By Rose Mwangangi
MWINGI, MAY 1, 2026
The long-delayed opening of Kwa Kamare Police Station in Tseikuru Ward has now taken on a sharper, more urgent meaning.
It comes not as a proactive security measure, but in the aftermath of bloodshed that left eight people dead, including a 14-year-old child.
Police officers, alongside about 30 National Police Reservists (NPR), moved into the facility this week, effectively operationalizing one of eight stations constructed by the Kitui County Government along the volatile Kitui–Garissa-Tana River border.
The stations were completed in 2024 but had remained unused due to the failure by the National Police Service (NPS) to deploy personnel.
That delay cannot escape is now drawing scrutiny. Why now?
For nearly two years, the infrastructure stood ready—silent outposts in a region repeatedly hit by cross-border incursions linked to armed camel herders and long-running resource conflicts. Yet it took a deadly flare-up to trigger action.
At a charged public meeting in Nguni market, Kitui County Commissioner Erastus Mbui defended the government’s response, saying security agencies have now moved decisively to contain the situation and prevent further attacks.
But his remarks did little to answer the growing question among residents: why now?
The Kwa Kamare station is not an isolated case. Across the border belt, similar facilities remain in varying states of dormancy. One of them, in Kona Kaliti, was destroyed in a boundary dispute with residents from Tana River County and has never been rebuilt—further exposing gaps in coordination and long-term planning.
Garissa Governor Nathif Jama Adam, who attended the Nguni meeting, acknowledged the scale of the recent violence and called for restraint among communities.
He urged Akamba and Somali residents to resist retaliatory cycles and instead safeguard coexistence and trade.
But even as leaders speak of peace, the ground tells a more complicated story.
Transport between Garissa and Nairobi through Mwingi has only just resumed after a three-day paralysis at the height of the violence.
Several businesses, particularly those owned by Somali traders, remain closed or vandalized—silent markers of the tensions that continue to simmer.
The activation of Kwa Kamare Police Station may signal a shift in state presence. Yet it also underscores a deeper institutional lag—where response follows tragedy, rather than preventing it. It is an emblem of a forgotten people and left to die or be killed as is happening now.
For residents along the Kitui- Garissa –Tana River frontier, the question lingers: if the stations were ready in 2024, what exactly has the National Police Service been waiting for?
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