Rising crime wave not good for Jubilee government

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By Peter Nguli 

NAIROBI, KENYA: The ambitious digital Jubilee government has envisaged a double digit economic growth and an array of other mouth-watering projects including free laptops to standard one pupils in primary schools and doubling the number of tourists visiting our beautiful country.

That is a bold step and the government should be given utmost support by the citizenry as it changes gears towards this goal and others in the Vision 2030 blue-print. 

However, the recent crime wave in our country has reached alarming proportions.

Each day, there are a number of crime incidents being reported ranging from MRC to cattle rustling, from bank robberies to car-jackings, from terrorism to rape, from kidnappings to roberry with violence, so on and so forth.

Police are being killed like rats, as though they are fighting in the frontline in the legendary British battle of Waterloo. 

The response from top security organs is the usual press conferences from our Inspector General, David Kimaiyo who gives a toothless-bulldog tough talk that his 'mboys' are beefing up security and that armed criminals have escaped police dragnet.

Which beggs the question, just how do you chase a criminal armed with an AK 47 assault rifle in order to arrest him with bare hands? How do you treat armed criminals with kid gloves? There are only two options here: either the criminal kills you or you kill him.

This is a serious scenario which requires no debate at all; just shoot the thug dead at your earliest opportunity. 

I salute the Deputy President, William Ruto for his firm and uncompromising bold move; that armed criminals should be shot on sight even if they fire no shot at all.

His shoot to kill order is long overdue.

His order of deployment of KDF in crime-prone areas is long overdue too. For its a criminal offence to arm yourself for no apparent reason in the first place.

Why should one carry a gun? Why are herders of cattle carrying guns? Why do herders kill innocent civilians in order to steal cattle? Are cattle more valuable than human beings? No one should be allowed to carry any gun.

After all, this is against the law. If cattle herders can carry a gun, then I should be allowed to carry a gun openly in the streets of River Road. 

A forcible disarmament exercise should be carried out in the cattle-rustling areas. 

Of course, Mr Ruto will encounter opposition from bodies such as the Non Governmental Organizations and civil society groups who protect criminals in the name of human rights. In this scenario, we will hear of familiar moles like Makau Mutua and Maina Kiai. 

But Ruto must remain firm and understand that NGO’s and Civil Society as usual are on pay-roll and they are doing the work for which they are paid for in the name of the so called eti 'human rights'.

For when police are killed, these organizations are silent.

When criminals are killed, they protest in the streets and call for press conferences complaining of trigger-happy police. It is these busy bodies that make criminality rise exponentially in our country as criminals know that they have a voice to protect them, however much they carry on their criminal escapades.

These busybodies make policing so hard in our country as police start to fear using guns. 

The Deputy President is right to order for a shoot to kill policy on any armed person.

This is Africa and a killer criminal does not care about the lives of other innocent men, children and women.

If you are a policeman, you can not drop your gun down and run after an armed criminal so you arrest him with bare hands.