The government has, for more than 50 years, been giving guns and ammunition to police reservists and homeguards but does not know how many weapons it has issued owing to poor record-keeping.
In what senior security officials describe as a “scary scandal”, and the “biggest internal security threat”, nobody seems to know exactly how many officers are in the National Police Reserve (NPR) and the whereabouts of the guns given to civilians who previously operated as Home Guards and Kenya Police Reservists.
DEADLY MILITIA
While it is estimated that there are over 9,000 NPRs strewn across the northern part of the country, the actual number is not known since successive regimes did not keep records, the Nation has established.
And, since they are not under the control of security chiefs, there is fear that they could turn out to be a deadly militia in the volatile north.
Security insiders believe that these armed men, for whom the only qualification for recruitment was attainment of 18 years and volunteering for service, could be the main source of insecurity in the region.