Sakaja's show unfolds in Nairobi's ever-spinning circus of governance

As the saying goes, “when a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king, the palace becomes a circus”.  It’s a saying best ascribed to political leaders, and it is easy to see how it could be applied to many countries, including ours.  In fact, it’s a saying that once got a journalist in another part of the world arrested a couple of years back, on account of references to that country’s long-serving leader.  Yet every time I look at our capital Nairobi, before and since devolution, it’s as if we are predestined to be led by an eternal succession of jokers and jesters. 

So it was no surprise watching the circus act cum soap opera around attempts by Members of the Nairobi County Assembly to impeach current Governor Johnson Sakaja. In Act One, we were told over 20 charges had been drafted. Signature collection was advanced. We watched a couple of “bipartisan” pressers. Was it going to happen? Then the curtains closed. 

When the curtains reopened we suddenly found ourselves in Act Three of this drama. There would be no impeachment for now. The Governor would “work better” with MCAs. After all, we were warned, “if we destabilise Nairobi, we destabilise Kenya”.  What is not clear is if Sakaja, a UDA Governor, is working on a 30-day ODM reprieve or a “work with him” UDA directive.  As with all political things Kenyan, this is our version of “never never land”.  Stuff never happens. 

For the everyday Nairobi resident like myself, we missed Act Two of this theatre act. This is the “nyuma ya tent” business done behind closed doors. All we know is MCAs met their respective broad-based leaderships. “Met” is the operative word here, and we are not privy to what and how business was transacted. Or if “transacted” is the real operative word. The bottom line is NCCG (Nairobi City County Government) ended the week holding hands and singing kumbaya. 

I remain convinced that there is money to be made in a hit TV drama series on Nairobi. Part political drama, part crime (not law) and order, part tragi-comedy, we should call it “The Mayor”. Or alternatively, to restore our hope, start with a comic-book series with heroes and villains, which would be franchised to TV or film.  That way we might also restore our reading culture in today’s age of memes, GIFs and hashtags.  If that’s too much, we could stick with a cartoon show. 

But I digress.  Let’s consider three quick reflections from this latest episode of our “Nairobi half-life”. The first might begin with the impeachment motion itself from what we have gleaned in the media.  Uniquely for governor impeachments we have observed, there was a particular focus on service delivery, or more accurately, deteriorating services. Think about your usual suspects – garbage collection, public health, roads infrastructure, services to business in return for licensing and regulation, and of course, all manner of high-rise construction all over the place. 

Why was this different? Mostly because it was less about input-level things like hiring or procurement (the bugbear of other governors), and more to do with output-level service delivery. Not that the former isn’t an issue – for example there is more than meets the eye on massive payments that have been made to various legal service providers (lawyers and law firms). 

Political noise

Of course, any impeachment involves county assembly self-interest, and you can draw a straight line between “working better with MCAs” and highly-prized ward development and bursary funds. That’s the best way to translate accusations of “being sidelined” and “failing to consult”. We must also not forget that, in our current reality, government is itself a business to do business.  Which leads us to the second reflection. As is the Kenyan way, there was definitely a political back story to this impeachment. Without playing detective here, it is telling that much of the political noise we heard suggested that keeping Nairobi stable keeps broad-based government and Kenya stable, at least until 2027.  It is interesting that, since June 2024,  Kenyans have been treated to a never-ending instability narrative in which broad-based is the only current salvation.  

This is a great narrative to shield existing regime interests and behaviours (including corruption). In this thinking, impeachment upsets the apple cart, but stopping it leaves Kenyans with lemons. 

Imagine a day when the public, directly or through its representatives, could throw its leaders not simply for corruption, misconduct or generalised incompetence, but for not delivering actual results. Not just at elections, but between them. So, for example, a governor has two basic deliverables – governance and socio-economy; so we toss them out on service delivery (the governance deliverable) or local/county socio-economic development (the second deliverable). 

Extending the idea upwards, you would add a third deliverable – security – for the President. The fact that our politics is neither able nor willing to get close to this tells you all you need to know about how far we have to go. Except for this Nairobi case, we are happy to impeach on inputs. 

On that imaginary day in the future, leaders would be evicted on outputs (service delivery) and outcomes (welfare and wellbeing), not just through elections, but between them.  Importantly, a parliamentary, rather than presidential, system of government would make this task easier.  We are not there yet; every successful governor impeachment we’ve had looks like political bad luck. 

My final reflection is “poor Nairobi”.  But we are Nairobi and Nairobi is us.  There was a time a few years back when this great place was better known as “Nai-robbery”.  I don’t know exactly what happened to fix this – better policing? – but we had long forgotten this title until recently.  

Because now we are talking of a new crime presence, not even crime wave, as a by-product of goon infestations of recent public protests.  Like excellence, crime is more than action, it’s habit. 

Today we’re being called “Gotham City”, that dark city of the Joker from the Batman comic book. This is the same Nairobi planning to host an expanded permanent United Nations presence.  This is the place that has been ranked 10th most dynamic city globally on technology and innovation, with other high rankings in everything from travel destination to start-up finance and venture capital hub to a low cost of living by international standards. It is still East Africa’s premier business and investment destination, but it is also a place that ranks very poorly as a smart city (in the bottom 10 out of 146 cities) when we claim we host the “Silicon Savannah”. 

There was a time we visualised Nairobi, already a quarter of the economy and one of Africa’s top five private wealth centres, expanding into a Greater Nairobi metropolis, then megalopolis of inter-linked mini-cities.  Weren’t we recently talking about a Nairobi Financial District? 

Yet here we are, sitting in this 170,000 acre plot called Nairobi which is less than half tarmacked with almost half of all garbage not collected, struggling with politics, while Kigali and Addis leapfrog us. I used to say that we need to fix Nairobi to fix Kenya. Now I think it’s the other way round! 

Sadly, Kenyans have short memories. In 30 days, we will have forgotten. The circus will continue.