Raila Amolo Odinga’s casket, draped in the Kenyan national flag, was transported on a carriage towards his final journey on 19 October 2025. Pallbearers interred his body, next to his mother’s grave, Mary Odinga, as the solemn dirge played by the police band brought mourners to tears.
A 17-gun salute roared across the distant hills of Bondo in reverence for the passing of the political icon. For the first time ever in Kenya’s post-independence history, Raila’s burial drew the collective grief of the nation.
Earlier on, the political elite across the divide had eulogised Raila—scion of Kenya’s first Vice President, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga — as the glue and compass that delicately stitched the nation’s fabric. Raila’s character, shaped by the Marxist- Leninist ideological wellspring, was formed in the crucible of the struggle to uproot Kenya from the clutches of the tyranny of President Daniel arap-Moi’s de jure one-party state.
However, in the evening of his life, Raila became the calming voice that brought the fragile nation together.
After losing the disputed 2007 presidential election to his rival, Mwai Kibaki, Raila, who was later appointed the Prime Minister in the broad-based government, extinguished an ethnic tinderbox when he extended an olive branch to his adversary and inked the peace deal midwifed by the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. He had earlier in 2002 led the ‘Kibaki Tosha’ campaign to have the Nyeri politician elected as President while still recovering in hospitalised from a motor accident he suffered during campaigns. Raila inked a deal with Kibaki where he was promised the coveted position as the Prime Minister, but he was later short-changed. President Kibaki further clipped his wings when he appointed some members of the Opposition to his cabinet, to form the ‘Government of National Unity.’
“Rather than give Raila’s party more cabinet posts, his personal portfolio was reduced when Housing was chipped away and given to Kibaki loyalist, Amos Kimunya, the Minister of Lands. But Raila remained maginamous and invited Kibaki to his daughter’s wedding, Rosemary Odinga, at his home in Karen, Nairobi,” reads the memoirs by Nigerian author, Babafemi Badejo, entitled Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenya’s Politics.
Raila also later sealed a presidential handshake with Uhuru Kenyatta after losing to him twice in the 2013 and 2017 presidential elections, when Raila alleged that they had been rigged, including the latter, which was annulled by the Supreme Court. Before his death, Raila had been accused of becoming a political turncoat when members of the ODM party joined “the broad-based” government of Ruto as Cabinet Secretaries. The deal came on the backdrop of youth-led bread protests where nearly 60 youngsters were shot dead by security personnel. The Standard newspaper captured the mood in a headline titled “Raila, the betrayer.”
“Isn’t it a betrayal that Raila says nothing while the government he now supports continues to break the law, ignore court orders, allow corruption, silence independent media, give shoot-to-kill orders against innocent people, and waste public funds—spending hundreds of millions on dozens of unnecessary presidential advisers?” the media house opined, adding, “This government seems to have little respect for ordinary Kenyans. It is also abducting and torturing its own citizens.”
Raila’s past experience had taught him valuable lessons in regard to nation-building and state-craft. Raila’s body was bruised after spending nearly nine years in prison inside Kanu’s dungeons at Kamiti, Shimo-la-Tewa, and later Nyayo House. This is after he was accused by Moi’s government of providing support to a group of Putschists in Kenya’s Air Force that carried out an attempted coup in 1982.
Earlier on, Raila, in his youthful days, was compelled to join the struggle against tyranny to protect his community stripped of its dignity, and a freedom fighter who transcended the precinct of the Luo-nation. Aggrieved by the assassinations of Kenya’s leaders, including Pio Gama Pinto —Oginga Odinga’s point-man in the East, Tom Mboya, Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, and later Robert Ouko, and the Kisumu massacre on 25 October 1969, when the presidential guard and police shot dead scores in Kisumu, Raila took to the trenches. He had also witnessed from a vantage point the purge of Luo politicians led by Jomo Kenyatta’s Kiambu mafia clique. Prominent Luo politicians, including his father, who had served in the decorative role as vice president and was later demoted at the Kanu conference held in Limuru, March 1966.
According to his biographer, Badejo, “The 1982 coup attempt went beyond planning; it was executed by a group of discontented junior military men in the Kenyan Air Force. This discontent was based on a perception, rightly or wrongly, that the Moi government did not care about non-commissioned officers. The Air Force plotters were largely from the Luo ethnic group.”
The Sunday Standard, in its March 14, 2004, edition, like many other newspaper accounts over time, named Raila “as the central civilian accomplice of the coup plotters.” The Nigerian author observes that it is important, however, ‘that in spite of what looks like his obvious facilitation of the coup, Raila Odinga, throughout the interview for this work, neither admitted nor confirmed a role in the planning of the coup attempt.’
The plot to overthrow Moi was led by Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka in mid-March 1982. “Ochuka saw a general worsening of the situation of Luos in Kenya. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was prevented from standing in the Bondo by-election. Luos were under-represented in the armed forces and were not promoted, with Major Opande as the highest-ranking Luo in service. There was a marginalisation of Luoland with respect to development, and there were shortages of schools and teachers. The junior Air Force men lacked proper accommodation and stayed in leaky tents,” reads the biography.
The plotters, who included Sergeant Pancras Okumu Oteyo, Sergeant Joseph Ogidi Obuon, and Private Ochuka, had their first meeting at the Eastleigh base swimming pool on March 28, 1982. The plot began in earnest. By mid-April, Ogidi Obuon made contact with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and briefed him on their plan to overthrow the government of President Moi. This visit resulted in the involvement of John Odongo Langi, generally referred to as Oginga Odinga’s “security man.” Langi had been trained in Czechoslovakia.
‘Two other civilians associated with the coup plotters were Raila and Patrick Sumba, also known as “Paddy Onyango.”
Raila and Sumba, the author writes, pushed the position that required less collateral damage: “Though it was naive to think a coup could be executed without blood, bloodshed, if any, would need to be minimised.”
The night of July 31, 1982, was set as the date to strike. Raila had been tasked with the provision of a command post. For this, he secured an apartment on Ngong Road belonging to Professor Alfred Otieno. The military was then to move all the required communication gadgets to this operational headquarters.
“Sumba, who was a public affairs executive with Kenya Shell Company, also presented a weekly sports programme on the Voice of Kenya as a freelancer. So, he was to provide adequate intelligence on the taking of the TV House. He was also to undertake reconnaissance on all the residences of diplomatic missions that members of the Moi regime could run into,” writes Badejo.
The attempt to take over the Moi Government began at Embakassi military base on the night of July 31, 1982. The area was chosen because the armourer, who had agreed to cooperate with the plotters, was based there. He was to open the armoury for the insurgents to take weapons with which they were to capture Eastleigh, Langata, and Kahawa barracks.
“Opwapo led the group that stormed Embakassi. They went into the base as civilians. Although as they opened the armoury, the alarm went off, they took their weapons as planned. They ordered the duty officer to surrender. He did. On interrogation later, the duty officer rightly described Opwapo as a civilian who must have been very highly-trained.”
However, the now-retired General Joseph Musomba, who commanded the Second Kenyan Brigade, thwarted the creeping coup. For three weeks, Musomba carried out a mopping-up operation in Nairobi to find the other plotters. Ochuka and Oteyo had grabbed an aircraft and flown to Tanzania, and Raila was arrested.
The aftermath marked a dark chapter in Kenya’s history, interspersed with enforced disappearances, incommunicado detentions, and torture across Kanu’s torture dungeons. Raila was later taken to the Central Police Station and transferred to the Nairobi Area Special Branch office.. He was often beaten and threatened that he would be killed. Sgt. Joseph Ogidi Obuon, one of the ringleaders in the coup attempt who was subsequently executed for treason, reportedly claimed that “Raila had given the plotters money and had promised to canvass support for them.”
However, Raila’s repeated statements, as summarised before the Judicial Commission of Inquiry that probed the former Attorney General Charles Njonjo, read: “I stated that I had received information to the effect that Mr. Njonjo had made plans to overthrow the Government of Kenya with the aid of South African and Israeli mercenaries and the General Service Unit. To this effect, a substantial amount of arms had been smuggled into the country. Some of these arms were kept somewhere in the Aberdares, and the coup was planned to take place on August 5th, 1982. I also stated that the same source had said that several South Africans and Israeli agents had come into the country to make arrangements for the coup.”
Njonjo was on June 29, 1983 suspended as Minister and an inquiry was set up to probe several allegations that bordered on compromising the security and integrity of the Kenyan State and conspiracy to overthrow President Moi. Njonjo had earlier in 1978 resisted the powerful cabal led by Jomo Kenyatta’s nephew and his personal physician, Dr Njoroge Mungai, and Mbiyu Koinange, who were against Moi being sworn in acting capacity for 90 days as provided in the Constitution after the death of President Jomo Kenyatta.
Mungai held the Cabinet dockets of Defence and Internal Affairs, and Foreign Affairs, while Mbiyu Koinange served as Foreign Affairs minister and the minister in the Office of the President. Prison brought immense pain to the family of Odinga Oginga. Raila’s mother, Mary Odinga, died in 1984, and Raila’s impassioned pleas to bury her mother fell on a deaf ear. Raila later told his family that he had a premonition about his mother’s day, which convinced him she had passed away. “And he cried. When a smuggled note told him about his mother’s death, it was no longer news.”
Raila spent nearly nine years in prison and was finally released in 1991. He later fled to Uganda after he was tipped by a US-embassy official, Alan Eastham, that they had intelligence that the Moi government was panicky and could physically harm or assassinate him. The advice was that Raila should take care.
“On the morning of his departure, Raila was collected by Father Mak’Opiyo and a white American nun. They were in their religious dresses. Raila, also dressed as a Reverend Father, sat behind them wearing sun glasses and clean-shaven. He read a newspaper as they passed through all the roadblocks. The reverend father and nun were waved on at every roadblock.”
At 4pm, he went to Olago beach, on Lake Victoria, and boarded the boat with a single outboard engine, which was owned and driven by the late Hezron Orort. The lake was very rough, and Hezron had to collect other passengers from the tiny Ndenda island. The passengers were Ugandans who knew the terrain fairly-well on the other side. They set sail from Ndeda at about 8pm when the lake had calmed.
The rickety boat moved slowly, using only the moon and stars for navigation on an initially calm night. They moved parallel to the coast at first, passing several islands on the Kenyan side. After two hours, Hezron announced that they were in Ugandan waters. Raila heaved a sigh of relief four hours later when they arrived at the Island of Sigulu, in Uganda.
He later met the intelligence Tsar, Jim Muhwezi, who provided a passport that was only valid for the journey to Norway after spending a fortnight in Kampala.
To leave Kampala, Raila, fearing he could be abducted by the Kenyan security agents in Uganda, dressed up in a white tunic gown and pretended to be ‘Omar, who was going to Mecca on pilgrimage.’
He returned to Kenya a year later, shortly after President Moi capitulated to pressure from Western donors and protests led by Raila, Jaramogi, Kenneth Matiba, Martin Shikuku, George Anyona, Charles Rubia, and Masinde Muliro to repeal the de jure one-party State legislation.
In the December 29, 1992 presidential election, the divided opposition lost the election to the incumbent Moi, who received 1,970,77. Matiba polled 1,419,308, Mwai Kibaki got 1,040,997 votes, and Jaramogi got 959,088 votes.
Contesting on the Ford-Kenya ticket, Raila won the Lang’ata constituency with a landslide against Kanu’s David Leaky, a cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse area in Nairobi.
He sought to lead Ford-Kenya after his father, Jaramogi, died, and when he was defeated by Michael Kijana Wamalwa, he registered a new party, NDP. He later sealed a pact with Moi’s KANU party, and in 2002, the NDP merged with KANU, and Odinga became the Secretary-General of the United Party.
Raila was born on 7 January 1945, barely five months before the end of the apocalyptic Second World War. The land expropriated in Central Kenya had by then led to the Mau Mau revolt. Raila’s father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. In 1947, with the support of Achieng’ Oneko, Oginga Odinga established a press in Nairobi that printed Ramogi, a newspaper involved in raising consciousness about decolonisation.
Raila’s father was appointed as Kenya’s first vice president, deputising Jomo Kenyatta in the post-independence administration. The new government was beset by intrigue and the politics of tribal identity. The Kenyatta Presidency and the so-called “Kiambu Mafia” of elite Kikuyus who surrounded the President used Tom Mboya to undermine Oginga Odinga.
“As earlier pointed out, ideological differences and ambition within KANU saw a heightening of the rivalry between Oginga Odinga and Tom Mboya. The legacy of the Cold War led to a perception that Odinga was a Communist with allegiance to the Soviet Union and Communist China, while Mboya was seen as epitomising the virtues of capitalist free enterprise, and allied to the United States of America,” Badejo writes.
In 1969, he graduated with a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Technical University, Magdeburg in East Germany. He returned to East Germany in 1970, but he did not stay for long, realising that he could not continue with the Ph.D programme for which he had registered. Upon returning to Kenya in May 1970, he started teaching at the University of Nairobi.
At the time of his return, Kenya’s politics was enmeshed with Cold War ideological divisions between the West and East.
According to the author, Jaramogi, after the assassination of Tom Mboya, ‘had become the sole articulator of the Luo position as Kenyatta did for the Kikuyu; Paul Ngei for the Kamba; Masinde Muliro for the Luhya; Ronald Gideon Ngala for the Coast; Jeremiah Nyagah for the Embu; and Chief Nyandusi for the Kisii.’
In the twilight of his life, Raila had won the hearts of Kenyans as the crown prince who never ascended the throne.