Why we should blame insecurity on foreigners

Foreigners are falling over themselves to come to Kenya. Having heard of the great oil and water discoveries in Turkana, the titanium and rare earth off the coast of Indian Ocean, the gold in Marigat, Migori and Ikolomani, and the coal in Kitui, they are rubbing their palms and sharpening their teeth to eat Kenya alive.

Although the official net immigration rate stands at negative 0.23 per 1,000, meaning that there are an estimated 200,000 more people who leave the country than those who enter, you can never be too sure how many undocumented spongers, scroungers, pimps and terrorists are masquerading as Kenyans.

Within days of living off the fat of the land, their faces have the smoothness of ripe tomato and they are unrecognisable from the general population. That is why they have been so successful in stealing national identity cards, passports and university degree certificates.

Not content to steal jobs, business opportunities and capital from Kenyans, these restless and footloose invaders who have fled from the chaos they have created in their home countries are driven by repeated bouts of nostalgia to recreate the mayhem they left behind: Hence the explosion of grenades, the attacks on places of worship and shopping malls.

After terrorists, bad aliens and funny foreigners found a way into the manual national identity registration process launched in 1979, it is imperative for the governmental to find a digital way of identifying bona fide citizens afresh. Everybody in Kenya, including the Deputy President, might be a foreigner and there is no way of knowing it.

The proposed re-registration of all Kenyans using digital technology to capture details of their bloodline will net all pretenders to citizenship and be beyond manipulation or corruption.

RIDICULOUSLY LOW PRICES

The urgency of catching these evil foreigners and inserting a micro-chip in their right toe before they do something cannot be overstated.

Although Ugandans and Rwandans can enter the country with just their national identity cards, courtesy of their membership of the East African Community, it is obvious that Kenyan citizenship is what is being abused for terrorist activities.

Many of the dubious citizenships being produced in ongoing police searches have been acquired at ridiculously low prices, often nothing beyond Sh100,000. The immigration and registration officials running these apathetic schemes are the cause of the high incidence of poverty in the country.

With a Sh8 billion budget, the government can overcome the problems that attended the IEBC’s attempt to create an electronic voter’s roll last year.

Kenyans without fingerprints and irises would enter a special register that uses toeprints and blood samples to identify them. At the end of the registration exercise, and a little investment in machines for reading blood matches, Kenya would never have to worry about terrorism or crime again.

Since money without security is meaningless, no expense must be spared. The re-registration of persons joins a list of progressive and ambitious projects by the government to spend public money where it is most needed. It is not in the league of petty cash expenses like health, water, sanitation or civic education. It is grand and high-minded in the fashion of the standard gauge railway and the schools laptop project.

Although the data from the census is only five years old, and the registration of personas has been computerised since 1997, and passports have been digital for the past 20 years, the country has to start from a clean slate by cancelling every person’s citizenship and granting it anew.

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