The many role models of young knife attacker

The family of Brian Kibet Bera, the university student shot last week by State House security guards after reportedly scaling a gate there, deserves all the help they need to have the bright young man recover from his physical injuries and mental illness.

After years of investing in his education – he is in the fifth year of his mechanical engineering undergraduate degree course at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology and was an A-student in high school – even the State should be involved in his rehabilitation.

The official statement from State House about the incident indicated that Brian was armed with a knife and, therefore, carried the threat of harm, explaining the decision by the security guards to shoot him in the shoulder.

The incident last Monday was reported to Kileleshwa Police Station before the student was admitted to Kenyatta National Hospital and the police have not ruled out charging him.

MENTAL ILLNESS

Brian’s dad has since come out to narrate the young man’s struggles with mental illness in the past three years that at some stage interrupted his studies and prompted the family to seek medical help for him.

Considering what the family has already gone through, it would seem callous to want to subject them to more suffering from a potentially traumatising criminal prosecution of their son.

Perhaps what should concern the authorities more are the strong hints of ethnic nationalist radicalisation in Brian’s social media posts a day to the State House incident.

In a series of posts on his Facebook timeline, the student expressed a deep sense of grievance with a number of ethnic communities he considered outsiders in his Trans-Nzoia County, and appeared to see himself as some sort of a messiah sent to free his people and their land from these ‘invaders’.

ETHNIC TENSIONS

To put this in perspective, one has to consider the fact that Trans-Nzoia, where young Brian was brought up, is among the areas in the wider former Rift Valley Province that has experienced ethnic tensions in the past 27 years of return to multiparty politics.

Between 1992 and 2002, the politically instigated ethnic flare-ups, officially portrayed as land clashes, were widely seen as a reaction to perceived threats to the reign of President Daniel arap Moi, who hailed from the region.

The power shift, with the exit of Moi, has seen the emergence of younger politicians in the region who are not loathe to stoking populist ethnic nationalism to endear themselves to voters.

INCITERS

In April, an MP from the region was summoned by the National Cohesion and Integration Commission after a video showing him making ethnic slur went viral on social media.

A governor there has staked his re-election on an ethnic expansionist agenda to annex farmlands, towns and villages from a neighbouring county.

Young men like Brian, awed by the success of these rising political stars from their neighbourhoods, cannot resist the urge to be the next community warrior.

jkotienoke.nationmedia.com