Sakuye community decry marginalisation by successive regimes
Mzee Abdi Boya speaking to the Nation at Dabel dispensary on August 24, 2022. The only health facility relied on by over 20,000 residents grapples with acute drug shortage.
Members of the Sakuye community in Marsabit County have decried marginalisation by successive regimes since independence.
The community has cited regional development imbalance and other historical injustices.
Dabel resident Ibrahim Abdullahi Ali told Nation.Africa that despite the government’s efforts to address regional disparities through policies and other interventions, the division is characterised by persistent social and economic injustice, with residents concentrated in underinvested neighbourhoods.
“We’re concerned about how the Sakuye community in Dabel has been neglected and rendered helplessly voiceless even amid humanitarian crises. We’ve been left to our own devices even during these severe droughts,” Mr Ali said.
The community, he said, was also systematically isolated from the resources, amenities and opportunities needed to thrive.
The ongoing drought has also pushed residents to the cusp of starvation and economically segregated neighbourhoods.
Mr Ali added that the community has since the 1970s suffered inequity and even with devolution “there has never been any meaningful urgency to advance bold solutions to foster long-overdue investment and opportunities in the region”.
The majority of Sakuye youths who are educated are jobless and some above 35 years old cannot obtain national identification cards due to what they called discrimination at the Registrar of Persons office in Moyale town.
Mzee Abdi Boya displays empty shelves at the only dispensary relied on by over 20,000 residents in Dabel Division on August 24,2022.
They claimed that even some of the most senior and aged members of the community who helped hoist the Kenyan flag on Mt Kenya at independence were yet to get ID cards.
Apart from the humanitarian crises ravaging the region, development strides are also threatened.
It was only during pioneer Marsabit governor Ukur Yatani’s tenure that the area was considered for development projects and jobs.
Residents were ‘lucky’ to have a dispensary and livestock market established by the first county government.
Dabel Dispensary chairperson Mzee Abdi Boya added that in the face of these colossal humanitarian challenges, the community has no political representation in the county assembly or Parliament.
The once flourishing dispensary no longer has any drugs for the patients. Even medics working there sometimes have to buy painkillers from the nearest shops.
Expectant mothers in labour are required to carry water with them to aid their delivery.
The health facility has only one clinical officer and a few community health workers, making it hard to continue operations when the officer is attending to emergencies away from the area.
There are many expectant and nursing mothers and malnourished children who could not get the required medical treatment due to the acute drug shortages.
As humanitarian agencies rush to drought-hit areas such as Laisamis and North Horr, Dabel division continues to be given a wide berth.
Mzee Abdi Boya looks at the carcasses of livestock that succumbed to drought in Dabel division on August 24, 2022.
Residents have lost nearly all their livestock, their primary source of livelihood and nutrition.
Mzee Ali takes us to the field around the only remaining borehole and we come face to face with the stench of death and witness over 200 carcasses strewn all over the site.
Dabel was gazetted as a division but is not fully operational.
Of the five locations in the divisions of Guyotimo, Dirib Dima, Misa and Dabel, one, Guyotimo, is defunct as residents fled the area due to lack of water amid the ravaging droughts.
Ms Fatma Abdi gave a painful account of how women eke out a desperate existence by making and selling charcoal.
As the drought gets worse, residents no longer have enough stamina to make charcoal.
They have nothing left except hoping against all hope that some Good Samaritans could come to their aid.
The education sector has not been spared either by the socioeconomic ills. Dabel Primary School teacher Hussein Kadir decried an acute shortage of teachers at schools in the region.
Many learners have also dropped out of school due to starvation.
Further, a gold mine in the area that had resuscitated the waning hopes of residents is contested by rich people from neighbouring communities who want to grab it.
The Sakuye are also among the communities still grappling with the unhealed scars of the brutal torture at the hands of military officers in December 1963, when the Kenyan government declared a state of emergency in the Northeastern region, then known as the Northern Frontier District.
A resident of Dabel examines a broken-down water system at one of the only two available boreholes in Dabel on August 24, 2022.
Members of the community endured 56 days of forced detention without trial, confiscation of property and even abduction and rape of young women.
A ‘prohibited zone’ was created along the Somali border and the death penalty was made mandatory for unauthorised possession of firearms.
Over 40 women were abducted and violated, only to return with permanent disabilities and unable to conceive.
More than 30 young men were also abducted and did not return.
The community thought that the inquiries and documentation of the atrocities by the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) in the region would provide answers about what transpired in that period but nothing substantial has happened.
The community is now appealing to the Independent, Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to consider creating a ward in Dabel division so that residents can get a representative to champion their rights in the county assembly.
Ms Fatma Abdi (centre) recounts how the women had been adversely affected by the years of neglect by the government and especially amidst the ravaging drought in Dabel Division on August 24, 2022.
“We demand community-centred economic inclusion that can concurrently address all the barriers causing discrimination against us, through a combination of equity-focused structural changes,” Ms Abdi said.
Residents called on county officials and the national government to implement policies and resource flows aimed at integrating the Sakuye community like other Kenyan citizens.
They also want officials to help address systemic discrimination against the community.
The Sakuye are a semi-nomadic pastoral people living in Marsabit, near the Ethiopian border, and Isiolo counties. The 2019 population census put their number at 27,006.
