Rising gang culture in Nakuru schools raises alarm

There is a common belief that schools and education at large help keep children on the straight and narrow and for some schools actually provide a safe haven for children who want to be protected from the early life of crime. 

However, in Nakuru things are different. Yesterday while giving his remarks on the state of security in Nakuru.

Yesterday, Cabinet Secretary of Interior Kipchumba Murkomen confirmed that gang influence has made its way to schools in Nakuru. 

 He revealed that there are those children in day schools who do not go to school for fear of being targeted by those who are in the gangs. 

Mtaa Wangu has overtime highlighted the issue of how gang violence has shaped the trajectory of most of the schools within the city centre. 

Case in point was the Kivumbini Secondary School where the number of students continues to dwindle each and every year. The reason for this being that many parents in the area would opt not to enrol their children due to the increase in criminal activities in the area. 

Just to put it in perspective Kivumbini Secondary School had a total of three streams. In 2021 it fell to 2 streams and as of 2024 it only had one stream. 

The parents we spoke to highlighted how once they enrol their children into the schools, they end up joining a criminal grouping whose induction happens in school. 

In a popular school in Nakuru West, the script reads like it is from one of the Godfather films. 

At the time we got to learn that apart from them being gang affiliated, some of the students have gone as far as setting up a hierarchical structure according to the gangs they are in. 

Their activities range from soliciting money from other students, peddling drugs and threatening teachers. 

In this "organized crime" set up the teachers are the detectives, but they can only do so much. 

At the time, the County Commissioner Loyford Kibaara denied that there was any effect of criminal gangs on education.