LET’S END THIS ISSUE OF BANDITRY ONCE AND FOR ALL

Banditry is a term that should be added as surname for the nomadic communities.

It all started as an activity of cattle rustling where one community will steal cattle from the other and then the affected community will track and recover the stolen livestock.

This was thought to be a Barbaric culture which later was turned around by cartelism and rumors has it some rich men turned the situation commercial and started funding the activity.

Just the other day the Cs Interior Security had a meeting in one of the affected place and he promised an end to this situation. "I assure the people of Kenya that we shall neutralize every bandit who defies the Government and engages in the atrocious killing, maiming, and displacement of people from their homes," he said.

"We are taking this war to their hideouts by land and air, with all our weight and might and with all the strength that God has given us to effectively defeat this lamentable catalog of crimes against humanity. We shall never surrender our Country to criminals."

In his speech the CS also said that he will soon be revealing the names of spiritual leaders and politicians who are benefitting from the security threat.

Now the government is investing a lot of energy in trying to curb the situation and once again the economy is punished and resources are allocated for wrong purposes.

Every once in a while lives of our men and women in uniform and innocent civilians are lost in random banditry attack. The interior minister stated over 135 Kenyans, including 20 officers, have been killed in the last seven months.

It's about time we get a permanent or at least semi-permanent solution to this because as a country we are past the forward reverse movement.

The ministry of interior security should try a different approach.

The common "operations" seems not to be working and we know that if the formula is repeated mostly and does not give result then a new one should be formed.

Imagine if the government decided to move the training grounds for our security forces to the affected places of Kerio Valley,Pokot,Samburu,Turkana and Marsabit to mention but a few.

Alternatively if the office of the cabinet secretary for interior security and some few other cabinet secretaries were relocated to the affected areas and give them a taste of how living there is not easy then it's a bet that something will be done.

It's noticeable that the same areas affected by famine and starvation is the same areas that's affected by insecurities that means if we deal with the basic needs then it means that this option looks like a working one.

In conclusion if a hungry man is an angry man then let's reduce the anger by reducing the hunger. So let's settle this once and for all and use the resources for other tasks.

Lerte Tellah - Samburu