Log into your member account to listen to this article. Not a member? Join the herd.

In the last years of President Daniel arap Moi’s Kanu rule, the central business district of the capital city Nairobi, become a bad, dangerous and ugly town. Nairobians were being mugged left, right and centre. It didn’t matter what time of day, one was being robbed, so long as the opportunity availed itself.

During the day the town was unpoliced, or let me put it this way, the police (both plain clothes and uniformed) become part of the problem. They watched as people got hassled and those who didn’t watch, participated in the hassling.  The alleyways were unkempt and unpassable. Few street lights worked, so once dusk set in, the town was thrown into an abyss of darkness. From then on, anything went.

Hordes of marauding hoodlums and muggers prowled the CBD unfettered, searching for their victims. It was a horrendous time to be a Nairobian.

The expatriate community was weary of venturing out and if it did, it moved in groups and certain specified areas. It created its own security arrangements, whereby, it collected data for everyone who was in its circuit, hence easy to keep track of its members.

Recently, I spoke to some of my expatriate friends who live in the Westlands suburbs of Nairobi, and they told me the “Nairoberry” days are back, where after a very long while, they are now having to rethink about their safety and security, especially in the evenings.

Then, police disguised in civilian clothes, were mugging people openly. In 2001, a professional journalist colleague one evening was going to catch a matatu as he headed home. It was just about past 7pm. On crossing the famous Kenya Cinema on the other side of Moi Avenue, he was met by a mob of men who stripped him of nearly every valuable item, including his belt and spectacles and a feature mobile phone which was in vogue then.

The “Nairoberry” days are back, where after a very long while, [people] are now having to rethink about their safety and security, especially in the evenings

In a split of a second, he was on the ground, shorn off everything. Describing the efficiency with which he had been robbed, we suspected it must have been the work of trained hands. For the next three months, we investigated the incident and true to our fears, it was a group of criminally-inclined policemen who were robbing people in the CBD.

Those times are back: Between January and April, 2022, mugging incidents from people that I know alone, have been staggering – from a university don being robbed by uniformed police right in the middle of the CBD late in the evening, to boda boda riders mobbing a man to rob him off his personal effects, including the prized mobile phone in broad daylight, to hoodlums snatching ladies’ handbags and just slithering away, unperturbed that they could apprehended.

In January, an international news agency that has offices in Nairobi and that had just employed a new foreign correspondent was warned that Nairobi is full of “pickpockets and street-smart hoodlums” and therefore he was being warned to be extra careful. Hardly would a news agency that itself deals in reporting newsworthy information, miss to report on an aspect that it considers to be of concern to its employees.

Of course, the CBD has mutated from those terrible Moi days of dangerous boulevards and streets, where it was not uncommon to have potholes in the middle of avenues that no one could remember the last time they had fresh tarmac.

Today, many of the thoroughfares are in better conditions, the street lights, by and large are operational and on the face of it, well, the CBD is a wee cleaner. The CBD is apparently manned by CCTV cameras, but guess what, the mugging instead of decreasing, has actually gone up. What was the point of installing those cameras?

But beneath the cabro works, which are mostly to be found in the uptown, the entire CBD is not a safe place to be, uptown or otherwise. Chatting with a friend outside the Stanley Hotel, next to the newspapers and magazines kiosk, which is at the junction of Kimathi Street and Kenyatta Avenue, a boda boda passenger brazenly nicked a man’s mobile phone as he was making a call and rode away, onto Kenyatta Avenue. It was a 1pm, a hot, sunny day. It must have been a team effort, some boda boda riders move around, pretending to ferry passengers, but in real sense are they are just muggers.

The CBD is manned by CCTV cameras, but the muggings instead of decreasing, have actually gone up

The hotel’s security guards told us the area around the five-star was no longer safe, rogue boda boda riders had become a menace to unsuspecting passers-by exposing their mobile phones as they wait to cross the zebra-crossing, either on Kimathis Street, or Kenyatta Avenue. The Stanley Hotel environs should be one of the safest areas in the CBD, but not anymore. I asked the hotel’s security detail what happened to the plainclothes police that are always a whistle-stop away. “It looks like it’s a free-for-all nowadays,” said one of them.

A university lecturer on his way home was recently accosted by regular police on Muindi Bingu Street, near Jevanjee Gardens. It was about 7.30pm. At gun point, they forced him to go a Mpesa (mobile phone money banking) agent and withdraw all the money he had on his mobile phone. He lost KSh30,000 in total. The street wasn’t dark like Moi days, in fact, at the point where he was mugged by the police, there are CCTV camera, at the junction of Muindi Bingu and Moktar Dada Streets, but just like in Moi days, the rogue police are back. They were most probably from Central Police Station, because the station covers that area of the CBD.

Accompanying a friend to the station to report about his stolen items, which included credit cards and of course his mobile phone, all forcibly snatched by boda boda riders’ in broad daylight, one of the officers, a burly policeman, manning the crime desk, laughed uproariously and said; “hahahaha, welcome to Nairobi. Hii Nairobi iko na wenyewe,” this Nairobi has its owners. unabahati haukunyoroshwa sana, you’re lucky you got off lightly, it could have been worse.”

The Kenya police become very sensitive when the media reports of its iniquities, against the very people they are supposed to protect. But on the streets of Nairobi, they are known to abet crime and collude with CBD thugs. If you want to know, just talk to the multitude of the downtown street hawkers. “Pickpockets, bag-snatchers and petty thieves are always roaming these streets, we know them, the police know them, they are always going about their business unrestricted, how come the police don’t arrest them?” Poses a hawker on Tom Mboya St.

The Stanley Hotel environs should be one of the safest areas in the CBD, but not anymore

“It is because the police and the thugs work together, in partnership, in a fellowship of some kind, where the thugs share their stolen loot with the police afterwards. Many of the police patrolling Tom Mboya St for example, are always in plainclothes, we see them, also walking up and down, just like the pickpockets, oftentimes crisscrossing each other, but no arrests are made. It is what it is. On these streets, everybody minds their own businesses, that way you don’t cross anybody’s path.”

At the tail end of his regime, Moi was sucked up by succession politics more than possibly the security concerns of a big city like Nairobi. Already a lame duck President, even the police could afford to be rogue and not fear the consequences. In any case the police always seem to have a leeway, especially the Kenya Police, who are known to be involved criminal activities.

Less than 100 days to the much-awaited succession presidential elections, the Jubilee government has all its guns trained on the forthcoming tumultuous polls. The Nairobi city crime incidents have always been with us, but with an economic meltdown, an agitated police service that is aggrieved because of its unfulfilled remunerations’ promises, the election fever, it’s a free-for-all, which has seen the city’s crimes soar to the detriment of its habitats.