Like him or not, Raila Amollo Odinga who passed away on 15th October, 2025 in India Hospital after succumbing to ailments remains the most influential figure in African politics. His abrasive politics created both enemies and a blind following. Despite a recognizable family name in Kenyan politics, Raila is a self made politician who tried to the best of his knowledge to reshape Kenyan political conversation between the governors and the governed with limited success.
Kenyan folklore would like us to believe his father, former first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, saw a brighter political future for his son Raila Amollo Odinga to be the future pointman of his Luo Nyanza. The elder Odinga anointed Raila to lead the family political prospects in Kenya. Others poured cold water to that tell-tale claiming Raila blew it all when he attempted to oust his own father from the leadership of Ford Kenya. It is said, his father dimmed Raila’s light as too impatient to prosper in the vagaries of Kenyan national politics.
Paradoxically, Raila himself didn’t help matters when he self professed as not the “consensus politician” but a “conviction politician”. This attitude explains in many ways why he was the most polarizing figure in Kenyan politics as he was pursuing “My way or the highway”. This subject will be revisited elsewhere to sum up Raila’s limitations as an agent of social change both at home and abroad where “painful compromises” rather than “individual convictions” melt the ice paving way for durable deals on engagement.
Raila was trained in East German and earned an equivalent of a masters degree in mechanical engineering. East German was part and parcel of communist sphere arming his political enemies with enough arsenal to damage his future aspirations. His own father’s dabbling with socialist ideals dented further family political prospects at a time of Cold War insidious divisions with Kenyan leadership bending knee to Western capitalism. That presented formidable guardrails for the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga to scale the heights of Kenyan politics leading to his resignation as the first vice president of Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta who was the first president of Kenya.
Under one party political system, Raila Odinga struggled to make an impact and out of desperation, he later spilled the beans – that he was the mastermind behind the foiled coup attempt that almost removed president Arap Moi government in 1982. The then Liberal Democratic Party leader Raila Odinga and Babafemi Badejo, who wrote his biography Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics, scrawled some admissions of Raila having been the linchpin of the coup. That biography was launched in July, 2006.
The then Kenya Attorney General, Amos Wako, dismissed Raila’s allegations in the biography as mere opinions, not worthy of treasonous prosecution. Wako’s view was that a book was an opinion not amounting to evidence admissible in a court of law. While Raila dodged the criminal prosecution bullet but his fervent admissions of having had a hand in a coup d’etat that left more than 100 soldiers and perhaps 200 civilians dead, including several non-Kenyans complicated his quest to be the president of Kenya as principals in the Kibaki administration feared for their own careers had he bagged the 2007 elections which was widely regarded he was rigged out of a victory.
Raila Odinga was detained for over seven years in Nyayo House torture chambers after being implicated in the 1982 coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi. He was imprisoned without trial for six years, and the prolonged detention significantly impacted his health, including his eyesight, causing involuntary tearing due to damage to his lacrimal ducts.
Once out of involuntary detention, Raila was undaunted as he joined other opposition forces to form FORD that was riven with divisions between his father Jaramogi Oginga and Ken Matiba who failed to agree between them should confront the sitting president Moi in 1992 elections. It is widely believed had the duo settled this dispute among themselves, Moi presidency would have ended in 1992, but didn’t. As despite opposition total votes exceeding those Moi garnered they failed to oust him in the ballot box since “first past the post” constitutional rule ensured the retaining of the status quo.
Raila tried to run in 1997 but made very little impact as Moi triumphed with Mwai Kibaki coming second. Kibaki vehemently disputed the election outcome but Moi led Kenya to his last constitutionally bound term limit. With Moi not running in 2002, Raila felt joining forces with Moi would improve his chances of gunning down the presidency.
Moi didn’t disappoint no sooner Raila brought his Labour Party paratroopers into Kanu. Moi rewarded Raila with a cabinet post and Kanu secretary general. However, when the hour of reckoning of picking the presidential candidate for 2002 Moi had different ideas as he endorsed Uhuru Kenyatta stirring a furore of the opposition. Luo Nyanza wouldn’t have permitted Raila to accept Uhuru Kenyatta to be Kanu presidential flagbearer based on the acrimonious history between the two most influential political dynasties in Kenya.
While other Kanu stalwarts groused quietly, Raila was bold and quickly convinced doubters it was time to dump Kanu, and join the opposition under Mwai Kibaki. With the election hour ticking, Kanu defectors settled on Mwai Kibaki, a former vice president out of sheer political expediency which would later havoc this “marriage of convenience”. Raila and Kanu erstwhile defectors faced different fortunes with the Kibaki administration. Most of them who were opposition proper were kicked out for being a lousy fit, and embarked on a journey to unseat Kibaki in 2007. However, Kanu insiders fared better with Kibaki since they had common values to reboot to having a robust chemistry and discipline curated since their heydays in Kanu.
In 2007, Raila cobbled a coalition that chipped off the once Kanu bedrock of political support under Moi reign – a gratitude to William Samuoi Ruto. Kibaki fortified himself in Mount Kenya but the maths favoured Raila. With Raila ahead since the vote was being tallied and displayed on the KBC TV became a main source of disputed election: The Mount Kenya vote was deliberately delayed in order to know the gap between Raila and Kibaki before fixing Raila for good.
The then Kenya Election Commission chairman, Samuel Kivuitu (now deceased) even threatened to declare the result he had already tallied if Mount Kenya returning officers & coordinators didn’t surrender their constituencies final result. Much later, after declaring Mwai Kibaki had won the presidency and the country was burning, a reporter queried Kivuitu whether he was sure Mwai Kibaki was indeed the winner he quipped: “I really don’t know…” His irresponsible concession rallied the opposition to demand a slice in the Kibaki cabinet in what was later known as “half loaf” handshake agreement.
Samuel Kivuitu during the hastily organized swearing-in ceremony of President Mwai Kibaki joked that the much maligned KEC – Kenya Election Commission (now defunct) knew to separate real presidents from imposters! After hearing this, the opposition under Raila Odinga decided not only to sack Kivuitu but to annul KEC.
It is imperative to note that hundreds of people had perished during the 2007 election mayhem. According to various reports, between 1,000 to 1,500 people lost their lives in the violent clashes that erupted in Kenya following the disputed 2007 presidential election. The exact number of fatalities is difficult to determine, but most sources agree that the death toll exceeded 1,000. Some sources provide the following estimates:
– Over 1,100 people killed, as reported by Human Rights Watch.
– More than 1,200 Kenyans were reported killed, according to the UN Human Rights Team.
– 1,300 people killed, as stated in a report by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
– 800-1,500 killed, according to Wikipedia.
The violence, which lasted for several months, was sparked by allegations of electoral manipulation and resulted in widespread displacement, with estimates suggesting over 600,000 people were forced to flee their homes.
In the five year stint as prime minister of Kenya, Raila’s lack of consensus reaching skills decimated his cabinet picks in particular the sacking of William Ruto severed his Rift Valley rich vote essentially ending his own viability as a future presidential hopeful. While Raila himself and his array of supporters claim he won subsequent elections of 2012 – 2022 but facts need no further repetition: without Rift Valley support his case was cooked. He didn’t have the votes to upset a new coalition of Rift Valley and Mount Kenya under UhuRuto, period! The 2022 election was much closer because Uhuru Kenyatta shifted allegiance to Raila without effectively tilting the Mount Kenya Election scales.
Raila’s Enduring Legacy.
He will be fondly remembered for electoral reforms that made Kenya the most plural country in Africa where tolerance of the opposition unlike in Tanzania the opposition has been degraded to a second class citizen with no let-up.
While in his last days, he was lauded as the father of “ugatuzi” but the harsh reality is devolution in Kenya remains the eyesore of its strides in pluralism. Devolution has reared a lack of accountability, splurge, embezzlement of public funds and bureaucracy closer to the oppressed.
Cases of counties owning 500 Bank accounts and counting are not exceptions. Governors promoting nepotism or hunting down their critics are too common to ignore. While devolution if packaged properly stands to empower the powerless but until accountability and transparency is taken into account very little benefits will come out of it. The sad truth of Kenya’s giant steps is that constitutional making has not yielded economic prosperity. Glaring endemic poverty is a tragic reminder that the Kenyan constitution is still a work in progress with very little to celebrate.
Raila advocated for 35% of the revenues be allocated to counties to empower them but the current devolved structures have enriched those trusted to run them but not the intended people! This means more money to the counties will not achieve what Raila has wished for even when foreign cash is directly injected into counties money just vanish without a trace while governors keep demanding for more of the same.
The mammoth number of mourners who showed up to pay Raila’s remains the last respects is a ringing endorsement to his contribution to transform Kenya a better place to live in. Interestingly, even Tanzania’s nascent efforts to secure a new constitutional order were directly inspired by Kenyan constitutional incursions in which Raila was the MVP.
In many ways, irrespective of how Tanzania chiseled her constitutional order, the name of Raila Amollo Odinga emboldened this struggle for a better Tanzania for all. May the Lord Christ Jesus remember Raila’s good deeds now and forevermore.
Amen!
Good read, I always take a pick to read your articales.Brng them on.