The Nairobi Regional Commissioner (RC), Wilson Njega has called on residents of Nairobi County to build a culture of brotherhood, to safeguard against acts of terrorism and violent extremism in the county.
He said the culture of collective responsibility where each individual becomes his brother’s keeper will make each individual responsible on the community welfare, adding that the culture of individualism and materialism where selfishness abounds makes people not to be responsible should be avoided.
Njega said threats of terrorism are still real and spread across all communities, a need that requires each individual to engage in security matters, as people involved in radicalisation, terrorism and violence are in their midst.
He said, “The radicalised youth are our children, we need to engage them in programmes and projects at all levels to keep them occupied and this will prevent them from falling prey to radicalisation and other social ills”.
“The people involved in acts of terrorism and radicalisation are the ones we live with, be internally vigilant from every sector of the community,” stated Njega.
The RC was speaking on Thursday at the Nairobi County Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) Consultative and Drafting meeting at a Nairobi hotel.
The 3-day meeting has brought together State and Non-State Actors to develop the Nairobi County Action Plan for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism in the County.
He said the plan should be owned by all Nairobians for it to make a difference in the neighborhoods.
Speaking at the event, the National Counter Terrorism Centre Director, Martin Kimani said the Nairobi Action plan will provide Nairobians with a place to turn to whenever they have an issue touching on security.
“If the P/CVE plan is implemented it is going to set a new standard for measuring how a country relates to violent extremism. We want to make the Action plans in all the 47 counties a success,” he said.
Currently, Kenya and Kenyans are under a vicious assault by global and regional terrorist groups that has prompted the security services to deploy means of detecting, deterring, disrupting and dismantling the threats.
Present at the meeting was the Nairobi County Commissioner, Flora Mworoa among others.
By Bernadette Khaduli