Firebrand philosopher: Kenyan politician Raila Odinga, who died in India this week at the age of 80, was as complex as the country he sought to transform, the writer says. Photo: The Standard
When Nigerian scholar Babafemi Badejo published Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics in 2006, he captured something moving about the man who would dominate Kenya’s political imagination for half a century.
Badejo described Odinga as “a man difficult to define, both revered and reviled, charismatic yet divisive”. Nearly two decades later, as Raila Amolo Odinga takes his final bow, that description still holds.
Odinga, who died this week at 80, was far more than a politician. Kenyans affectionately called him Baba, the father of the nation’s democratic conscience and Jakom, the chairman whose voice defined opposition politics for decades.
He stood as Africa’s foremost opposition leader and a tireless champion of democracy, a moral compass whose defiance outlasted regimes, reshaped constitutions and inspired generations. His life mirrored Kenya’s own turbulent quest for identity and his political creed, rooted in devolution, inclusion and social justice, resonated far beyond the country’s borders.
He carried with him a certain aura, an energy that filled public spaces and left even the most hardened journalists quietly awed.
The news of his death, on the morning of October 15 in faraway India where he was receiving treatment, hit Kenya like a tsunami and jolted Africa into collective mourning.
The flood of tributes from people whose lives and careers had been shaped by Odinga included one from Nelson Havi, a former president of the Law Society of Kenya, which captured the nation’s mood: “All men die, but some die with consequences that reshape nations.
“We owe the 2010 Constitution to Raila Odinga. Like Julius Caesar before him, Raila’s death will divide his Republic and give birth to new empires. Baba the enigma will never be succeeded,” Havi said.
President William Ruto and Zambian leader President Hakainde Hichilema described Odinga as a true pan-Africanist.
“Raila Odinga dedicated his entire adult life to the service of our nation. The father of our democracy, a tireless champion for social justice, a renowned Pan-Africanist and a statesman without equal,” Ruto said.
Hichilema echoed the sentiments: “His journey inspired generations across our continent.”
Born in 1945 in Kisumu in western Kenya, Odinga was the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vice president and its earliest socialist firebrand. From his father, he inherited both the burden and the courage of dissent.
Educated in East Germany, Odinga returned home in the 1970s as an engineer. But the pull of politics and his father’s persecution under presidents Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi drew him into activism. The Odingas would remain Kenya’s first family of resistance.
During Moi’s single-party regime, Odinga emerged as the symbol of underground resistance. Accused of supporting the failed 1982 coup, and later of plotting rebellion, he was imprisoned without trial for nearly eight years before eventually fleeing into exile in Norway.
Those years in detention cells forged his myth. He emerged from detention broken, but committed to multiparty democracy, and fluent in the language of revolution.
When Kenya finally reintroduced multi-party politics in 1992, Odinga joined his father in the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, marking the start of his three-decade-long dance with destiny.
Few African politicians have mobilised hope as consistently, or as heartbreakingly, as Odinga. He contested the presidency five times — in 1997, 2007, 2013, 2017 and 2022. Each time, he came close enough to taste victory, each time, the prize slipped away.
In 2002, euphoria swept the nation when Odinga masterminded the National Rainbow Coalition that ended Moi’s 24-year rule and brought Mwai Kibaki to power. With chants and flag waving, there was a conviction that a new dawn had arrived.
Yet, only five years later, the nation was in flames. When Odinga’s disputed loss in 2007 triggered post-election violence that claimed more than 2 000 lives, the same hope that once united the country now tore communities apart.
It was Odinga’s decision to enter a coalition government as prime minister in 2008 that pulled Kenya back from the brink. He steered the country towards reconstruction, championing constitutional reform and overseeing transformative infrastructure projects.
The 2010 constitution, with its promise of devolution and checks on executive power, remains one of his most enduring legacies.
Defeat never silenced him. Odinga’s genius lay in his resilience, the uncommon ability to rise, reorganise and reinvent himself after every political heartbreak. His politics often unfolded like theatre, always bold, unpredictable and magnetic.
Thousands of people gathered at Nairobi’s Uhuru Park in January 2018, witnessing him swear himself in as the “people’s president”, an act that defied both authority and expectation. The government’s swift response was a nationwide media shutdown ordered by President Kenyatta.
Months later, disbelief struck as Odinga shook hands with Kenyatta in a gesture of reconciliation that redrew Kenya’s political map. To his critics, it was betrayal. To his supporters, an act of statesmanship.
Either way, Odinga remained the gravitational centre of Kenya’s politics that every shift in the national mood seemed to orbit around.
Beyond Kenya’s borders, Odinga was an ardent pan-Africanist and a continental thinker constrained only by the limits of national politics.
His tenure as the African Union’s high representative for infrastructure between 2018 and 2023 embodied his dream of a connected Africa bound by trade rather than dependency.
In his campaign last year for the African Union Commission chair, driven by his vision of a self-reliant Africa, Odinga — true to his story — came close once more but fell short; admired across the continent, yet again denied the crown.
Still, his candidacy reignited Africa’s conversation about leadership and integrity. Odinga belonged to a rare generation of leaders who believed true liberation required economic self-determination.
Yet Odinga was as complex as the country he sought to transform. His populism, fiery and magnetic, often collided with the pragmatism of governance. Supporters saw him as a messiah and detractors called him a perpetual disruptor. Between those extremes lay the essence of the man, a restless democrat unwilling to surrender to cynicism.
In his later years, Odinga grew more conciliatory but never retreated from the public arena. Even after his final presidential bid in 2022, he remained an unrelenting voice for electoral reform, regional integration and government accountability.
Once again, he took to the streets, leading nationwide protests demanding reform and relief from the rising cost of living, demonstrations that tragically claimed the lives of 24 of his supporters at the hands of the police.
Last year, he stood shoulder to shoulder with Ruto, setting aside old rivalries to help steady the nation after days of Gen Z–led protests shook Nairobi, leaving 60 young people dead.
Raila Odinga lived through Kenya’s cycles of detention, dictatorship and division, yet he never stopped believing in its promise.
“We must keep the dream alive,” he often said. For him, politics was not a profession, it was a calling.
His death marks the twilight of Kenya’s liberation generation. The Odingas fought every regime since independence and Raila’s struggle was the heartbeat of a nation still chasing the ideals of freedom and justice.
His legacy will outlive his unfulfilled presidential dreams. He expanded Kenya’s democratic space, gave ordinary citizens a language of resistance and transformed opposition into an institution. He turned protest into a civic virtue and personal suffering into public awakening.
As Badejo once wrote, Odinga was always more than he appeared, a firebrand, a philosopher, an agitator and a builder. He never turned down any media interview requests.
Indeed, he was an enigma.
