Kenya has to flex some muscle to deal with demands on its territory

For the life of me, I never could understand why anybody would want to live in any other country than Kenya. This, of course, is a very subjective, even jingoistic sentiment, but I feel that if only we could fix our politics, our economy, our extraordinary acquisitiveness which leads to mind-boggling corruption, and our ethnic chauvinism, we would be the happiest nation on earth.

Indeed, we live in a country endowed with great potential, an industrious people, fairly accommodating weather, and relative peace.

The problem is that when it comes to recognising our failures and acting on them, we suffer from horrible disabilities — poor leadership, collective amnesia, single-minded pursuit of mediocrity, and general lack of accountability. In other words, we have, somehow, managed to convert a potential paradise into a dystopia and then flailed around looking for scapegoats. As a result, today, everyone around us seems to be working hard to claim a piece of Kenya.

In other words, the vultures are gathering around expecting to collect the pieces once this country breaks up. The way we are going, this may not be a pipe-dream after all. Never before has Kenya faced so many threats to its territorial integrity. Its enemies, some who have been masquerading as friends, have started making all sorts of claims on its boundaries, perhaps sensing a weakness many of us don’t know anything about.

From the age-old Migingo Island dispute which, apparently, will only be sorted out when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni exits the scene, to the Ilemi Triangle whose ownership remains hazy since before Independence and which may become a hotbed of intrigue when South Sudan claims it, to the maritime boundary between Kenya and Somalia which has been raging for the past one year, it seems as though Kenya might one day be forced to flex its muscles or perish.

Earlier this week, I read an article by a “learned friend” arguing passionately for the right to self-determination to be included in our Constitution, describing it as a “cardinal principle in modern international law which allows those who feel subordinated to pursue it”. Though he did not reveal which people are subordinated and who has been doing the abominable thing, it is possible to read between the lines. Recently, an organisation calling itself the Northern Frontier District Independence Party has emerged to agitate for the secession of half Kenya’s territory.

This means that this movement has backers among some of the region’s intelligentsia — people who should know better than to play dangerous populist politics for nefarious ends. It should not be forgotten that the Shifta war of the early 1960s was fought over similar claims. Although the group has not said it intends to join our northern neighbour in pursuit of the Greater Somalia dream, this could well be the eventual objective.

Just what is secession and why is it necessary in some cases and absolutely abhorrent in others? Some regions within a State secede, or try to do so, if the circumstances are such that not to do it means eternal subjugation. One element common with secession is that a people within one territory are excluded from all of its affairs, be they political, economic or any other form of self-determination.

If, for instance, you are treated like a second-rate citizen and excluded by your government from making any decision affecting your life, then you have a right to fight your oppressor especially if you are numerically strong and relatively homogeneous. In Africa, the best example of justifiable pursuit of autonomy was Biafra where the Igbo of Southern Nigeria were heavily oppressed by successive Northern-dominated governments. The abortive secession bid cost at least two million Biafran lives, most of them due to starvation.

The more recent one is the secession of South Sudan from the Republic of Sudan. However, that only happened after two costly civil wars that claimed 2.5 million lives and caused the displacement of at least five million more. Today, South Sudan is the best example of how even a successful secession may be no panacea. Since its independence in 2011, at least 400,000 people have died and almost four million been displaced in civil war.

All in all, secession bids in Africa have not fared well, and there is no reason to believe that all the noises made in Kenya in the past two decades will ever amount to much because the reasons given have not really been fundamental. A good example is the yesteryear threat by the ragtag outfit known as the Mombasa Republican Council which wants a huge swathe of the coast to secede citing marginalisation of coast people. Today, the MRC is largely moribund, though not fully contained. But social media pronouncements by the so-called NFD Independence Party are a different kettle of fish. My feeling is that the authorities should treat this looming threat very seriously indeed. The region is too vast and too close to the Somalia border, and it has within it al-Shabaab terrorists running amok. This new “party” is a clear and present danger to this country.