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Arming guards is not the solution

guards

Let’s not make a hasty and reactionary decision about arming private guards. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Last week on Tuesday, I rushed to the bank only to find a long queue. To keep myself busy, I logged on to Twitter only to find a distress call from a friend saying there were explosions and gunfire. He wanted to know what exactly was happening at the scene.

James Oduor alias “Odu Cobra” was a friend I had known for more than ten years. We joined campus at the same time, went through the orientation programme together and shared general classes before we deviated to our respective courses.

The last time we met was in 2017 after a disappointing rugby game between Kenya and Germany.

He was the funniest guy I have interacted with. he would crack jokes leaving the whole class (more than 70 students all strangers to each other at the time) dying in laughter.

What’s really memorable about him was that if you were having a bad day, you only needed to log onto Facebook and read Odu Cobra’s status updates. You would find yourself laughing out loud. So, when I came across Odu Cobra’s distress call at around 3:40pm I knew that this time he wasnt joking.

Unfortunately, we lost Odu Cobra in the Dusit terror attack. A story narrated by one of his colleagues has it that when explosions and gunfire rented the air, Odu Cobra decided to help himself by trying to flee the building.

From the third floor he ran down the stairs in an attempt to exit the building only to meet one of the terrorists who was throwing grenades and spraying bullets in every floor whilst heading to the roof top.

So he ran back up but unfortunately he had left behind his key card that is used to access the office.

He chose to climb the stairs all the way to the rooftop only to find the door locked. That was the end of the road for him, he had to face the terrorist eyeball to eyeball.

I wonder what was going through his mind as he faced the terrorist; did he ask the terrorist to spare him since he has a young family, did he ask for a minute to whisper his last wishes to his two young kids, or did he wish he was in possession of a gun and take down the terrorist?

There is a floating proposal that private security guards at public places should be licensed to carry guns.

This proposal made a lot of sense picturing Odu Cobra last moments and I kept convincing myself that if the security guards had guns at the entrance maybe they would have held back the terrorists for a little while and our friend, our brother, our stand up comedian “Odu Cobra” would have managed to escape.

Uganda has not experienced any terrorist attack since and it has been argued that it’s because private guards carry assault rifles - though there is no evidence that correlates the two.

But I met a friend who has a large part of his family in Somalia on Friday and this conversation came up, he convinced me otherwise.

He insisted that the proposal of arming private guards is playing Russian roulette, looking at how licensed guns are already being misused.

But the eye opener was that armed guards have never deterred Al-Shabaab attacks in Mogadishu, like the Sahafi Hotel has been overrun twice despite having more than 25 armed guards. The answer lies in having well-oiled intelligence gathering operations – “prevention is better than cure.”

So let’s not make a hasty and reactionary decision about arming private guards. To those who’ve lost loved ones in the Dusit attack, the pain is so real, may they be the last fallen soldiers in our fight against terrorism.

To my friend “Odu Cobra” shine on your way brother. Till we meet again. nind maber (rest in peace).