President William Ruto recently pledged Sh2 billion to compensate victims of recent protest-related violence. It is a significant sum. It is a necessary gesture. For the families of those shot or abducted while exercising their constitutional rights, it offers a sliver of redress. Yet, the announcement has reopened a much older, deeper wound.

While the state finds billions for the victims it chooses to see, it remains silent on the ghosts of Wagalla. Forty years ago, the Kenyan government turned its military against its own citizens in Wajir County. The state has yet to pay for it. It has yet to prosecute. It has yet to apologize.

The Unpaid Debt of 1984

On February 10, 1984, the Kenyan state under President Daniel arap Moi unleashed a campaign of terror against the Degodia and Garre communities. Thousands of men were rounded up at the Wagalla airstrip. They were stripped, searched for non-existent weapons, and systematically executed over several days.

Survivors describe soldiers laughing as they fired into crowded hangars. They speak of helicopters strafing men fleeing across the desert. They speak of bodies left to rot under the sun, consumed by hyenas because the state refused to claim its own dead. Official reports from the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) estimate 5,000 deaths. Local survivors argue the toll is closer to 10,000.

The horror is not just the arithmetic. It is the impunity. Benson Kaaria, the former Northeastern Provincial Commissioner and a primary architect of the massacre, died last year at 91. He never spent a night in a cell. He never testified. He retired with a full pension and died with his reputation intact. The state rewarded his silence with a dignified burial.

A Caste System of Redress

President Ruto’s recent allocation creates a dangerous precedent. It suggests that justice in Kenya is a matter of political convenience rather than a fundamental right. The victims of recent protests are urban, digital, and visible to international media. They are seen. The pastoralist men of Wagalla, murdered in a remote corner of the country, are treated as historical noise.

This is not governance. It is a caste system dressed in constitutional clothing. The descendants of Wagalla still live in internal displacement camps on their own ancestral lands. They still carry identity cards that bear the marks of the old provincial administration—a system that branded them as second-class citizens. They watch as Nairobi politicians fly overhead in helicopters, heading to rallies, while they struggle for basic water and pasture.

The Path Toward Legal Action

The social contract is not a gift from the presidency. It is a binding obligation rooted in statutes and international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The state cannot pick and choose which massacres to compensate based on ethnic arithmetic or current political optics.

If the administration continues this segregationist approach, legal action is inevitable. The state must move beyond selective empathy. It must acknowledge the mass graves that local elders can still point to. It must provide a formal apology. It must stop treating the Wagalla Massacre as a footnote in a dust-covered report.

Key Takeaways

  • The Sh2 billion compensation for protest victims highlights a stark disparity in how the Kenyan state values different groups of survivors.
  • The 1984 Wagalla Massacre remains the most glaring example of state-sponsored violence that has never seen a single prosecution or formal apology.
  • Legal experts and activists are now calling for an end to this selective justice, warning that the state’s failure to address historical atrocities undermines the entire social contract.

Justice delayed is justice denied. For the survivors of Wagalla, that delay has now stretched into four decades. The next move belongs to State House. They can continue to ignore the past, or they can finally acknowledge the debt that has been owed since 1984.