By Hope Barbra
Kenya is at a standstill. The enigma is dead. The world is mourning. Africa’s lion has roared his last and left the park in tears.
In the land of the Mombasa–Port Bell Railway constructors, India lays the body of the president Kenya never had — the people’s president. The doyen of opposition politics. The prince of peace. The heartbeat of Kenya’s unity. The glue that bound the country at the brink of collapse.
Last night, Raila Amolo Odinga, Agwambo, bowed out to join other Kenyan gallants after decades of struggle, sacrifice, detention, and service to the country.
Raila was the most consequential politician in the country’s history and dominated Kenya’s political landscape for decades.
For Raila, Kenya always came first, and on several occasions, he forgone his political ambitions to stop bloodshed and prevent the country from descending into chaos.
During the controversial 2007 presidential election, Raila defied the odds to settle for a grand coalition government with President Mwai Kibaki.
In the recent Gen Z demonstrations, Raila once again stood with President William Ruto to quell protests that nearly degenerated into anarchy. Later, Ruto and Raila formed a broad-based government that restored peace and order in the country.
Raila was born on 7 January 1945 at the Anglican Church Missionary Society Hospital in Maseno, Kisumu District, Nyanza Province, to the late Mary Juma Odinga and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
He attended Kisumu Union Primary, Maranda Primary in Bondo, and Maranda High School, where he studied until 1962, before being transferred by his father to Germany. He spent the next two years at the Herder Institution, which trained foreign students in the German language and was part of the philological faculty at the University of Leipzig in East Germany.
He received a scholarship in 1965 to study at the Technische Hochschule (Technical College) of Magdeburg in the GDR. Odinga returned to Kenya in 1970, and in 1971 he founded the Standard Processing Equipment Construction & Erection Ltd (later renamed East African Spectre), the only company manufacturing liquid petroleum gas cylinders in Kenya.
Odinga was arrested and charged with treason after being accused of participating in the 1982 coup attempt. He was released six years later, in February 1988, but detained again in August of the same year before being released in June 1989.
In the first multi-party elections in 1992, Raila was elected MP for Lang’ata, a position he held from 1992 to 2013.
In 1997, he contested the presidency on an NDP ticket and came third. In 2002, he supported Mwai Kibaki for president. Raila went on to contest the presidency of Kenya five times — in 2007, 2013, 2017, and 2022.
