BONYO'S BONE: Murkomen, teargas and the truth

In the last two days, Onesimus Kipchumba Murkomen has sounded the alarm that teargas canisters are in the hands of civilians.

He now wants investigations and has tasked Douglas Kanja to find out how this happened.

But CS, with respect, this is not a mystery. It is an accountability question.

Kenya does not manufacture teargas. It is imported under tightly controlled licences for one purpose, law enforcement, primarily for use by the National Police Service.

This is not sugar or rice or maize that passes through open tenders. Every single canister that enters this country is procured through a known supplier, logged through a controlled chain, issued through a documented command structure, assigned to specific officers, recorded before deployment and accounted for after use.

In fact, police procedure already answers the question the CS now wants investigated. For the avoidance of doubt, here is how it works. An Officer Commanding Station must sign for every round of ammunition, every firearm and every teargas canister issued. There are registers, movement records and after-action returns.

So, if canisters are in civilian hands, we are not dealing with an unknown. We are dealing with a breakdown or abuse of an existing system.

This is what in other sectors is called traceability, the ability to track an item one step back and one step forward. It is widely used in the agriculture and pharmaceuticals sectors and, without a doubt, security agencies are supposed to live by it.

The policing structure in this country dates back over a century to the East Africa Protectorate era. Surely, in 2026, we cannot claim we do not know where state-controlled crowd-control equipment came from.

You do not launch investigations to discover what your own inventory system should already tell you. You demand an audit, an explanation from the custodians.

Because the officers who sign for this equipment are not faceless strangers. They are the very people who line up parades during ministerial visits. They brief and escort you, as well as host you in stations across the country.

Look them in the eye and ask for the records. Anything else risks looking less like enforcement, and more like theatre funded by taxpayers.