By: Omar Suleiman.
I am writing this piece while trembling with rage and disappointment. I am utterly angered by how the Nation Media Group has covered the Walk of Hope that kicked off yesterday in Garissa.
The activist in the march, led by social activist Salah Abdi Sheikh who authored the book “Blood on the Runway, seek to achieve attention towards the marginalization faced by the people of this region—North Eastern.
The region has not seen a kilometer of tarmacked road, has never had a national school and its healthcare service is no better than a failed one with pregnant woman delivering at their homes due to lack of emergency vehicles.
Then Nation newspaper, probably the biggest of all the three national newspaper with a daily circulation of at last 350,000, portrayed the march as entirely a one that the people of the region are doing because they are fed up with the terrorist attacks in the region.
This paragraph published on its Sunday publication undermines the gist of the walk altogether: “Thousands of northeastern residents on Saturday begun a daring walk of over 800 kilometers from Garissa town to Mandera County in a bid to catch the attention of the international community over rising insecurity in the region.” To make the matter worse, nation used a photo of Kenyan army officers engaging Al Shabab attackers in Garissa University attackers instead of the pictures of the activist embarking the 25 day journey. Their headline, too was misleading: “Garissa residents begin 30 day peace walk”. The walk was not only participated by Garissa resident, but the residents of Wajir and Mandera. The only MP that is part of the walk is from Wajir West while Salah Sheikh is from Mandera.
The activist, who are mainly from the region, are not walking to catch the attention of the international community only to the rising insecurity in the region and youth radicalisation, but mainly to let world know the marginalization faced by the people of the region.
For over 50 years that the country enjoyed self-rule, the region was deliberately marginalized and its people killed en masse. At least 1000 people were killed in Wagalla airstrip in Wajir County in 1984, yet no one was indicted over the massacre.
We want the activist to showcase the true meaning of government neglect. We want the activist to let the world know what it means to be in a country whose ruling class and the establishment at large don’t care about you. They are walking 1000 kilometers not only to fight radicalization, but to let the government know why youths are getting radicalized.
About 200 people were killed in the region by the Somali armed group Al Shabab and President Uhuru Kenyatta never cared to visit either Garissa where 147 were killed, or Mandera where 28 passengers were shot dead in cold blood.
Instead of the president consoling the people and standing up to them, he told them that they were part of the problem and that they had to flush out the terrorist themselves. The interior security minister slapped the region with unpopular dusk-to-dawn curfew that is draining the economy of the region dry.
The lead activist told Wajir Times in an interview that they are walking to restore hope, and that should remain the essence of the walk. That is why it’s enjoying the massive support from the people of the region and their county governments.
So, Nation Media should not hijack the walk of hope, and turn it into something that suits the government. They should not turn the walk into a government project. The activist should not allow the walk to be hijacked by the government, or the people of the region will stop supporting it.
