Uhuru Kenyatta must rally Kenyans together in this hour of need

Dear Mr President, our country is in turmoil. We are scared and scarred. Last Sunday I read the papers and felt instantly depressed. Visitors were being pulled out of hotels and some airlines had decided to avoid Kenya until October!

What really brought it home for me, though, were the words of a mother whose child who is in the process of sitting exams. I asked the mother how the daughter was doing and she said to me, “my fear is no longer the exams but rather what kind of a country my daughter will inherit from us ”

I was shocked by the response but I knew that it was the truth. All I could do was tell the parent that we have to fight for our country as previous generations did.

In the course of the week I travelled to Mombasa and was horrified to see the hotels so empty; it is one thing to read about tourists being recalled but it is another thing to see the empty swimming pools and beaches. I was convinced more than ever that the fight for our generation has been defined.

Friends, the issues of terrorism and insecurity cannot be handled by the security agents alone. I know that we have delegated responsibility to the security organs but you must know by now that we too have to be involved. The security agents have arms but you have the will and the numbers to direct this country as you wish.

 You see the police cannot be in every home and every marketplace, but we are; they cannot know everyone but we do; the police cannot be in every matatu but we are; if we are vigilant, we can provide a protective gauze over this country so that no one with evil intentions can access it.

Can we afford to look the other way and hope someone else will do something about it?

My sister and brother, on this one no one else will do something; you are responsible for the security in the space around you. If you do not watch the person next to you nobody else can do it because you are the only person in that space. There may be people on the other side but they watch a different side from you. Be vigilant!

Mr President, your people have reached that place where they can net the criminals but they need to be called to action by their leader. Last week at the Gikomba explosions the members of the public were able to arrest one person who was handed over to the police.

You see Mr President, if wananchi had not acted, the police would have arrived too late to catch anyone. Of course the public needs to be educated not to lynch the suspect as they tried to do in the Gikomba incident but hand over the suspect to the authorities. I remember in 2003, after former President Kibaki came to power and spoke tough on corruption; I saw people heed the call and arrest police officers who dared demand bribes. I will never forget one police officer who was loaded into a matatu and taken to the police station for demanding a bribe from the same matatu.

It was momentous.

We need leadership Mr President; we need you to call us to action; call on our allegiance to our country; remind us that despite our several divides including political, race and ethnicity, there are matters that are Kenyan and that for those matters our pain must be one.

On another note Mr President, it is my take that what is happening today was going to happen sooner or later. You see almost all the 40 million of our people are Kenyans, yes, but do they have a factor that unifies them beyond being members of the same country?

If you listen loudly you will find that Kenyans identify largely with their families and then their tribes and that their identity as a Kenyan people does not quite exist and that in fact, previous leaderships have fought against it during elections and at the time of sharing out jobs and opportunities.

It is time to make Kenyans KENYANS. Make Kenya a country that they will defend with their lives; a country that our youth would go to war for because they believe in it. But remember, they can only believe in a country that gives equal opportunity to all of its people and not on the basis of tribe; make Kenya such a country, Mr President.