Leave Ole Lenku alone, let's deal with the issue

The conduct of our national discourse on security has become a shallow and unhelpful debate on the person of the Cabinet Secretary of the Interior Joseph Ole Lenku as opposed to a healthy and robust argument on how to tame runaway crime and restore peace and security within our borders.

There are those who have made it their job to disparage Mr Ole Lenku and they have done so with gusto that is at best remarkable and at worst obsessive. You would think the way people are vilifying and caricaturing the Interior Cabinet Secretary it is as if the deep sense of insecurity would disappear by this effort alone; that our security challenges could be wished away or removed from us in one abracadabra move of throwing Mr Ole Lenku out of office.

This is not the case. This will not be the case. The central problem with holding this view is it is indicative of a paralysing naiveté that makes one wonder whether we are remotely aware of the magnitude of what we are up against and what is required from us to get past it. The get-rid-of-Ole Lenku chorus hints at a remarkable ignorance and an equally dangerous one.

Our borders are porous to both arms and terrorists, our generosity to refugees is being abused, numerous key personnel are on the take from police officers to intelligence agents to immigration agents who dish out identity and employment documents to anyone who throws a tidy sum their way. The idea that our country will be safer today if Mr Ole Lenku leaves office is a sorry manifestation of wishful thinking.

I am not defending the man nor am I excusing him from the various sins that the multitude has apparently convicted him of; I am merely suggesting that we are better served as a country by moving the debate along to more substantive issues instead of endlessly engaging in the same talk over and over again. We have a real problem to deal with; it is in our best interests to focus our energies on that front.

We are not losing lives because Joseph Ole Lenku does not do well in front of a microphone and terrorists are not running loose because Mr Ole Lenku is not tall or does not have a commanding voice - any pretence or suggestion to the contrary is an insult to our common intelligence. Indeed, one must pay credit to Mr Ole Lenku for the steely determination to show up to work every day and keep the fight going.

Perceptions are not the basis of the security game and they rightly should not be. We are facing the most daunting period in our history in terms of security; in terrorism we face an unrelenting and merciless enemy who must take a great deal of comfort in the fact that we cannot seem to focus our attention at stopping them.

We must start to cause them a bit more discomfort in the way we react to heinous actions against this land.

Let us respond with outrage and derision to terror attacks and crime sprees, but to the perpetrators not the men and women responsible for securing our lives and property. If and when they make mistakes let us criticize them, but do so objectively. Let us instead apply ourselves to contributing to a safer Kenya by being vigilant and helping law enforcement officials with information and intelligence.

When you are confronted by a major challenge, the temptation for many is to panic. But situations like the one we find ourselves in calls for cool level headedness and steely determination directed towards implementing long-term strategies to achieve long term solutions.

As a society let us discuss the installation of CCTV cameras and modern surveillance equipment let us discuss stricter control over articles of citizenship and the issuance of work permits to those who mean to cause us harm. Let us talk about the advantages of biometric registration of persons, the purchases of thousands of police vehicles and the recruitment of 10,000 police currently underway.

Let us focus on these things because this is what Mr Ole Lenku is actually doing, let us engage him on these matters because that is how we help ourselves-that is how we secure ourselves, our children and protect our way of life.