Insecurity our main worry, say Kenyans

Close to two thirds of Kenyans want the Government to hire more security officers and strengthen community policing to curb insecurity in the country.

A majority think insecurity would be tackled more effectively if there were more police officers in the villages and estates as opposed to the ejection of illegal immigrants, according to a new poll by research firm Ipsos.

Only one per cent of the 2,190 respondents surveyed in the poll conducted between December 9 and 15 favoured a change of leadership, prosecution of suspects or ejection of immigrants as a strategy to improve security.

About 16 per cent said they believed community policing would be more effective to tame insecurity, a finding that significantly endorses the Nyumba Kumi initiative, a form of community policing introduced by the Ministry of Interior earlier this year to encourage people to share information on crime with security agents.

HIRING MORE SECURITY

When pollsters specified the question to terrorism as a form of insecurity, almost the same number of interviewees backed the hiring of more security officers and community policing. Only one per cent said a change of national security laws could help curb terrorist attacks.

Notably, the findings were analysed before the Government introduced the Security Amendments Bill 2014, which was chaotically passed on Thursday and signed into law by President Kenyatta on Friday.

“As a reflection of the fact that at the time the Government had not announced its intention to bring to the National Assembly any amendments dealing the country’s legal framework related to security, only one per cent of all respondents mentioned this measure as their preferred approach,” Dr Tom Wolf, a Research Analyst at Ipsos, said.

Still, only eight per cent said they wanted the Kenya Defence Forces to be withdrawn from Somalia as a way of minimising terror attacks. Some 45 per cent of the respondents, who said they were aware of KDF presence in Somalia felt that the soldiers’ activities in Somalia were the cause of the attacks in Kenya.

The phone survey was conducted just three weeks after a face-to face research on the state of affairs at the household level between November 6 and 14.

The survey of 2,005 respondents had shown that 33 per cent of those polled thought that the high cost of living and inflation were the most pressing national problems. Only 18 per cent from this group said the government should address terrorism.

PHONE INTERVIEW

Dr Wolf explained they were motivated to carry out a telephone survey so soon after the face-to-face interview by the two terror attacks in Mandera County and the termination of President Kenyatta’s case at the ICC.

“When you are doing a survey, the one thing you do not want to happen is when you are in the middle of it, some major event happens, like a security situation or whatever major event such as a government announcement.

“These things can make the results incomparable with the ones in the earlier survey. If you ask me if we would have done the telephonic survey had the two events not happened, the answer is we would have done it anyway. Usually, at the end of the year, we do a mobile phone survey on Christmas activities and expectations for the new year …and so on,” Dr Wolf told journalists in Nairobi.

After the Mandera attack, the telephone results showed terrorism had become the most pressing national problem with a 67 per cent rating. But it also showed that President Kenyatta’s popularity had jumped by more than 15 points to 67 per cent, while that of his Deputy, Mr William Ruto, which had stood at 41 per cent in November, had shot to 63 per cent.

This means that the two leaders command massive public confidence levels despite the challenges posed by terrorism and corruption.

NO PARTY AFFILIATION

The views by Kenyans are not generally influenced by party affiliation since there is a small percentage of people supporting different political parties apart from Jubilee and Cord coalitions. However, the Jubilee government enjoys more support in its strongholds in Central and the Rift Valley.

“Political alignment has only minimal effect on how Kenyans perceive various issues,” Dr Wolf said. The survey, however, also shows the Jubilee government has to work harder to ensure food security.

Ipsos in October released a survey that showed that a third of Kenyans go to bed hungry, especially at the Coast, where more than half of Kenyans face the painful reality.

As an area which has witnessed the highest number of terrorist attacks this year, the study could suggest that the decline in tourism numbers could be behind the surging number of people going to bed without food.

This is because more Kenyans in the region either have no jobs or their sources of income from tourism have gone down.