Commentary By Leo Odera Omolo In Sotik Town,
The time is ripe for the government of Kenya to deploy all its available resources with the view to ensure that cattle rustling along the boundaries of Sotik, Borabu and Trans-Mara district is stamped out at all costs.
The government has the capacity to ensure that Kenyan citizens living in those areas sleep comfortably like any other Kenyans in other regions. The businesses of cattle rustling is retarding development and progress in this region, because people live in fear of not only losing their highly pried animals, but at time their sanctity of lives.
Moreover, cattle rustling are retarding development and progress in the region, particularly to members of the hard-working Abagusii community who are living in Borabu, Manga, Kijauri and Nyansiongo and other settlement areas in the area. The same is with the members of the Kiosigis Community living on the Sotik side of the border.
It has negative impact on the farming communities in the three district when it is taken into account that thee farmers have in recent past introduced grade dairy animals whose cost has gone up threefold. Each good dairy animals be it Friesian or ayshire is now selling at between Kshs 40,000 and Kshs 80,000 depending on the quality and the farm where the animal originated from.
Moist farmers have taken loans from the various commercial banks, financial institutions and SACCOS only to lose such prized animals to the shameless night raiders. The practice is outmoded and repugnant and should be abandoned altogether as it is anti-development.
Members of the three communities living in those districts should be sensitized by their elected leaders, particularly the MPs on how it is essential to live in peace and harmony. After all the Kipsigis and the Abugusii have lived together peaceful from time immemorial.
They have been inter-marrying from each other and have hundreds of relatives across the two community’s common border. There is no sensible why the two communities cannot live and work together for a common goal; like sisters and brothers in one Kenyan nation.
There is no point for the members of the two communities to continue shedding the blood of their own kith and kin.
Elected leaders, particularly the MPs representing constituencies which are located along the borderline should join the District Commissioners and the OCPD and hold public Baraza and even special sessions with the elders from these communities and the general public and sensitize those people about the harmful effect of cattle rustling. It is indeed a very harmful old tradition, which must be discarded and abolish in modern Kenya.
There are a sizeable population of Kalenjin presently living in Trans-Mara district along with their Maasai brothers and the Abagusii. These people must be sensitized to maintain peace, law and order at all the time.
And for any meaningful development to be achieved, la and order must remain paramount. Raiding villages at night in such of cows kept by the farmers is an act which is sinful and must be whipped out completely.
Al the three communities good milk consumers, and milk is like gold among them. They depend on it for money which in turn they used in paying school fees for their children and other overheads’. Dairy animals are therefore highly prized property to the communities, but their concerted efforts are being thwarted by the heinous act of rustlers.
I took time at the weekend and visited Nyansiongo, Mokomoni, Kijauri, Sotik, on the Borabu district side and also Ramasha on the Masaba district both sides of the border separating the Maasai and the Abagusii, especially on market day, the people do a booming trade and looked peaceful and friendly. But when the nightfall it is when hell-broke out. But it is even worse along the Sotik Borabu borders.
These areas suffered a great of damage to property caused by the flawed 2007 general election, and people are yet to recover fully in terms of lost property worth millions of shillings in places like Chebilat border market, which is located at the border on the Sotik-Kisii highway has yet to recovered fully from the damage caused to buildings, schools, shop premises and on individual dwelling houses which were set ablaze and burnt into ashes.
These good Kenyans need to time to rest and chat the way forward for their lives, and should be left alone to sleep peacefully.
Only last week the police managed to arrest a dozen of people they suspected to be engaged in cattle rustling, but more effort to stamp out the menace and evil of cattle rustling which has got an adverse effect on the communities and their development effort must be stamped out.
The government of Kenya has the capacity to do so. They only to apply the same tactics similar to the one they deployed along the Rongo Trans-Mara border areas two years ago, which has now yielded in peaceful co-exist and cohesion between the Luos and the Maasai. The elders and chiefs should be assigned the duties of identifying the trouble makers who in turn should be locked up.
Other good method is to impose a communal fine, in which if the cattle from Abagusii is lost inside the Maasailand, the government in turn should send members of the security forces into the area with instruction to round up similar number of the stolen cattle for the compensation of the victims
The colonialist applied the same tactics in 1961 when there was an outbreak of cattle rustling between the Maasais and Kambas in 1961. The offending community paid extra herds of cattle seized by police as part of the corporal punishment. Thereafter there has never been any tribal skirmish between the Kambas and the Massais ever since that time.
Leaders of the three communities should cooperate with the government through the Provincial Administration and police in asking their constituents to volunteer information, which might led to the apprehension of the suspected culprits.
The border separating the Kipsigis in Sotik district and the Abagusii in Birabu district has been very volatile and life threatening, because cattle’s rustling has become nightly phenomenon giving the resident sleepless nights.
In m modern Kenya people must be sensitized to work and live in harmony with their neighbors and even with those who have acquired land and settled across the common border and settled should enjoy the prevailing peace and tranquility.
Ends