One dead, 50 injured in chaotic campus security drill

Wamuyu Kamau, a second-year student at Strathmore University, is distressed and has been missing class. She is yet to get over the trauma she suffered last Monday when a security drill turned tragic, spreading panic and causing a stampede that killed one employee.

The shambolic drill, which was executed as if it were a real terror attack, has left Kenya’s top private university nursing an image nightmare. It has also rekindled fears of terror attacks that have stalked institutions after last April’s deadly assault on Garissa University College.

The botched security operation forced students to scamper for safety, with dozens jumping from as high as the fifth floor of some buildings. More than 50 students and employees were hospitalised with injuries.

“While I escaped with scratches after crawling out of campus through a live fence after the alarm and gun shots rent the air, I am yet to believe it wasn’t a real attack. My close friend is hospitalised with fractured limbs,” Kamau told University World News.

“It will take months before I heal from the mental torture I went through, thinking the university had been hit by terrorists. The drill was conducted near the student centre, where many people gather before and after classes.

“While the university administration says they had notified and trained us, I personally wasn’t informed prior to the drill. I understand the necessity of doing such an exercise but why should it be carried out in such a seemingly reckless manner, to even cause death?” she said.

Vice-chancellor John Odhiambo apologised but said the drill was well intentioned, especially in the light of security alerts that showed Kenya’s universities had been singled out by terrorists as being among top potential targets.

Terror attacks

On 2 April 2015, al-Shabaab Islamic militants attacked Garissa University College in northeast Kenya, killing at least 148 students and injuring scores in the country’s deadliest terror attack since the 1998 bombing of the United States embassy in Nairobi.

A week later, a student died following a stampede at the University of Nairobi’s Kikuyu campus after ‘gunshot-like’ explosions caused by an electricity fault triggered a terror scare across the institution. More than 40 students were injured.

In September 2013 al-Shabaab attacked Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. At least 67 people were killed in a siege involving just four gunmen, and which lasted for four days.

Universities poorly prepared

Kenyan universities have been castigated for poor security, vigilance and preparedness on campuses and in hostels, especially following the Garissa attack.

In recent years universities have heightened security measures. But they struggle to guarantee full control over, for instance, who walks onto campuses.

“The way students and employees at Strathmore responded to the drill shows that the Garissa massacre has instilled fear in universities and the country in general. People feel exposed to attacks,” said a security analyst who did not want to be named as he consults for the government.

“Universities are ill-prepared should a real attack happen. In most of them, you can walk in and out without being subjected to security checks. Post-Garissa, vigilance has gone up substantially but still, the level of risk is high,” he added.

In August, Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery announced that police officers would be deployed on request to universities to boost security and guard against possible future attacks by religious extremists. Universities are expected to make requests for the police officers and meet associated costs.

Kenya’s sorry state of preparedness was laid bare by a recent United Nations Security Council report that castigated the government for failing to act on available intelligence ahead of the Garissa attack. According to the report, multiple intelligence sources told UN investigators that al-Shabaab gunmen were known to be in Garissa 10 to 14 days prior to the attack.

The principal of Garissa University College, Dr Ahmed Warfa, was aware that campus security arrangements were inadequate and had consulted and written several times to the local government security apparatus requesting extra security – but was not taken seriously.

Feeling insecure

Kenyans are worried about whether state security and intelligence personnel have the capacity to identify and neutralise terrorist networks before they unleash more attacks on universities and schools, and kill people.

“You ask me if I feel more secure at the university, I would tell you no. While security has been enhanced around the university, strangers still seep through the security checks and that’s my greatest fear,” said Dan Okoth, an MBA student at the University of Nairobi.

“Knowing that terrorists target areas where they would get the maximum impact in terms of casualties, security around hostels and study halls worries me,” said Okoth.

It is also emerging that universities are increasingly turning to undercover intelligence officers who mingle freely with students to help boost detection of threats.

“Security is a complex issue. When it comes to protecting students, we have resolved we are not leaving anything to chance,” said a senior security administrator at a Nairobi-based university. “We will go to any lengths. We are tapping all the available resources to neutralise the threat of attacks.”

Breeding radicalised youths

Educationists said universities in Kenya, and in many other African countries, are not only targets of terror attacks but are also playing a part in breeding radicalised youths, some of whom take up Islamic fundamentalism.

The inability of graduates to find gainful employment and growing economic inequalities that prevent many graduates from attaining social status in society, have provided fodder for the recruitment of well-educated youths into the ranks of militant politico-religious orders.

“The feeling of deprivation coupled with a sense of injustice is giving birth to anger and readiness to reject the existing system and challenge it and even to overthrow it using violence,” said Professor Alexander de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, in his study Islamism and its Enemies in the Horn of Africa.

After the Garissa University College attack, Kenyan authorities identified one of the attackers as a former University of Nairobi law graduate who was described as a brilliant up-and-coming lawyer.