Tajudeen Abdul Raheem tries to decide whether politics, the business of political parties and money are in a greater state of disarray in Nigeria or Kenya. Or, who is more politically enterprising between the Nigerians and the Kenyans? Contrary to popular assumptions, it seems East Africa is winning!

I used to taunt political science colleagues in Nigeria that they were political voodoo magicians.

Given the unpredictability of Nigerian politics, and the ease with which the political class changes colours and allegiances from regime to regime, it is difficult to see that there can be any scientific basis for teaching politics in that country.

For instance, there are some people best described as orphans of the Nigerian state. They have been part of government in one way or the other almost all their lives.

Looking at some of the emerging power brokers in Aso Rock today, it would not be correct to say treachery and betrayal do not pay. Because neither have diminished their proximity to power! Some of them are and indeed deserve to be decorated as traitor-generals of Nigeria!

Many of them may not even win elections in their clans. But somehow whether military or civilian, they remain there. It is not science, but the creative art of power that is needed to understand the cabal that Aminu Kano would have described as being ‘consistently inconsistent’!

That’s why I even went as far as to suggest to my tormented fellow political scientists that their political science departments across the country should be closed down on the grounds of 'unfair trade description'. Because they claim to be teaching what is not really there.

But it was not my intention that they should all become jobless. Instead they needed mass retraining in order to be absorbed into Business Studies; since it is not politics that guides politicians, but money.

Therefore the science of Monetics may be more appropriate than political science theories in understanding how the country is governed and mis-governed.

Why bother to teach students democratic theories about parties, groups, elections etc, when political parties do not exist as alternative sets of policies to be canvassed in free intercourse of public debate and policy options, and from which the electorate can choose.

To the extent that there is any political party at all, all the politicians belong to AGIP (Any Government in Power)!

Now living in Kenya, one of the most politicised and ethnicity-obsessed countries in Africa, I am beginning to think that I have probably been most unfair to Nigerian political scientists.

You do not need science to understand Kenyan politics either. But the Nigerians need to come and learn from the masters here. It is pure business and memory-loss that you need to make sense of it at all.

President Museveni of neighbouring Uganda may have thought that he invented 'individual merit' and 'No Party Democracy' - which he imposed for ten years before donor pressures forced him to change tune.

But it is in Kenya where the ultimate privatisation of politics through a veneer of multi-party democracy is really being popularly practised.

For instance, last weekend, President Kibaki finally announced to a bored public that he was going to be standing on the platform of yet another new party (Kenya has more than 100 political parties), called the Party of National Unity (PNU), itself a coalition of 14 of the so-called Kibaki-friendly parties.

The same president had been brought to power on the platform of a coalition of similar parties in 2002. No sooner had they got rid of KANU and President Moi, cracks develop between the main parties in the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).

It precipitated a parting of ways with prominent leaders like Raila Odinga and Kilonzo Musyoka, who defeated the president and his allies in the constitutional referendum under yet another coalition, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

NARC was a coalition against KANU/Moi and his chosen successor, Uhuru Kenyatta. But ODM was a coalition against KIBAKI that included Uhuru Kenyatta/KANU. It even had the support of the much hated former president, Moi. They defeated the government. The euphoria was such that if elections were held, then they could have chased Kibaki out of the State House.

Elections were not held but the ODM lasted as a united group for much longer than many had predicted.

Eventually the improbable cohabitation of highly ambitious politicians finally gave way to a break-up, that meant Musyoka going away, but the other leaders remaining together.

And this is where the parallel with boardroom dynamics of Kenya political dealers reveal themselves most clearly.

It is in Kenya that I have come to realise that political parties are registered the same way as companies. You declare officials as you declare directors. You choose a name. As long as no one else has not registered it, it is yours.

Even if someone has registered the initials, you can still get it by adding 'K' (Kenya) or some other initial to yours. That’s why you have FORD, Ford K, Ford Asili, FORD people or NARC and NARC-K, ODM and
ODM-K.

Whoever has the certificates 'owns' the party! You do not even have to have members.

The owner needs not be a member of the party. He or she just happens to be the person to have registered it. You then wait until some politician needs the name, and you exchange it for cash!

In their initial triumphalism, the Orange people did not immediately register the ODM. So some smart lawyer beat them to it. They could not get him to relinquish the party, so they registered as ODM-K.

Then Musyoka found that he could not stop the Raila bandwagon for the ODM-k nomination. But he had the four aces. The chap who had registered the ODM-K was the close ally and kinsman who ‘gave him’ the certificate.

Raila and the majority leadership realised that this piece of paper will confer ownership on Musyoka. So they went back to the other dealer, and 'persuaded ' him to ‘give’ the certificate to Raila. He did the 'handover' in public!

So Raila and his allies became 'owners' of the original ODM, while Musyoka pocketed ODM-K.

Kibaki had similar problems and resolved them similarly!

After the exit of Raila and co. from NARC, the remaining NARC rump in government had problems about ownership. Mrs Charity Ngilu (whose National Party of Kenya had been used to register NARC) remains the original registered chairperson of NARC. She has refused to take out the certificate from her handbag.

Pro-Kibaki members of the government, frustrated at Ngilu’s non-cooperation, went ahead to register a new party, NARC-K!

So, you have a situation where most of the politicians, including the President and his leading challengers, are no longer members of the party or coalition that brought them to power.

Kibaki's people felt that NARC is no longer easy to sell to the public, with or without 'K', so they just bought themselves another party from the shelves!

In the new pro-Kibaki PNU coalition of parties - wait for it - is one Mr Uhuru Kenyatta. His faction of KANU and his benefactor, still looking after him, former President Moi, now a leading campaigner for Kibaki - who had defeated KANU and Uhuru!

Now you tell me who is more politically enterprising between the Nigerians and the Kenyans?

Next time you are checking for stocks and shares on the Nairobi Stock Exchange, you may want your financial adviser to check out what possible combination of names of parties are not yet registered, instruct him or her to snap them up, and wait for the next round in the game of musical chairs among the politicians that is bound to happen. Sooner or later, you will cash in your big bucks.

Tajudeen Abdul Raheem is the Deputy Director for the UN Millennium Campaign in Africa, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He writes this article in a personal capacity as a concerned pan-Africanist.

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