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60 Days of Independence: Kenya’s Judiciary Through Three Presidential Election Petitions

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The judiciary had finally come of age, judicial independence had been attained. In the days that followed, judicial officers discussed on their social media pages how they were retaking their oaths of office. Erstwhile critics in the Internet fever swamps were suddenly gushing with praise for the judiciary.

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60 Days of Independence: Kenya’s Judiciary Through Three Presidential Election Petitions
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Independence Day

On the morning of 1 September 2017, Kenya entered the annals of history as only the fourth country in the world to annul a presidential election. Before that, courts in only Ukraine, the Maldives and Austria had annulled presidential elections. No opposition party in Africa had ever successfully petitioned a court to overturn an election, and the decision was praised globally as striking a blow for democracy and the rule of law. “Look, in view of all that evidence, and in good conscience, what other decision would I have made and how would I have looked?” the Chief Justice remarked.

Outside the courtroom later, as the majority decision and the two dissenting opinions were read out and broadcast live, the crowds erupted into celebration. From inside the building, it felt as if a bomb had gone off.

The judiciary had finally come of age, judicial independence had been attained. In the days that followed, judicial officers discussed on their social media pages how they were retaking their oaths of office. Erstwhile critics in the Internet fever swamps were suddenly gushing with praise for the judiciary.

President Uhuru Kenyatta was visibly angry. He had expected the court challenge on his victory to suffer the same fate as the challenge to his 2013 election victory and plans for his swearing in were already in top gear. The day before the Supreme Court decision Kenyatta had even made disparaging remarks about waiting for what some six people would decide regarding the election, and a false news alert on the Kenyatta family-owned K24 TV had implied that the petitioners had lost the case even before the judgment had come in. The 2017 petition was expected to go the same way. Then it all went horribly wrong.

Kenyatta had waged many battles in courts both at home and abroad and he had prevailed each and every time. He had defeated petitions seeking to stop his candidacy for president, neutered efforts to invalidate his shocking 2013 presidential election victory, and watched with amusement as a crimes against humanity case against him at the International Criminal Court (ICC) floundered, with witnesses withdrawing or recanting their testimony. He had won every court battle that mattered – until then.

Just what had changed in four short years? The answers would become clear from the actions undertaken in response to the petition decision.

Kenyatta’s first response to the Supreme Court’s decision annulling the election was to make a televised address from State House pledging adherence to the rule of law (sic). Later on the same day, he let rip at a rally of his supporters at Burma Market in Nairobi, calling the judges crooks and warning the Chief Justice that now that his victory had been invalidated, he, the Chief Justice, would be dealing with a President and not a mere president-elect.

Still smarting, Kenyatta told a State House meeting the following day that the country had a problem in the judiciary and vowed he would fix it.

Maraga thinks he can overturn the will of the people,” Kenyatta said.  “We shall show you in 60 days that the will of the people cannot be overturned by one or two individuals. Tutarudi na tukishamaliza tuta-revisit hii mambo yenu …Tunafanya kazi hii, unakuja unablock, unaweka injunction. Kwani unafikiria wewe umechaguliwa na nani? [After we return from the repeat election, we shall revisit your issues. We cannot be working only for you to frustrate us with injunctions. Who do you think elected you?]

The tirade signalled the beginning of a political onslaught that would manifestly challenge the judiciary’s claim to independence.

Among Kenyatta’s supporters, the anger was palpable. And it quickly turned into action – Member of Parliament for Nyeri Town Ngunjiri Wambugu petitioned the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to remove Chief Justice Maraga from office for alleged gross misconduct. He accused the Chief Justice of instituting a “judicial coup” with a view to seizing political power. The petition to the JSC came only a day after Members of Parliament from Kenyatta’s Jubilee Party announced during a Senate debate that they planned to pass a series of laws to limit the powers of the judiciary on elections. Kenyatta prevailed on Ngunjiri to withdraw the petition.

Within a week, a loud demonstration by Jubilee Party supporters was accompanying Derrick Malika Ngumu to the Supreme Court as he lodged a petition with the JSC to remove Justices Mwilu and Lenaola from office. The petition accused the two judges of gross misconduct and breach of the judicial code of conduct for allegedly being in contact with the petitioner’s lawyers during the hearing of the 8 August presidential election petition. As it turned out, cell data showed that some of the judges lived within the same radius as a bar popular with politicians. The JSC dismissed the petition for lack of merit.

In contrast, when the decision to annul the election results came in, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka were in court. From the court steps, Odinga declared that the decision had vindicated him and he pressed his advantage by demanding resignations at the electoral commission as well as irreducible minimum reforms to guarantee a free fresh election. He would later withdraw from the fresh election and call on his supporters to boycott it.

Both Kenyatta’s and Odinga’s reactions to the nullification appeared to be knee-jerk and tactical rather than strategic. The nullification appears to have surprised both protagonists, with the result that they were grappling with how to deal with loss and victory, respectively. As the court drank in the praise for its courage and independence, the attacks against some of its judges began to crystallise. The opposition began to expect more decisions along the same lines, and the angry government saw the court as a stalking horse for the opposition that might well issue more damaging decisions if not checked.

The decision to annul the election results was a huge rebuke to the electoral commission’s conduct, but it stopped short of finding the commissioners and staff culpable

The majority judges had not thought that they were in any danger. They were convinced of the soundness of their decisions and how they had arrived at them; they felt that they could defend them. After all, they had not cited Kenyatta for anything untoward. Although the judges understood the President’s anger for what it was — a normal human reaction, they took comfort in the public support that they received. Yet, that public goodwill lulled them into underestimating the hostility they were going to face.

The decision to annul the election results was a huge rebuke to the electoral commission’s conduct, but it stopped short of finding the commissioners and staff culpable. The commission’s chairman invited the director of public prosecutions to investigate any of his staff suspected of wrongdoing. Save for a few low-level officials at the polling station and constituency level who allegedly tampered with the elections, no charges have been preferred for illegal acts committed in the 8 August 2017 polls.

Because the judges had not faulted the President or any individuals at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) despite acknowledging the existence of “irregularities and illegalities”, they felt safe since they had not crossed the invisible line of power.

Still, there was a surge of attacks on the judiciary. Public demonstrations against the Supreme Court judges took place in Nyeri, Eldoret and Nairobi. The demonstrations targeted the Chief Justice in particular, with some protestors burning his effigy. Within the public sphere, an explosion of coordinated fake news, hash tags, videos and social media postings targeted the judges and the courts. Kenyatta’s reference to the judges as wakora [crooks] spawned the hash tag #WakoraNetwork.

On 19 September 2017, a day before the judges were due to deliver the reasons for the determination in the petition, the Chief Justice stood on the steps of the Supreme Court flanked by members of the Judicial Service Commission.

He pointedly criticised the Inspector General of Police, who he said was not taking judges’ calls. Judges had requested increased security but they were being ignored. “If leaders are tired of having a strong and independent judiciary, they should call a referendum and abolish it altogether. Before that happens the judiciary will continue to discharge its mandate in accordance with the Constitution and individual oaths of office,” he said.

The judges had never faced as much pressure as they did in the aftermath of the decision; they had no experience in dealing with the executive at close range, and nothing could have prepared them for the backlash.

It was a sobering moment as the Chief Justice said that he was willing to pay the ultimate price to protect the Constitution. Maraga was considered an insider, beloved by entrenched interests who hoped that he would apply the brakes on the reforms train, but he had little experience in playing the long game with the executive and the legislature.

The constant attacks were eroding whatever social capital the Supreme Court had built up with the decision of the 1st of September. As public support for the Supreme Court grew lukewarm, dampened by politicians’ criticism of the judges as having gone rogue, so too did the spirit that had imbued the court before the election nullification begin to wither.

By the 1st of October, when Supplementary Budget Estimates were published to accommodate the costs of the fresh presidential election, the budget of the judiciary had been slashed by Sh1.95 billion or 11.1 per cent.

At the height of emotions over the Supreme Court’s annulment decision, the ruling coalition demanded that changes be made to the Judicial Service Act to modify the procedures concerning the appointment of judges. The National Assembly passed amendments to the Election Act barring the courts from opening ballot boxes to scrutinise voting tallies

The judiciary’s budget had previously been increasing progressively from Sh3 billion in 2009/10 to Sh7.5 billion in 2011/12 before reaching a high of Sh16 billion in 2015/16. As other sectors continued to receive increased budgetary allocations, the judiciary’s projected budget of Sh31 billion was slashed to Sh17.3 billion.

At the height of emotions over the Supreme Court’s annulment decision, the ruling coalition demanded that changes be made to the Judicial Service Act to modify the procedures concerning the appointment of judges. The National Assembly passed amendments to the Election Act barring the courts from opening ballot boxes to scrutinise voting tallies.

A shaken IEBC was so uncertain of itself that it filed a petition seeking the Supreme Court’s advice on its role in verifying election results. The court ruled in its 17 October advisory opinion on what it had said in its September judgment, that the IEBC chairman could not correct errors on the vote tallying forms.

As the year wound down, the Kenyan Section of the International Commission of Jurists named CJ Maraga as 2017 Jurist of the Year, celebrating his courage in leading the Supreme Court to the majority decision to annul the presidential election result.

In the aftermath of the fresh election, the dismantling of the president’s legal team would give an indication of the depth of Kenyatta’s disappointment in those handling his legal affairs. Solicitor General Njee Muturi was demoted to Deputy Chief of Staff at State House; AG Githu Muigai would suddenly resign in January 2019, and the president’s advisor on constitutional affairs, Abdikadir Mohamed, would decline a posting to South Korea as ambassador. The president also accepted the resignation of Keriako Tobiko as Director of Public Prosecutions and offered him the position of Cabinet Secretary for the Environment.

Within the judiciary, there was a collective sigh of relief that the institution’s prestige and honour had been restored. The joyous mood at the Supreme Court contrasted sharply with the ugly scenes in the aftermath of the 2013 decision on the presidential election petition. As soon as Chief Justice Willy Mutunga had read out the 30 March 2013 decision, each judge swiftly left the building under the escort of the paramilitary General Service Unit (GSU) and the crowds in the streets were dispersed with teargas. What had begun as a globally watched court battle ended in silent ignominy. Much hope had been placed on the Supreme Court in 2013 and the disappointment in its decision significantly injured the public standing of the judiciary.

Just what had happened to change the Supreme Court in the four years between 2013 and 2017?

The 60-day period the Supreme Court gave for a fresh election provided a snapshot of the judiciary’s highest moment as an independent institution. The judiciary had for years been engaged in a struggle to claim its independence within a volatile political environment. The interplay of internal institutional politics – involving appointments, personality clashes, conflicts of interest and opposing judicial philosophies – and the external politics around how those wielding political power related with the institution is likely to have influenced how the court decided the presidential election petitions in 2013 and 2017.

Court in A New Mould

Kenya’s first Supreme Court was cobbled together from the old judiciary, academia, and civil society and it is instructive that the Court of Appeal contributed only one judge to the new apex court that would topple it in the judicial hierarchy. It was a clean break with the insularity of the Court of Appeal, its arrogance and slavish loyalty to rules.

Until 2013, presidential election petitions in Kenya had never gotten off the ground. Petitions challenging the election of the president in the 1992 and 1997 contests did not go beyond the preliminary stage and were dismissed on technicalities at the Court of Appeal – the highest court at that time. The requirements the petitioners needed to fulfil – such as the requirement to personally serve a sitting president with court papers – were so onerous as to make litigation moot. Opposition politicians refused to take the dispute over the 2007 presidential election to the courts, arguing that their opponent controlled the judiciary, leading to a 60-day violent crisis that only ended with the international mediation that brokered the formation of a coalition government.

This history made part of the case for establishing the Supreme Court as a special forum to hear and determine presidential election petitions, which had to be decided within 14 days of the announcement of the result. A president-elect could only be sworn into office if there was no court challenge. The change was first introduced into the September 2002 draft constitution prepared by the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission. This draft was the basis of successive proposed constitutions that culminated in the adoption of a new constitution in 2010.

On the surface, the first Supreme Court seemed to have the right mix of insider experience and outsider mavericks. More significantly, the court was a subconscious assembly of the country’s so-called Big Five, the largest ethnic groups; the Kamba, Kalenjin, Luo, Luhya, and Kikuyu, were represented.

At the helm as Chief Justice and Supreme Court President was Dr Willy Mutunga, who had taught law at the University of Nairobi, had been a political detainee, had pioneered the establishment of Kenya’s vibrant civil society movement, and had been part of the push for a new constitution. He had also been in charge of the East Africa regional office of the Ford Foundation. After the return of multi-party politics in 1991, he became one of the public faces demanding constitutional change. In early 2002, he successfully mediated between opposition leaders Mwai Kibaki, Charity Ngilu and Michael Kijana Wamalwa to form a political alliance and support a single candidate for the presidency in the 2002 elections following which Kibaki was elected president.

Although each of the Supreme Court judges – there are seven – had been through public interviews and those already serving on the bench had additionally been vetted for suitability to continue serving, there were questions about whether they were up to the task of adjudicating a political dispute purely on the basis of evidence and facts. Only three judges had judicial experience; the other three came from academia and civil society.

Dr Mutunga had had no role in interviewing or selecting any of the first Supreme Court justices. He and Deputy Chief Justice Baraza were awaiting parliamentary vetting and approval at the time. The JSC thus gazetted the names of five judges without his input. A court challenge seeking to have the Supreme Court conform to the principle that no institution should have more than two thirds of one gender failed.

The other judges who would make up the bench for the 2013 presidential election petition were Justices Philip Kiptoo Tunoi; Jackton Boma Ojwang; Mohamed Khadar Ibrahim; Smokin Charles Wanjala; and Njoki Susanna Ndung’u. By pure coincidence, they had all been Dr Mutunga’s students at the University of Nairobi. Deputy Chief Justice Nancy Makokha Baraza, however, would leave office after serving for only six months following a public furore over her altercation with a female security guard performing checks at a Nairobi shopping mall. A tribunal found Baraza unsuitable to serve on Kenya’s apex court and she later withdrew her appeal at the Supreme Court. The vacancy created by her departure was not filled until after the 2013 election petition had been decided.

In the run-up to the 2013 presidential election petition Dr Mutunga’s stint as a political prisoner and history as a pro-democracy activist had fed fears that he would be in the tank for Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who had also been a political prisoner and was contesting the presidency a third time. Yet, ahead of the 2013 presidential election petition, the Supreme Court had cultivated the habit of dodging legal bullets and its excessive caution was sometimes seen as bordering on cowardice. For example, when the IEBC sought an advisory opinion on the election date under the new Constitution, the Supreme Court sent the matter down to the High Court whose decision was subsequently affirmed by a five-judge bench of the Court of Appeal by a majority of four to one.

The Supreme Court’s aloofness discouraged litigants from approaching it to settle the question of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto’s eligibility to contest the 2013 elections given their indictment at the (ICC for crimes against humanity. “Any question on the qualification or disqualification of a person who has been duly nominated to run for president can only be dealt [with] by the Supreme Court,” said Judge Helen Omondi, reading out the decision of a five-judge High Court bench, 17 days to the March 4, 2013, General Election. To date, the Supreme Court has not made any determination on the leadership and integrity standards a candidate for president should satisfy in order to qualify to run.

By the time the 2013 presidential election petition arrived at the Supreme Court, police were dispersing the petitioners’ supporters with teargas. Once the petition was filed the court opened up the proceedings to live broadcasting and web streaming on its website, with 157 law schools following the feed. Six senior jurists from the Commonwealth Judges Association were on hand to watch the hearing The pre-trial conferencing ­- an innovation of the new Supreme Court – was fascinating, giving the public a rare inside view of how the wheels of justice turn.

The judges declined an audit of the IEBC’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) system, saying that the petitioners had not indicated who should conduct it, and expressing fears that the exercise might go beyond the constitutional deadline for determining the petition.

Remarkably, a report published by the Carter Center after the election put the failure of the ICT system at 41 per cent of all biometric identification kits.

Another application sought leave for Odinga’s lawyers to formally file an 839-page bundle of affidavits and other evidence — necessitated by the IEBC’s own filing in response to the petition. However, citing the deadline imposed upon it by the Constitution, the court ordered that the material be expunged from the record.

Civil society activists Gladwell Otieno and Zahid Rajan filed a separate petition seeking to argue that the IEBC did not maintain a constant voter register, with the result that the number of people who voted was higher than the number of those who were registered. The petitioners claimed that it was unclear which register had been used to confirm the identities of voters at polling stations across Kenya.

A third set of petitioners, Moses Kiarie Kuria, Dennis Njue Itumbi and Florence Jematia Sergon filed their petition before the March 16, 2013 deadline seeking a declaration that spoilt votes should not be taken into account when computing the valid votes cast.

The court, on its own motion, ordered the scrutiny of all votes cast in all the 33,400 polling stations to gain insight into whether the winning candidate had indeed met the threshold of garnering a majority of all votes cast. But it soon became clear that notwithstanding the availability and use of nearly 50 legal researchers, the court was woefully unprepared to manage the scrutiny or to understand how the Sh10 billion ICT infrastructure had helped or undermined the election.

Dr Mutunga and Dr Wanjala were convinced that a scrutiny would provide a snapshot of the election but the Supreme Court’s lack of experience in managing an election scrutiny would prove to be its undoing as it ceded control to the court administrators who actively sabotaged it through administrative delays and systems failure. In the event, although the team completed the scrutiny, they misled the judges that they had only examined 18,000 polling stations and that the data was inconclusive.

Without acknowledging that the scrutiny it ordered was only partially undertaken and inconclusive, the court upheld the election for lack of evidence of rigging. The decision provoked brutal criticism, including open accusations of bribery. Dr Mutunga resorted to publishing an agonised post on Facebook asking that if anyone knew of judges accepting bribes, he or she should come forward with the evidence.

Long before it gave its final decision, the manner in which the court had handled a number of applications made during the hearing was a clear indication of the decision that the court would make. The final judgment was brief on matters such as the failure of the polling kits (worth only seven paragraphs) while lengthy on far less important ones such as why rejected votes should not be considered in the final tally (27 paragraphs).

Although there were recriminations about the inadequate preparations by advocates for the petitioners – who declined offers of help from the United States at the time – the Supreme Court came in for severe criticism for its proceduralist reading of the rules and this may have influenced its approach in 2017.

In their book on the 2013 General Election, New Constitution Same Old Challenges, James Gondi and Iqbal Basant point out that public confidence in the Supreme Court declined after the decision, which was roundly criticised in academic and legal circles. A Judiciary Perception Survey in 2015 found that the approval rating of the judiciary plummeted from a stratospheric 78 per cent to just under 50 per cent in the year after the ruling.

So harsh was the backlash from the decision that when interviewing for the Chief Justice’s position in 2016, Justice Smokin Wanjala – who had been on the Supreme Court bench since its establishment – said he would not be happy to be part of another presidential election petition, if only to avoid unfair criticism.

In the event, he was one of the four judges that formed the Supreme Court majority that annulled the 8 August 2017 presidential election and he also sat on the petition challenging the validity of the fresh election held on 26 October 2017.

Odinga issued a statement shortly after the March 2013 Supreme Court decision and before the judges had given their detailed reasoning, saying that he and his running mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, disagreed with some of the court’s findings and pointing at anomalies in the way the hearings were conducted but also adding that: “Our belief in constitutionalism remains supreme.”

“Casting doubt on the judgment of the court could lead to higher political and economic uncertainty and make it difficult for our country to move forward,” Odinga said.

There would be an inchoate attempt to reform the Supreme Court through a proposed referendum on the constitution in 2015, but it did not materialize. Still, attempts to bring the judiciary to heel had begun as early as when Dr Mutunga was Chief Justice. Decisions by the High Court striking down various laws and executive actions as unconstitutional or illegal had grown into a source of regular annoyance. The executive oscillated between quailing impotence and blinding anger in response to court decisions around corruption, the amendment of security laws to deal with terrorism, and the president’s desire to participate in the appointment of judges.

This article is the first of a three-part series adapted from the recently launched report: 60 Days of Independence: Kenya’s judiciary through three presidential election petitions

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Politics

Nigeria: A Messiah Will Not Fix Country’s Problems

In Nigeria’s recent election cycle, many citizens looked to Peter Obi for change. But the country needs people-led social transformation, not saviors.

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Nigeria: A Messiah Will Not Fix Country’s Problems
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On February 25, Nigerians once again took to the polls with a determination that their votes could change the fate of a country in deep despair. For the seventh time since a civilian dispensation began in 1999, Nigerians hoped that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) would conduct a free, fair, and credible election. This hope was reinvigorated by the emergence of technology that would ensure, purportedly, a transparent process. Yet, once again, voters had their dreams crushed with an election marred by violence, ballot box snatching, forged results and, of course, voter intimidation and buying. In the days that followed, despite mounting evidence of irregularities and international outcry, INEC declared Bola Ahmed Tinubu, of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the winner of the presidential poll. The continuation of a gerontocratic oligarchy was solidified.

Although media attention focused on a young class of voters and the uniqueness of this historical moment, a deeper analysis is necessary. If nothing else, this election provided an opportunity to examine the shifting landscape of Nigeria’s elite electoral politics, and the increasingly complex voting patterns of citizens, while understanding these voters are increasingly a minority—less than 30 percent of the registered voters (about one-tenth of the population) cast their vote.

The dizzying rise of Peter Obi as a “third force” candidate over the last nine months was largely due to a movement of emergent and middle-class youth, the so-called “Obidients,” who used technology to galvanize a youthful base to push forward their candidate. That the Obidient movement was formed, ironically, off the back of the EndSARS movement, is in many ways a direct contradiction. The generation that was “leaderless” now suddenly had a leader. The rate at which young people chose this candidate still gives me whiplash. But there was no shaking their convictions. Obi was their candidate, and no one could shake their belief that a new Nigeria would be formed under his presidency, despite the evidence that he was directly endorsed by the same ruling class that has led to the country’s demise.

Obi is not a revolutionary, a social welfarist, nor even pro labor, but he became the savior many youth were looking for to “rescue” Nigeria. Ironically, the millions of youth that fought the EndSARS battle, and named themselves the leaderless soro soke (“speak up” in Yoruba) generation, did not seek elective office themselves. Rather, many put their eggs in Obi’s basket in supporting an older, veteran politician whose clean cut and soft demeanor led to his near deification. Other EndSARS activists, including Omoyele Sowore, were mocked for running in the election and were seen as not experienced enough for the job. In the end Sowore  performed abysmally at the polls, despite his demonstrated commitment to Nigerian youth and human rights record and involvement in the EndSARS protests (Sowore’s African Action Congress polled only 14,608 votes, faring worse than in the 2019 election).

This absolute faith in Obi was demonstrated when his followers patiently waited for five days after the election to hear from him. Instead of sending them into the streets, he advised them to wait for him to challenge the electoral irregularities in the courts. Why did a leaderless generation need a hero?

The contradictions in the EndSARS ideology and the Obidient campaign will be tested in the years ahead. After the Lekki massacre on October 20, 2020 brought the massive street protests of the EndSARS movement to an abrupt halt, many of the sites of protests shut down completely and groups that were loosely organized dismantled into relative silence for almost two years. In fact, there was little indication that EndSARS would evolve into a mass political movement until Peter Obi emerged on the scene in May 2022. The first- and second anniversaries of the Lekki massacre were marked by smaller protests in Lagos and a few other cities, which paled in comparison to the numbers at the 2020  protests. Still, efforts to free many of the prisoners arrested during EndSARS are proving difficult, with some protesters and victims still in jail today. There was no direction, no cohesiveness, and no willingness to move forward at that point. But in May 2022, seemingly out of nowhere, things began to shift. A candidate emerged that many EndSARS protesters seemed to think would be the savior.

Understanding the youth divide

While often lumped into a sum, the category of “youth” is not a single class of people. When Obi was said to carry the youth vote he actually only carried the vote of a particular category of young people, an emergent middle and professional class, who were also some of the most vocal in the EndSARS movement. However, if we are to use the discredited election geography as a proxy for representation, it is clear that this demographic is both well defined and narrow. Major urban areas like Lagos and Abuja pulled towards Obi, as did a few Eastern states. The North Central states including Plateau and Benue asserted their own identity by aligning with Obi, perhaps in a rejection of the Northern Muslim tickets of the Peoples Democratic Party (with whom Atiku Abubaker ran) and the APC.

The 2023 election also forces us to re-examine the dynamics of class, ethnic and religious divides and the deepening malaise of the poor and their disengagement with politics. What is clear from this election, like many before, is that Nigeria has yet to come of age as a democracy; indeed, the conditions for democracy simply do not exist. It is also quite evident that the Nigerian elite are adept at changing the political game to suit the mood of the Nigerian people. Electoral malpractices have shifted over time in response to the increasing pressure of civil society for accountable elections. Strong civil society advocacy from organizations focused on accountability and transparency in government have pushed against electoral practices. While these practices continue, there are significant shifts from previous elections where vote buying was brazen. However, it begs the historical questions: has Nigeria ever had a truly free and fair election, and is the process with which democracy is regenerated through the ballot the path for emancipatory politics? These questions become more relevant as the numbers of voters continue to dwindle, with the 2023 election having the lowest turnout in Nigeria’s electoral history, despite the social media propaganda around the youth vote and the turning tide of discontent that was predicted to shape the election.

Lessons from history

The fact that young people were surprised by the events on February 25 may be indicative of youthful exuberance or a startling lack of knowledge of history. The idea that a ruling class, who had brought the EndSARS struggle to a bloody end, would somehow deliver a free and fair election, needs more critical scrutiny. For those that remember the history of the June 12, 1993 elections—annulled after the popular rise of MKO Abiola—the election is no surprise. But for young people deprived of history education, which has been removed from Nigeria’s curriculum for the past 30 years, the knowledge may be limited. When a young person says they have never seen an election like this, they also cannot be faulted, as many young voters were voting for the first time. Given that many youth seem to underestimate the long history of elections and electoral fraud, the question of intergenerational knowledge and of a public history that seems to be absent from electoral discourse cannot be ignored. It is also hard to fault young voters, in a  land where there is no hope, and whatever hope is sought after can be found in the marketplace.

Many of the young organizers were adept at reading their constituencies and mobilizing their bases, but some of the elephants in the room were ignored. One of these elephants, of course, was the deep geographic and ethno-religious and class divisions between the North and the South. This is evident in the voting patterns in the North West and North East where Obi’s campaign did not make a dent. Though Obi ran with a vice president from the North, the majority of votes in Northern zones were divided between PDP, APC and New Nigeria People’s Party while two of the North Central states, Plateau and Nasarawa, went to Obi’s Labor party. Kano, the largest voting population in the country went to Rabiu Kwankwaso’s NNPP, an outlier who was ignored to the peril of opposition parties (Kwankwaso was the former governor of Kano).

Obi’s campaign also focused on the emergent middle class youth, as well as appealing to religious sentiments through churches on a Christian ticket and ethnic sentiments appealing to his Ibo base in the South East, where he swept states with more than 90 percent of the vote. The North is largely made up of the rural poor with poverty rates as high as 87 percent and literacy rates among young women in Zamfara state as low as 16 percent. Tracking Obi’s victories, most of the states where he won had lower poverty rates and higher literacy rates; states like Delta and Lagos have the lowest poverty counts in the country. While Obi used poverty statistics to bolster his campaign, his proposed austerity measures and cuts in government spending do not align with the massive government investments that would be needed to lift Nigerians out of poverty. While the jury is still out on the reasons for low voter turnout, deepening poverty and the limited access to cash invariably impacted poor voters.

Historically, Nigeria’s presidency has swung between the North and the South, between Muslims and Christians, and this delicate balance was disrupted on all sides. In 2013, an alliance between the Southern Action Congress (AC), the Northern All Nigeria’s People’s Party (ANPP), and Congressive People’s Alliance (CPC) to produce the Action People’s Congress (APC) was able to remove the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) who had dominated the political scene. Another important historical note is that of the legacy of Biafra that lives on, as an Igbo man has never taken the helm of the Presidency since the Civil War. While Obi ran on the promise of a united youth vote, the lingering ethnic and religious sentiments demonstrate the need for his campaign to have created a stronger alliance with the North and the rural and urban poor.

The failure of the youth vote is also a failure of the left

The other factor that we must examine is the failure of the left to articulate and bring into public critique the neoliberal model that all the candidates fully endorsed. Many young Nigerians believe if Nigeria works, it will work for everyone, and that “good governance” is the answer to the myriad problems the country faces. The politics of disorder and the intentionality of chaos are often overlooked in favor of the “corrupt leader” indictment. The left was divided between the Labor Party, whose presidential flag bearer ran on a neoliberal rather than pro worker or socialist platform, and the African Action Congress, who ran on a socialist manifesto, but failed to capture the imaginations of young people or win them over to socialist politics and ideology. In seeking to disrupt the two party power block, young Nigerians took less notice of the lack of difference between the three front running parties, and chose to select the lesser of three evils, based on credentials and the idea that Obi was “the best man for the job.” In fact, the Nigerian youth on the campaign trail emphasized experience in government as a criteria for a good candidate, over and above fresh ideas.

The left also failed to garner the EndSARS movement and channel it into a political force. The emergent youth middle class, not the workers and the working poor, continued to carry the message of liberal rather than revolutionary politics. Unfortunately, just as the gunning down of Nigerian protesters caught young people off guard in October 2020, so too the massive rigging of this election. However, there is no cohesive movement to fight the fraud of this election. The partisan protests and separate court cases by the Labor Party and PDP, demonstrate that the disgruntled candidates are fighting for themselves, rather than as a single voice to call out electoral fraud and the rerun of the election. The fact that there is acceptance of the National Assembly election outcomes and not the presidential election, points to the seeking of selective justice, which may eventually result in the complete disenfranchisement of the Nigerian people.

At this time we must seek answers to our current dilemma within history, the history that we so often want to jettison for the euphoria or overwhelming devastation of the moment. The question for the youth will now be, which way forward? Will we continue to rely on the old guard, the gerontocratic oligarchy that has terrorized Nigerians under the guise of different political parties for the past 24 years? Or will we drop all expectations and pursue the revolution that is sorely needed? Will young people once again rise to be a revolutionary vanguard that works with millions of working poor to form a truly pro-people, pro-poor party that has ordinary Nigerians as actual participants in a virbrant democracy from the local to the federal levels, not just during election time but every day?  Will the middle class Nigerian youth be willing to commit class suicide to fight alongside the poor to smash the existing oligarchy and gerontocracy and snatch our collective destiny back?

It is a time for truth telling, for examining our own shortcomings. As young people, as the left, and as civil society, we have relied too long on the oppressors for our own liberation.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Africa in the New World Disorder

The war in Ukraine indicates a new world disorder, where great powers fight for primacy and Africa continues to be exploited.

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Africa in the New World Disorder
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There are some of us in Africa who believe that we should not invest any serious thinking in the war in Ukraine as it is one of the “European tribal wars.” The logic of that belief is that in Africa we have too many of our own problems to invest energy and effort in European problems. The trouble of being African in the present world order, however, is that all problems and wars end up African in effect if not in form. In the sense in which one who knows it feels it, every war in the world is an African war because Africans have, for the longest time, felt and known wars that are not of their creation. The African condition itself can be understood as a daily experience of war.

Over centuries Africa has been structured and positioned to be on the receiving end of all world problems. As such, Africa is not only the storied cradle of mankind, but also the cemetery of the human condition where every human and world problem comes to kill and to die as well. The worst of the human condition and human experiences tend to find final expression in Africa. It is for that reason that Julius Nyerere once opined that the Devil’s Headquarters must be in Africa because everything that might go wrong actually goes wrong in the continent.As the world tiptoes precariously from the COVID-19 pandemic, at the same time it seems to be tottering irreversibly towards a nuclear World War III. The countries of the world that have the power and the privilege to stop the war pretend to be unable to do so. Even some powerful and privileged Western thinkers are beating the drums of war. For instance, Slavoj Zizek, considered “the most dangerous philosopher in the West,” wrote for The Guardian in June 2022 to say: “pacifism is the wrong response to the war in Ukraine,” and “the least we owe Ukraine is full support, and to do that we need a stronger NATO.” Western philosophers, not just soldiers and their generals, are demanding stronger armies and bigger weapons to wage bigger wars. In Ukraine, the conflict is proving too important to be left to the soldiers, the generals and the politicians. In that assertion Zizek speaks from the Euro-American political and military ego, whose fantasy is a humiliating total defeat of Russia in Ukraine. Zizek, the “dangerous philosopher” takes his place as a spokesperson for war and large-scale violence, agitating from a comfortable university office far away from the horrors of Bakhmut.

United States President, Joe Biden, spoke from the same egopolitics of war before the Business Roundtable CEO Quarterly Meeting on March 21 last year: “And now is a time when things are shifting… there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.  And we’ve got to unite the rest of the free world in doing it.” Clearly, an “end of history” fantasy of another unipolar world led by the US and its NATO allies has possessed Western powers that are prepared to pump money, weapons and de-uniformed soldiers into Ukraine to support the besieged country to the “last Ukrainian.” During a surprise visit to Kyiv on the eve of the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden hawkishly said the US will support Ukraine in fighting “as long as it takes,” dismissing diplomatic alternatives. Suggestions for a negotiated settlement in Ukraine that have come from influential figures, such as Henry Kissinger on the right and Noam Chomsky on the left, have been dismissed with the sleight of the left hand, and this is as Ukraine is literally being bombed to dustAfrican countries that have for years been theaters of colonial invasions, proxy wars, sponsored military coups, and regime changes can only see themselves in Ukraine. What Ukraine is going through is a typical African experience taking place in Europe and the first victims are Europeans this time.

Being Africans in Africa, at the least, should equip us with the eyes to see the war in Ukraine for what it is, a war driven by a Euro-American will to power, a spirited desire for world dominion against the Russian fear of NATO encirclement and containment, and nostalgia about a great Soviet empireIt is a war of desires and fears from which the belligerents will not back off. The envisaged “new world order” can only be another “world disorder” for an Africa that has for so long been in the periphery of economic, political, and military world affairs.

Destined for war: The Thucydides trap

Well before the war, the Singaporean diplomat and scholar Kishore Mahbubani described how the “world has turned a corner” and why “the West has lost it” in trying to maintain its economic and political dominion by any means necessary and some means unnecessary. Power is shifting under the feet of a young and fragile Euro-American empire that will not lose power peacefully, hence the spirited desire to force another unipolar world without China and Russia as powersTaiwan and Ukraine are the chosen sites where the Euro-American establishment is prepared to militarily confront its threatening rivals. That “from AD 1 to 1820, the two largest economies were always those of China and India” and that “only in that period did Europe take off followed by America” is little understood. That the Euro-American empire has not been the first and it will not be the last empire is little understood by the champions of the “new world order” that Francis Fukuyama, in 1989, mistakenly declared as “the end of history and the last man;” a world ruled by the West, led by the US  and its European allies had arrived and was here to stay in Fukuyama’s enchanting prophecy. Ensuing history, 9/11 amongst other catastrophic events, and the present war in Ukraine, were to prove Fukuyama’s dream a horrific nightmare. Mahbubani predicts that the short-lived rise and power of the Euro-American Empire has “come to a natural end, and that is happening now.” It seems to be happening expensively if the costs in human life, to the climate and in big dollars are to be counted.

In the struggle of major world powers for dominion of the globe Ukraine is reduced to a burnt offering. While, on the one hand, we have a terrified Euro-American empire fearing a humiliating return to oblivion and powerlessness, on the other hand we have the reality of an angry China and Russia, carrying the burden of many decades of geopolitical humiliation. Such corners of the world as Africa become the proverbial grass that suffers when elephants fight. The scramble to reduce Africa to a sphere of influence for this and that power is a spectacle to behold and the very definition of the new world disorder; a damaged and asymmetrical shape of the world where the weaker other is dispensable and disposable.

In its form and content, this new world disorder is ghastly to ponder, not only for Africa, but also for the rest of the world. Graham Allison pondered it in 2015 and came up with the alarming observation that “war between the US and China is more likely than recognised at the moment” because the two powerful countries have fallen into the Thucydides Trap. The ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, described the trap when he narrated how avoiding war becomes next to impossible when a ruling power is confronted by a rival rising power that threatens its dominion. Thucydides witnessed how the growing power and prosperity of Athens threatened Sparta in ancient Greece,  driving the two powers to warThe political and historical climate between China and the US captures the charged political temperatures that punctuated the relations between an entitled and proud Sparta confronted with the growth and anger of a frightening Athens. The proverbial chips were down.

For the US and China to escape the Thucydides Trap that is luring both superpowers to war, “tremendous effort” is required of both parties and their allies. The effort is mainly in mustering the emotional stamina to see and to know that the world is going to be a shared place where there must never be one center of power; that political, economic and military diversity is natural, and the world must be a decolonial pentecostal place where those of different identities, and competing interests can share power and space, is the beginning of the political wisdom that can guarantee peace. President Xi Jinping of China seems to have read Allison’s warning about the Thucydides Trap that envelops China and the US because on a visit to Seattle he was recorded saying: “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might make such traps for themselves.” The world is sinking deeper into new disorder and violence because rival powers cannot resist the Thucydides Trap and keep repeating “strategic miscalculations” based on their will to power and desire for global dominion.

The problem with China (the Athens of our present case) that troubles the US as the Sparta of the moment is that, as Allison observes, “China wants to be China and accepted as such—not as an honorary member of the West.” The problem with world powers, past and present, seems to be that they cannot live with difference. In fact, political, economic and cultural differences are quickly turned from competition to conflict, from opposition to total enmity. How to translate antagonism to agonism, and to move from being enemies to being respectful adversaries that can exist among each other in a conflictual but shared world is a small lesson that seems to elude big powers, whose egopolitics drives their geopolitics into a kind of militarized lunacy. One would be forgiven, for instance, to think that playground toys are being spoken of when presidents of powerful countries talk about monstrous weapons to be deployed in Ukraine. Observing from Africa one can hazard the view that big powers might be small and slow learners, after all. The death-drive of the superpowers is perpetuated by the desire to force other countries, including other powers, to be “more like us” when they are formidably determined to be themselves. To break out of the Thucydides Trap and avoid war, for instance, the US has to generate and sustain enough emotional stamina to live with the strong truth that China is a 5,000-year-old civilization with close to 1.5 billion people and in its recent rise is only returning to glory and not coming from the blue sky. And that the world has to be shared with China and other powers, and countries. China, and allies, would also not have learnt well from  many years of decline if they dreamt and worked for a world under their sole dominion.

Any fantasy of one world ruled from one mighty center of power is exactly that, a fantasy that might be pursued at the dear cost of a World War. Away from that fantasy, the future world will be politically pentecostal, not a paradise but a perpetually in the making and incomplete world where human, national, cultural, political and religious differences will be normal. From Africa that future world is thinkable and world powers should be investing thought and action in that and not in new monstrous weapons and military might.

Africa in the new world disorder

The symptoms are spectacular and everywhere to be seen. It can be the Namibian President, Hage Geingob, on live television having to shout at a German politician, Norbet Lammert, for complaining about the growing Chinese population in Namibia. Geingob asks why Germans land in Namibia on a “red carpet” and do “what they want” but it becomes a huge  problem for the West when the Chinese are seen in Namibia. That Namibia should not be reduced into a theater of contestation between the West and China because it is a sovereign country was Geingob’s plea to the German politician. It can be President Emmanuel Macron of France, in May 2021, asking President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for forgiveness for France’s role in the genocide of 1994—the bottom line being that African conflicts and genocides bear European footprints and fingerprints. Africa is reduced to the West’s crime scene, from slavery to colonialism and from colonialism to present coloniality. 

Coloniality is brought to life with, for instance, the US Republican lawmakers launching a bill “opposing the Republic of South Africa’s hosting of military exercises with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and calling on the Biden administration to conduct a thorough review of the US-South Africa relationship.” Africa as an object that does not have the agency to act for itself but is acted upon in the new world disorder, is real. It is Africa as a child in the world system that must be protected from other relationships and that must be told who to relate with and who not to relate with. It is also Africa as an owned thing that must be protected from rival owners. Behind the myth of African independence and liberation is the reality of Africa as a “sphere of influence,” about which world powers are still scrambling for control and ownership, including Russia and China. When in January 2018, Donald Trump referred to African countries as “all these shithole countries,” he meant that Africa still metaphorized the toilet of the world order, where disposable waste and dispensable people were to be found. Looking at the world disorder from Africa is a troubling view from the toilet of world affairs.

Looking at the world disorder from Africa with African eyes and sensibility makes it obvious that it is Africa that should be against war and for a decolonial, multipolar world order where differences are legitimated, not criminalized; where economic competition, political opposition, and rivalry are democratized from antagonism to agonism; and where political opponents are adversaries that are not necessarily blood enemies that must work on eliminating each other to the “last man.” Such a world order may be liberating in that both fears and desires of nations may play out in a political climate where might is not necessarily right. From long experiences of being the dominated and exploited other of the world, Africa should expectedly be the first to demand such a world. 

World powers need to be persuaded or to pressure themselves to understand what Mahbubani prescribes as a future world order that is against war, and liberating in that it is minimalist, multilateral, and Machiavellian. Minimalist, in that major countries should minimize thinking and act like other countries are minors that should be changed into their own image. Multilateral in the sense that world institutions, such as the United Nations, must be pentecostal sites where differences, fears and desires of all countries are moderated and democratized. Machiavellian in that world powers, no matter how mighty they believe they are, must adapt to the change to the order of things and live with the truth that they will not enjoy world dominion alone, in perpetuity. The world must be a shared place that naturalizes and normalizes political, economic, cultural, and human diversity.

This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site once a week.

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Understanding the Crisis in Northern Kenya

The violence plaguing the North Rift region in Kenya is complex, as it is caused by a multiplicity of factors

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Understanding the Crisis in Northern Kenya
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On the 14th of February 2023, Kenya held a national prayer day in accordance with our government’s habit of holding ‘prayers’ when certain stressors reach an unbearable level on a national scale. Currently, there are many factors triggering national stressors, and one of them is a complex security issue loosely termed “banditry”, for which our government has no viable solution. So, we pray, declaring war on our people, instead of reflecting on and addressing the root causes of the crisis.

Over the years, these theatrics, which reflect the inadequacy of the government’s policies in dealing with our challenges, have occurred in different forms including ‘prayer breakfasts’, ‘national prayers’, ‘crusades’, and other forms of supplication. And while these functions are met with a wide spectrum of reactions ranging from approval to derision, depending on people’s spiritual or political leanings, it is crucial for us as citizens to realize that as much as these may be expressions of faith at our leaders’ personal level, at the political level they are basically ‘time-outs’ or pressure release valves. Where one has a strategy, time-outs create room for the implementation of plan ‘B’ or ‘C’. However, in the absence of a strategy, time-outs are called in the vain hope that the adversary or adversity at hand will somehow lose momentum.

There is more to the “banditry” phenomenon than meets the eye

There have been violent conflicts of many kinds in northern Kenya for many decades, some driven by terrorism, ethnic animosity, resource conflict, cattle rustling and other factors. Since 2017, however, many Kenyans have had greater awareness of the fact that the violence in northern Kenya isn’t just mere disorder; people have come to terms that there are definite geographical, economic and social patterns to, and causes of, the violence. The ongoing sporadic skirmishes of violence and cattle rustling in the North Rift area are exacerbating the difficulties that the communities there are already facing as a result of a debilitating drought. Most tragically, the violence in the region has led to the death of 16 security personnel and over 100 civilians in 6 months, a period largely overlapping with the first 5 months of H.E. President William Ruto’s time as the president. Sadly, over the years, Kenya had become largely inured to this slow-burning war due to its long duration and the boorish mentality that made the majority of us see certain parts of the country and pastoralists as somewhat ‘backward’ or ‘lesser’ beings. The most harmful effect of this attitude has been the inability or unwillingness of Kenyans to understand the root of this problem.

Things came to a head on the 11th of February 2023 when a group of security personnel on patrol were ambushed on the Lodwar-Kitale highway resulting in the death of 3 officers and the loss of guns, ammunition and patrol vehicles. This daylight highway attack was a huge affront to the authorities, resulting in instant opprobrium from citizens all over the country who wonder why our much-vaunted security agencies still couldn’t subdue these “bandits” after all these years.

Such attacks were turning into exasperating feelings of déjà vu because we see the same places, roughly the same seasonal conditions, the same kind of weapons, and even the same meaningless terminology and knee-jerk government reactions time and again. In every other part of Kenya, when laws are broken, they are investigated and addressed all along the chain from perpetrators, enablers, participants and beneficiaries. Most of the time, cases are brought to logical conclusions, but not in this case. Why?

Insights into the depth of this particular problem came from a very knowledgeable (if unexpected) source. The Governor of Trans-Nzoia County, Mr George Natembeya, came out at the National Prayer Day with a hard-hitting statement, asking the President not to let people around him “shield” him from the realities on the ground concerning the “banditry” in the North Rift areas. He went on to detail the woes of the security personnel working in the area, claiming that they were being sent into a veritable war zone without adequate allowances, equipment and even food supplies. I was personally taken aback because the previous operation took place when Mr Natembeya was the Rift Valley Regional Coordinator (RC), a position he held until last year when he resigned to run for a political office. Ironically, the office of RC is a very senior position in the executive arm of the Kenya Government that placed Mr Natembeya in direct charge of deploying the security personnel who suffered the same deplorable working conditions he was now lamenting about.  In a show of cognitive dissonance that is so typical of Kenyans, the Governor was widely praised for his ‘straight talk’ and honesty in ‘speaking truth to power’. Obviously buoyed by this newfound adulation, he went on to hold a press conference where he robustly advocated military involvement in the operation against bandits, firmly stating that the civilian security apparatus (where he spent the majority of his career before moving into politics) is inadequate to protect Kenyans. This advocacy was worrisome because the use of the loose term ‘banditry’ betrays a lack of knowledge of the identity or objectives of the adversaries.

The first major cause for alarm was the haughty ‘pre-devolution’ tone with which Mr Natembeya pronounced himself on the deployment of the military. He proceeded to even give recommendations on the orders that need to be issued, stating that they should be instructed to “decimate” the bandits. This is a startlingly cavalier term when used by a senior public servant in reference to citizens who haven’t been positively identified in any way. It is a term that could be useful in the primitive theatre of war, where opponents are positively identified by uniforms, positions or other means, but sustainable solutions to the security problems in the North Rift region invariably require more sophisticated approaches that would ensure that innocent citizens are protected and not “decimated” alongside. It would have been much easier for us ‘spectators’ to dismiss these statements as hot air emitted by someone who failed in his earlier responsibilities, but we lost that option when the government moved with speed to implement these external ‘instructions’.

The main cause of a complex issue

The violence plaguing the North Rift region in Kenya is complex, as it is caused by a multiplicity of factors. If it was simple, it would have been solved a long time ago through any of the heavy-handed responses deployed by successive governments against it. My work as a conservationist has given me unique insights into one aspect of it which seems to have been ignored by many.

Northern Kenya has a roughly 5-year drought cycle, and 2017 was a drought year. As a consequence, pastoralists moved south into Laikipia county in search of pasture. They invaded private ranches and provoked an inevitable state response, which resulted in the death of many ranchers, pastoralists, security personnel, and hundreds of livestock.

I headed a team of consultants tasked by an indigenous rights NGO to study Marsabit, Isiolo, Laikipia, and Samburu counties in a research project aimed at uncovering the dynamics and drivers of the southward transhumance and the resultant conflicts. We collected data from hundreds of respondents, including ranchers, pastoralists, government personnel and NGO practitioners. Three things stood out in our findings. The first was the sheer distances covered by the pastoralists with their animals, and the second was the fact that almost all the (government-designated) livestock movement routes have been blocked by private landowners. The most compelling finding, however, was that a vast majority of the pastoralists were from homelands that were now ‘wildlife conservancies’ controlled by the Northern Rangelands Trust (NRT),( -a conservation NGO. The pastoralists had lost access to their dry-season grazing areas.

After completing our fieldwork and analysis, we planned and held a validation workshop in Nanyuki on the 14th of June 2017. The findings of our report presented at the workshop resonated well with the community members who attended the workshop, some of whom provided us with further insights into the crisis. Our views on NRT were also ‘validated’ by a dramatic moment when my presentation was interrupted by their Laikipia county director, Mr Richard Kasoo, who literally screamed at me to stop vilifying NRT and had to be ejected from the room by the elders present. The top NRT management later called a more cordial meeting at a Nanyuki hotel, asking me as the team leader to expunge certain items from the report, which they felt portrayed them in a ‘negative light’. Much to their chagrin, I declined to do so, out of respect for my team and our respondents. This entire experience was a cameo of what ails us in this arena. Man-made stressors are routinely met with deafening silence and frantic inactivity until we invariably take ‘ruthless’ steps to ‘decimate’ the people we should have engaged before the fighting broke out. As such, those of us who observed the violent resource conflict in 2017 know that it wasn’t brought to an end by any human intervention. The drought ended, the rains came, and people who were fighting simply went back home.

These findings and my views have since been shared with several senior state officials and several non-state actors as well (including the protagonists), but have been invariably met with deafening silence and frantic inactivity. This is not to suggest that this is the only set of causes because the bloodletting certainly predates wildlife conservancies, which only started around 2004. Ethnic animosities that exist in this and other parts of Kenya are realities that we must factor in. The displacement and loss of access to resources also eliminated a lot of the geographical space that typically limited contact and conflict between some communities, resulting in more frequent flare-ups. However, the negative impact of conservation practices on the communities’ ways of life is definitely one of the easier drivers to deal with, so it is difficult to imagine that anyone is dealing with the more intractable and socio-politically fractious ones.

Most notably, the alacrity with which government authorities have embraced the advice of a former RC with a less-than-stellar record to handle a crisis is a worrying indication of not having a plan. One doesn’t need to be an expert to know that militaries aren’t trained to investigate, arrest or prosecute, so we could be courting numerous extrajudicial killings. The Interior Minister speaking in January, added his voice to the frightening miasma, saying that the Government will be ‘ruthless and brutal’ in this operation. We don’t seem to have had a plan for what we are doing now, so it cannot be easy to envision any plan for managing the inevitable fallout of such violence either. We are at war with ourselves in pitch darkness, struggling to finish ‘the other’ before dawn because the light of day might reveal who we really are.

This article was first published by The Pan African Review.

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