Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:24:57
By Dickens Wasonga
KISUMU – Some residents of Kisumu now want the no-nonsense Nyanza PPO Antony Kibuchi to tackle the rising insecurity which has rocked the lake side city in the past few weeks.
In less than one week, three violent robberies were reported within the violence-prone Kondele area alone.
During one such incident, a prominent doctor attatched to new Nyanza provincial hospital was shot dead by a group of armed thugs who stormed a bar in the area. The thugs had earlier shot a woman, injuring her seriously at Briliant bar just a few meters a way from where the top medic was gunned down. The woman was rushed to the new Nyanza General hospital in critical condition while the provincial surgeon, identified as Dr. John Opondo, died when being rushed to Agha-Khan hospital.
The thugs later took off after robbing patrons and the bar attendants of an unknown sum of money.
During the same week, three suspected criminals were lynched by members of the public.
One was killed at Nyawita estate, another around Nyamasaria and the last one between Kondele and Manyata slums.
The town has yet to recover from the afermath of the post-election violence.
After the slaughter by the Kibaki’s armed forces and Mungiki, the Luo Community must unite to charter their own destiny. We can no longer wait and hope that the government will help us out of their situation. There are many unemployed young people who see no light at the end of the tunnel and are turning into criminals. The community leaders must get together to identify and help those younger generation that need help. They must deal with those hard core criminals who cannot be rehabilitated.
There are many young people graduating from high schools or colleges who cannot get employement. These are good kids who are coming off age with nothing to do!
The outsiders cannot solve our problem for us. Whenever you see those foreign NGOs and preachers, know that they are there to help themselves at you expenses. They are using our natural resources and pretending that they are doing us a favour.
The key is “Community Organisation and Policing”. Raila may help, but nothing will fall on your laps unless you organize and make his helping easier through organisation and hard work.
The luo community has itself to blame
During the post election violence we showed these thugs that it was ok to break the law, we stood by as the raped and ripped off pasengers and women, pretending to look for kikuyus
Now the knife we helped sharpen with our complaceny is cutting us
Its time for our beloved community to stand up, call a spade a spade, these are nothing but thugs and need to be stopped
We need to let the law take its course, but if we bar the government just because the police are non luos, we show our ignorance and hurt ourselves
We need the full weight of the law behind curbing this thuggery, and if the power behind the force is a kikuyu office and he can do the jib, then so be it
After all is ni mali yetu and maisha yetu inaharibiwe
being shot sighted will be the death of us
I honestly think that kisumu or Nyanza, God forbid, will have a mungiki type gang in less than 10 years. This is becuase we are breeding a generation of jobless youths. A clever man once said that an idle mind is a devils playground. We take our youths up to secondary school level then majority of them venture into ngware ama boda boda business. Others become youth for hire during electioneering. After the so called politicians win or loose the elections, they decamp to Nairobi and the poor youths are left stranded with no more “easy money” or “gonya” as they call it. Guys i happened to be in Kisumu kajulu which i call home during the post election violence. After the youths were done with flashing out non-luos,Indians included, they turned on fellow luo’s who they call “Jodak” or outsiders. It took the intervention of local chief and councillors to persuade the youth against evicting Jodak. My worry is this, if these guys don’t get jobs or some kind of economic empowerment soon, then in 10 years time we will not have a place to live in and Kodiaga will be over-flowing with hard-core criminals. We willl have to pay “protection”fee. I wish i could help….