By Brian Otieno and Charles MgHeny
Thursday, April 17, 2014
STUDENTS are starting to be radicalised in Mombasa, according to county education director Abdikadir Kike. He said some secondary school pupils are demanding to be allowed to grow long beards, and to dye them different colours.
“This kind of indiscipline is not usual,” said Kike. He said the ministry will approach moderate Imams and sheikhs to talk to students as soon as they open for second term. Kike said such signs should be a wake-up call for teachers and parents.
“The students have to know that the business of radicalization is not their business. Their business is to learn and help the county grow economically,” said Kike.
“Radicalization has not affected our schools just yet but there are signs of it in pockets in some schools,” said the education director. He did not name the schools where the students are being radicalised.
He was speaking at Seacom offices in Mombasa where the cable company was awarding top performers in Math and Sciences in the 2013 KCPE and KCSE exams. Jomvu MP Badi Twalib said children are influenced by peer pressure and need support from parents and teachers.
“These are cultural problems. These might be due to the influence of drugs and other social vices that we see around. Our children must be protected right from Class One,” said Twalib at the prize giving ceremony.
“We told stakeholders about the issue and had initiated a process where we were to identify students in schools that have started exhibiting peculiar habits that might point to having been or being radicalised,” Knut Mombasa secretary Dan Aloo told the Star.
He said head teachers have instructions to report extremist behaviour to education officials and security agents. He said they should also provide guidance and counselling to those students.
“We can’t encourage such behaviour in our schools. These are leaders that we are training and they must be people of good morals,” he said. Meanwhile, businesses around the Masjid Shuhadaa mosque (former Masjid Musa) have closed down following the recent chaos in the area.
Various sheikhs from the mosque have been killed including Sheikh Aboud Rogo, who was killed in August 2012, Sheikh Ibrahim Ismael and Sheikh Abubakar Sharriff alias Makaburi who was shot this month.
Real estate, transport, hotels, shops and butchery in the area are the most affected. Ali Abdalla, 44 who was born and raised up in the area, said it is become difficult to rent out additional property.
“Whenever a tenant left we used to get a new one in less than a month. Currently we have about five houses whose tenants left and we have not found new ones. It now three months,” he said.
Abdalla also owns a butchery that used to make between Sh80,000 and Sh100,000 daily selling meat wholesale to other butchers and customers from the posh estates of Nyali and Tudor.
“Right now it is very difficult to get Sh40,000 a day after we lost customers who use to buy meat in large quantities,” he said. Robert Ochola, a pharmacist near the Majengo market for ten years, closed his shop in November last year and moved to Bombolulu.
“Non-Muslims in the area were being discriminated and targeted whenever violence broke. I had to move for the sake of my business and family,” he said.
Ahmed Bashir, a Majengo resident working in Mombasa town, said getting transport to Majengo is currently difficult as matatu and tuk-tuk drivers avoid the area.