain tribes dominate.
Having falsely diagnosed the terrorism problem as ethnic cleansing and statistical issue, Ngunjiri’s recommended solution is for the government to “sort out the fictitious population numbers urgently.” This short-sighted view obstructs the hard thinking we need to do to tackle extremism. His thesis of Kikuyus being ethnically cleansed out of NEP also fails to recognize the heavy price that Somalis themselves have paid at the hands of Al Shabaab, both in terms of lives lost (in Somalia, Eastleigh, NEP itself) and from the severity of the repression by security forces and massive disruption of their economic lifelines.
Ngunjiri’s appeal to a narrow tribal constituency was manifestly clear in the way he roused emotions over the killings; the very first line of his article pointed out that ten of the 14 victims were from Nyeri County! But the fact that Nyeri has had to bury fifty terrorism victims in just six months shows that, despite their blanket support for Jubilee, ordinary Kikuyus are bearing the burden of a failing state like everyone else.
The government in fact has come under intense pressure from ordinary Kikuyus who have been demanding concrete actions to address their multiple woes. And its ineffectual attempts to shift attention from these woes by focusing on or inflating minor issues have failed, because these efforts are marked by the same incompetence that has failed to prevent terrorist attacks on anticipated targets.
Take for example the ongoing campaign against alcoholism in the former Central Province, which was triggered by women’s protests against men being absent from their homes. What should have been a social sensitization campaign was recklessly hijacked by unpopular leaders seeking cheap but dangerous popularity through incitement and murderous threats against the community’s perceived critics. Panga-brandishing youths led by a governor and a number of MPs actually stormed their fellow Kikuyus’ legal businesses and destroyed property worth millions of shillings.
Equally reckless tactics have been used by the region’s political establishment to defend Devolution Minister Anne Waiguru against credible corruption allegations, while the President has used his office to prevent any investigation.
We see similar evidence of state failure mount in every sector. No amount of whitewashing by Ngunjiri will camouflage it.
The writer is a research analyst on Kenya issues currently based in the US. He previously worked as a communication officer for Raila Odinga in 2007-2009. otj.paul@gmail.com