Captain, the ship is leaking; will you just watch it sink?

Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang’s stumbling attempts to explain and deal with the Abdullah al Faisal scandal may be a far cry from his Bado mapambano signature tune, but I am not letting his subdued demeanour get to me.

Not when there is a Sh50 million tag on our best hope of getting the man out of Kenyan soil.

That, according to the minister better known for his skills as choirmaster, is what it would take to charter a flight to take the Islamic preacher directly to his Jamaica home.

Few countries want to let the man sniff their air, let alone step on their soil – not even Cuba, long considered the villain of the piece.

If there have been bloody street protests elsewhere over the dilemma he finds himself in, the reports have not reached this part of the world.

Kenya must ask itself hard questions about how it came to be stuck in this untenable situation.

Al Faisal did not just point to a spot on the map and turn up. He had contacts that facilitated his journey to Mombasa. They must have known his history but decided that he had something more important to offer them than Kenya ever would.

This is a bitter pill to swallow, even in a land notorious for its fractious population.

The kind of money Mr Kajwang speaks of is not to be sneered at, let alone the dent on our national ego.

Those who are overly concerned about al Faisal’s well-being might want to consider a harambee at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park. They might even be surprised by the turnout.

There is no shortage of worthy causes that Mr Kajwang could invest in. Taking home a man Kenya owes nothing to is one of the most galling ways to spend money when some children are locked out of school for lack of money.

Add to that amount the Sh12 million estimated cost of putting back just the glass in the neighbouring mall that bore the brunt of last week’s street battles, and you have an outrageously expensive slip-up in choosing the kind of people we welcome to our bosom. And that’s not counting the emotional cost.

Several issues come to mind, each in urgent need of attention. First, the Immigration ministry needs to be detoxified in and out.

The news that 10-plus Somali MPs had been netted in the subsequent crackdown on illegal immigrants is, to put it mildly, adding insult to injury.

Mr Kajwang quipped that he considered asking them to apply for refugee status. Ha, ha, ha!

Their presence, in such blatant breach of protocol, sends a screaming message: Mr Kajwang’s foot soldiers appear not to know their geography or they are sleeping on the job, or Kenyan residency (perhaps even citizenship) is on sale to the highest bidder.

The second scenario, which is entirely plausible given that the same minister was once turned away from Kenyan soil by Sudanese soldiers, is that the government does not consider the “remote” outposts part of this country.

The map of Kenya might as well have been altered without our knowledge – and without so much as a yawn when the matter surfaces in Nairobi.

Think Migingo, aka Mijingo. Kenyans are still being tortured and bullied there by a “friendly” neighbour, even after the Ugandan president conceded that the island was ours.

We are the victims of our government’s laid-back and irresponsible approach to matters foreign. As our leaders spend their time trying to outwit each other in the perennial battle for State House, neighbours living along our porous borders must be having a good laugh at our expense.

But perhaps the most important lesson is that there is a significant number of Kenyans for whom patriotism is a relative term.

If the protestors put even half the energy of their sustained fight over Al Faisal into just one of the many problems that plague the place they call home, we would probably be out of the list of least developed nations.

This category of Kenyans is even more dangerous than the sleepy officials in Immigration. The Somali MPs who were rounded up in Nairobi did not sneak in.

They got here in comfort, and were totally at home in Eastleigh.

Mr Kajwang has dropped the boisterous singer-cum-comedian facade. If he is losing sleep over how to untie the knots at immigration, he richly deserves it – and we deserve better answers than we have heard so far.

But even if Mr Kajwang were to happen on the airfare to ferry one dreaded passenger home and sort out computer issues at all border posts, the patriotism thing is well beyond him.

And so I must ask: Captain, the ship is leaking. Are you just going to watch it sink?

oriang.lucy@gmail.com