HASSAN: Northern Kenya should actuate its political worth nationally

It is sadly ironic that despite having representation in the leading political formations such as UDA and Azimio, Northern Kenya remains invisible in the latest party-cum-regional power sharing deals at the national level.

Similarly, issues largely connecting to the region such as the question of inclusion—following decades of continual State-sanctioned tradition of marginalisation and abandonment—as well as the immediate and current encounters of drought, poverty, poor state of infrastructure, insecurity, extrajudicial killings and severe shortage of teachers have not been given sufficient and binding consideration by most of the aspirants competing for the highest office.

Yet this region has repeatedly recorded a high and rising population growth according to demographic data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in the recent times, making it the sixth largest ethnic group in the country— with a swing vote of 2 million— even though the high fertility rate mainly happens naturally as a coping mechanism for the high child mortality rate in the region due to poverty and inadequate health facilities.

Shifting this defective status quo primarily requires a thorough and genuine local investment in having a strictly agenda-based political unity among the populace and the leadership with an eye to ensure proper and productive negotiation of the region's place and power in national politics.

The main hurdles to this goal is egocentrism, clannism and feeble personality-based politics in the region, which fuels narrow-minded and divisive disagreements to the detriment of charting the greater wellbeing of the expanse based on the many shared commonalities and common aspirations and challenges.

Prof Mohamed Hajji Ingriis, a UK-based Somali scholar who specialises in history and African studies, recently mentioned that while Somalis in Kenya were doing well population-wise and even commercially in areas like Eastleigh, their social existence and recognition would best thrive nationally if they find and rally behind one local leader of the principled calibres of the late Abdirashid and Ahmed Khalif and thereafter work hard to produce at least a Deputy President.

He also noted that much of the smile-inducing gains that Kenyan Somalis boast of today are mainly traced back to the Kibaki years of presidency, which opened growth opportunities for the region and its people unlike the other regimes that were oppressive and anti- development when it specifically came to Northern Kenya given that they relied on fear and economic policies that lacked distributive justice.

A key example of this is the longly-used Sessional paper no.10, 1965 that predicated government development investments on an area's climate and agricultural potential.  

Again, just to add to it, another major plus thing that Northern Kenya benefited under the Kibaki presidency was the massive political consciousness of the region that developed after the 2005 referendum, and that has since then seen an increased—although it is still far from perfect—visibility of Northerners in the three arms of government.

Tragically, however, the challenge that we have with this political progress is that most of those from the region who are given high positions in the national government are only using it for self-aggrandisement with little or no regard for the region whose name they make use of to sit in various decision-making tables. 

More saddening is the fact that some of them even deploy their power and influence to hubristically divide, frustrate and harrass the local populace and leadership instead of furthering the collective welfare. All true to the Somali proverb: 'Qorsho xumo abaar ka daran' (lack of plan is more terrible than severe drought). 

Sociopolitical commentator, Garissa

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