National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) has embarked on mapping out political violence hotspots in the country ahead of next year’s polls.
This comes as the commission expressed its concern over the ongoing hate-speech by politicians a year before the next general elections.
Speaking during a consultative meeting with the security officials, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) and leaders in Naivasha, the NCIC director of programmes Millicent Okatch, the commission will rely on past records to pick out the areas that were most affected by political violence.
“We have also started to engage the youths so that they are not misused by the politicians to cause violence during political campaigns,” she said.
She noted that they would however conduct fresh exercises across the country in a bid to avert chaos before, during and after the elections.
Okatch denied that the commission was a toothless bulldog.
“Our mandate is to investigate politicians spewing hate speech and handing over the evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions,” she said.
She noted that hate speech on social media was their biggest challenge.
Naivasha deputy OCPD Jared Marando said they had already identified the hotspots in the lakeside town that was hardest hit during the 2007 post-election violence.
The police boss said that they had opened a police post in some of the estates that had been mapped out as hotspots.
“We are ready to use prison officers in the patrols so that we don’t have a repeat of the 2007 violence,” he said.
