Kenyan Somalis and Borana seeking identity cards protest as they display their birth certificates at Magongo in Changamwe, Mombasa in 2012.
Every birth certificate in Kenya comes with the caution that it is not proof of citizenship; it is a caveat that would be more apposite on the national identity card.
The presidential declaration lifting special vetting for Kenyan Somalis seeking citizenship registration comes against the backdrop of suspicion bred over two generations. The first discord germinated in the frustrated 1962 referendum in which 82 per cent of the Oromo and Somali peoples of the then Northern Frontier District voted to join the two-year old independent Somalia rather than be a part of Kenya.
British craft retained the region as a part of Kenya after Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta made a case for maintaining the status quo, explaining that the vote had gone the way it did because the people “have not had an opportunity to know us”.
That deeper knowledge would come through the disproportionate force deployed during the five-year Shifta War, which ended with the Arusha accord of 1967. Although the authorities in Nairobi viewed Somalis in Kenya as sleepers for the generalised banditry in Kenya’s northlands, which were classified as a special security zone, there was also a deliberate effort to acculturate the community’s members into government through recruitment into the disciplined services and provincial administration.
The second iteration of Somali alienation was signalled by the collapse of the Somalia state following the ouster of President Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, which opened the floodgates of refugees into Kenya, leading to the establishment of the camp in Dadaab, adjacent to Kenyan Somali populations. The instability in Somalia coincided with the collapse of the Iron Curtain, signalling the defeat of global socialism and seducing emergent mercenary groups to ally with globally powerful ideological forces, hence the Al-Shabaab connection to the Al-Qaeda terror group.
Stress tests
In Kenya, Somalis seeking citizenship would be put through routine stress tests, such as the issuance of the pink card. The profiling of Kenyan Somalis as terrorist sympathisers has been mitigated by their absorption into the professional ranks of visibly influential national assignments, such as constitution-making, elections management and reforming the Judiciary and police.
After many years of conflict and faltering attempts to stabilise Somalia, some 100,000 refugees from Dadaab voluntarily returned home. Hundreds of thousands others have been resettled to third countries, but a significant number, being people of means, have integrated into Kenyan society through investment, marriage and grey citizenship.
It would not be sensible to continue to exclude people who have been living in Kenya as refugees for 35 years. Last year, the refugee and asylum seekers population in Kenya reached 777,354 people, nearly half of them being Somali. An alumnus of the Refugee University of Kenya is second-term US Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Kenya’s historical xenophobic posture towards Somalis, cultured in memories of the Shifta War and complicated by its confrontation with Al-Shabaab, often obscures its ability to see its objective interests in embracing the citizenship of this fast growing demographic. If Kenya has managed to degrade the ability of the Al-Shabaab to carry out terror attacks, it is because it successfully infiltrated the terror group using Kenyan Somalis. As at the last census, Kenyan Somalis were the sixth-largest ethnic population in the country.
From a strategic point of view, the country would be better served by blurring the identity differences between Kenyan Somalis and the rest of the population. Since the constitution allows for dual citizenship, which comes with full rights, this is an option that should be extended to Somalis in Kenya and Somalia. Loyalty to a country ought to be deeper than possession of a laminated piece of paper; it ought to be based on real interests.
Accurate citizenship data
So far, Kenya’s record in holding the dam against foreigners acquiring citizenship is a test case of closing the stable when the horse has bolted. At every election, Kenyans discover to their shock and horror that the National Registration Bureau is not all that it is cracked up to be.
For example, in 2022, there were 483,874 voters on the electoral roll whose national identity card numbers were less than six digits, and another 63,756 whose identity document had more than nine digits. The serial number on every national identity card should be seven or eight digits: no more, no less. These errors still emerged after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission had reportedly cleaned up the register of voters following an audit by KPMG. The commission had deregistered 54,274 voters because the auditors found their details did not match those held by the registration bureau.
The fluidity of citizen registration has impelled some to suggest that the closest Kenya can come to obtaining accurate citizenship data is by checking numbers in the National Registration Bureau against the details of examination candidates for the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education.
Hundreds of thousands of people have acquired national identity cards through fraud, bribery or other illegal means. The premium on citizenship needs to reduce in order to increase its integrity.
The writer is a member of the board of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected].
