An inquiry will not be held. It was not held in the wake of the Westgate attack. It was not held in the wake of the Mpeketoni attacks. It was not held in the wake of the Mandera attacks. It will not be held int he wake of the Garissa University College Massacre. An inquiry will not be held because the recommendations that such an inquiry would make are recommendations that could not be possibly implemented without tearing the national government asunder.
The Commander-in-Chief was personally touched by the cold hand of the Shabaab when the Westgate Mall was attacked in 2013. If that was not enough to stiffen his spine then the massacre of one hundred and forty seven children will not either. The Commander-in-Chief is not a fool. He is not weak. And he is not a coward. He is a politician. Therein lies his biggest weakness as well as his biggest opportunity.
The Commander-in-Chief knows what has to be done in order to secure the nation and protect the people. There is little that is new in this discourse. What needs to be done has been common knowledge since a former president inspected a "guard of honour" mounted by the Mungiki before they became an outlawed gang.
At the top of that list is the reform of the national security apparatus, especially by curbing the rampant graft that defines it. We are all painfully aware of the petty bribery that defines the relationship between the people and the National Police Service. But it is only recently that we have become more aware of the abuse of office by its seniormost officers. It is remarkable that police resources have become the playthings of the senior cadres of the National Police Service. It is even more remarkable that these officers continue to hold office when their antics are revealed.
We must also reorient the national security apparatus from its obsession with tribal politics and towards public safety. The appointments of the Chief of Defence Forces, the Inspector-General of Police, the Cabinet Secretary and Principal Secretary of the Interior and the Director-General of National Intelligence are ostensibly on merit, but in truth are about satisfying the tribal fears of politicians in the ruling alliance. So long as these key officials are held hostage to the politics of tribal mathematics, they have little incentive to propose programmes that will keep the people safe or the nation secure. Consequently the men and women they command will not do so either.
By far the most difficult recommendation to implement is one that cannot be legislated for nor dictated. There is no way of making the political class see service to the people as their principal duty. For a decade they have lived it up like princes of the city, taking what they want without apology. They have commandeered the lion's share of public resources for their own pleasure. They have failed to keep the Executive in check. They are the principal agents in the corruption of the institutions of the State. And they have no shame and no remorse.
If we believed that the Judiciary could keep everyone else honest we could say that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. But not even the sunniest optimist believes that that the administration of justice machinery - police, public prosecutions, and judges and magistrates - is capable of honesty or public service. There are individual officers of probity and integrity. But the institutions themselves are distrusted and their integrity challenged at every turn.
An inquiry would exposed the hollowed out government that we have. It would expose the lie that the government exists to serve the people. It would expose the hypocrisy that the people elect the government to serve them. It would tear asunder our faith in ourselves, our fellowman and our government. No Commander-in-Chief wants to be the one to expose the rottenness of this system. No Commander-in-Chief ever will.
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