Oduor: Man who redefined VIP protection

“No one has had a bad word to say about George Oduor, and it is not for want of trying,” whispered a forlorn mourner inside the hall of the House of Grace Church on Thursday afternoon during the somber requiem mass. For someone who made his name cordoning off Raila Odinga from evil eyes since 1994, that is a feat that can only be replicated by James Bond.

World over, VIP protection is a dangerously thankless job. In Africa, the hazardous work environment is multiplied to the power of infinity. It has often been said that to be a politician, especially in the third world, is to make something of a dangerous life choice.

Those who hold political office are subject to unsavoury abuse, heightened harassment and undue exposure to violence which reach its peak during electioneering period. With the rise of public scrutiny, rampant commercialisation of politics and normalisation of political thuggery as a means to win elections, surveys have found that those who aspire for public office are increasingly living in fear that manifests in many forms; including death threats, threats of sexual violence, abusive and discriminatory language, threats to family members, and the destruction of property. In Kenya this reality has never been starker.

Despite the cathode ray stealth glasses that can see the inside of an evil mind and an olfactory sense capable of sniffing danger from a sweating crowd, labour experts are still undecided on whether those who derive their bread from screening political figures can be categorised as blue or white collar workers. On the night President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated inside a concert hall – on this day 160 years ago – a local Washington patrolman, who had been assigned to protect him, had abandoned his post to get a better view of the play. The Secret Service was created four months later.

Enigma of Kenyan politics

Unlike the president who has the stealth of the state at his beck and call whenever he’s on the road, Mr Odinga’s security bubble has no luxury of a network jammer, a mobile armoury, and a standby level five hospital in case of a medical emergency - his aides have to track back to natural instinct whenever they’re in hostile environment. For those charged with fortifying the iron dome around Mr Odinga, therefore, every day is D-day. You could see from their faces, last Thursday, the immeasurable loss they’ve suffered with the exit of Mr Oduor. You know a good soldier when his comrades break down in public in his honour – every tribute inside the church hall was in agreement that he was a man’s man.

Ranking the most consequential politicians in Africa would be incomplete without a podium mention of Raila Odinga, the manifest enigma of Kenyan politics. His longevity in the political scene has earned him awe among his hardline mass movement in whose eyes he can do no wrong – they sacrifice sleep to keep him awake with thoughts on how to meet a faltering regime halfway. These painful decisions at protecting the greater good has not always gone down well with those who cannot see beyond their noses, and the man has to stay alive for them to see the folly of living under a rock in the fullness of time.

On March 30, 2023, at the height of the Azimio street protests against a raft of retrogressive government policies, seven live bullets were discharged at Mr Odinga’s window seat, while inside his car reeling from the suffocating effects of poisonous teargas. "We're regressing back to colonial times when African lives were deemed worthless,” exhaled Mr Odinga once he was out of danger. “We won’t be deterred, we won’t give up,” was his closing remarks to a parked crowd asking him for the way forward.

Protecting Mr Odinga, therefore, is not a job you apply for with eyes closed. You have to be in tiptop shape at his lowest moments – and they can be depressingly low, mostly after election losses with the winners taunting his base and their leaders carelessly showing lack of magnanimity with demeaning words. These emotions can suck in even the most professional of elite guards affected by the electoral loss of his boss. Not George Oduor, who no one could tell his happy face from his sad feeling while on duty. “Even in grief, George was composed – firm with the crowds, respectful and calm under pressure,” reads another paragraph of Mr Odinga’s tribute. It is what set him apart from the rest of the field. 

Protecting VIPs in Africa

Despite more than half a century of weaning from colonial rule and a steady progress at strengthening institutional guardrails, Africa is still – for the most part – a participant observer of the big man syndrome, with leadership flowing from a centralised source manned by an enigmatic figurehead. For that reason, most of those entrusted with protecting VIPs in Africa have often fallen into the delusion that comes with proximity to power. And you cannot blame them.

In his eulogy that provides a first time glimpse into the heaviness with which he has had to bear the loss of Mr Oduor, Mr Odinga candidly opens up of his need for someone he could trust with money, critical documents and sensitive information, “and George never failed.”

It has often been said that loyalty is the number one currency for those who interact with politics at an intimate level, and George was the poster image of this rare attribute. “He stayed when others defected”, mourns Mr Odinga, “he never backed down, even when the price was arrest and imprisonment.” You can count on your one hand the number of people inside Mr Odinga’s circle that would withstand such a strong sense of integrity since 1994.

If you add the calmness of George and the professionalism with which he handled everyone who sought audience with his boss, you find an endangered species that must be registered with CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora.

In George Oduor the country has lost the quintessential paragon of virtue that we all desire our children to take after. There’s a campaign to have Mr Oduor’s statue erected along Parliament Road for all VIP protection units to pay homage to before they report for duty each morning. It’s the least he deserves.

gabriel.oguda@hotmail.com