Kibaki urged to secure border

Chairman of the House Defence and Foreign Relations Committee Adan Keynan has urged President Kibaki to secure the country's porous borders May 31, 2011. FILE

By ALPHONCE SHIUNDU/ , ashiundu@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted  Tuesday, May 31 2011 at 15:29

Kenya’s sovereignty will remain at risk unless President Kibaki orders the military to secure the country’s porous borders.

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Speaking at a monthly meeting with parliamentary journalists in Nairobi, an MP and a university don said the President had been “held captive by elite interests”, and that’s why cross-border criminals were having a field day raiding the country.

Mr Adan Keynan, the chairman of Parliament’s Committee on Defence and Foreign Relations and Dr Adams Oloo, a political science lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said that unless the President, as the commander-in-chief, asked the military to take charge of the borders, the attacks on Kenyans living near the borders will continue.

“The President should move to secure the borders. Like Uganda, we must put up security posts at intervals of 20km all round our borders,” said Mr Keynan. “Our people near the borders cannot live at the mercy of marauding nomads.”

He said President Kibaki ought to secure the borders because he is the Commander-in-Chief of Kenya’s armed forces.

“When you look at the President, he can either be proactive or laid back. When he is laid back, he becomes a prisoner of elite interests,” Dr Oloo said.

Mr Keynan also said that the absence of a substantive Foreign Affairs minister was also hurting Kenya’s relations abroad. Though his committee edged out the former minister Moses Wetang’ula over corruption allegations, Mr Keynan said the President ought to have found a replacement as soon as possible.

“If I was the chief executive of Kenya, I’d not allow the people of Kenya to be without a minister of foreign affairs for even one hour,” the committee chairman said.

The two said the porous borders plus the tussle between Kenya and Uganda over the Migingo and Ugingo islands in Lake Victoria was also a threat to the integration process within the East Africa Community trading bloc.

Dr Peter Oesterdiekhoff of Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung noted that the push and pull between Kenya and Uganda was unlikely to cease, because there’s no conflict resolution mechanism within the East Africa Community to sort out such crises.

Dr Oesterdiekhoff said the security threats on Kenya’s borders “do not bode well for the integration process.”

The President also came under fire for failing to protect Kenya’s citizens, more so, following the rendition of some of them to Uganda to face charges of terror. Courts in Kenya have declared the rendition unlawful and asked the government to make sure the Kenyans came back home.

But then, they argued, Kenya has failed to follow up on the process for fear of jeopardizing relations with its biggest trading partner, Uganda.

“Whether Uganda likes it or not, this is realpolitik. We shouldn’t be begging Uganda to trade with us,” the University don said. “If Uganda is not our trading partner, we’ll get another one. That alone should not make us compromise our foreign policy.”