Business Daily (Nairobi)
16 April 2008
editorial
The law that created the National Security Intelligence Service, (NSIS) states that the core mandate of the NSIS is the protecting of the national security interests of Kenya and safeguarding its citizens. Its main objective is to identify and report on threats to the security of the State.
If the violence that erupted in parts of Rift Valley after the disputed election and the current skirmishes being unleashed on the Kenyan public is anything to go by, then something very wrong is happening at the premiere intelligence gathering body of the state.
By law, the NSIS has wide ranging powers to investigate, gather, evaluate, correlate, interpret, disseminate and store information, whether inside or outside Kenya, for the purposes of detecting and identifying any threat or potential threat to the security of Kenya, advising the President and the Government of any threat or potential threat to the security of Kenya and taking steps to protect the security interests of Kenya.
From the disruption of business activity, to the loss of life and the disruption of transport, Mungiki has proved without doubt to be a national threat to Kenya's sole security interests.
We strongly believe that it is the duty of the NSIS to have infiltrated Mungiki and have agents inside this group. There is no justification whatsoever on how the illegal group can have organized its members all over the country without the intelligence agents being on the know.
What makes it even more disheartening is the fact that the sect mobilized its followers using short text messages calling on each member to be ready to wreck havoc days before they actually went on the rampage.
The director general of the NSIS owes Kenyans the duty to come out and explain to the public what his intelligence sleuths are doing.
While a lot of heat has been directed at the Police force, it should be noted that the NSIS has the sole duty of correlating such intelligence and informing the President who can then inform the police accordingly.
Unless the director general of the NSIS believes that gathering intelligence on the Mungiki does not fall within his jurisdiction, Kenyans need an explanation from him on why his agency exists and why it gets so much funding from the exchequer if it can not detect threats like those from Mungiki.
This would be the just and fair thing to do for the millions of tax payers in this country who are being terrorized by the murderous gang to know.
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