Opposition leader Raila Odinga may have lost his bid for the African Union Commission chairmanship, and therefore an opportunity for a dignified retirement from Kenyan politics, but he remains the man everybody wants.
President William Ruto badly needs Mr Raila’s support at the 2027 elections if he is to avoid the ignominy of being reduced to a one-term president. He is looking to formalise the broad-based government pact by which ODM party got slots in the Kenya Kwanza alliance Cabinet, while curiously retaining opposition leadership in Parliament.
Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, Mr Odinga’s fiercest critic before his impeachment last October, has recently been saying all the nice things he can about the opposition chief. He has vowed to drive Dr Ruto out of office, and obviously acknowledges that Mr Odinga has the clout and numbers to shape the electoral outcome.
Mr Odinga’s former colleagues in the opposition Azimio coalition, Wiper Party leader and former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka and DAP-K Party Leader Eugene Wamalwa, are publicly appealing to the veteran politician to ditch his deal with Dr Ruto and aid the effort to send the president home.
Former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s faction of the Jubilee Party has already named former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i as their candidate for the 2027 presidential elections, and is known to be actively courting Mr Odinga for support.
The youthful Gen Z activists, whose street protests last June gave Dr Ruto his sternest test until Mr Odinga came to his rescue, are also hoping that a return to local politics following his loss at the AU will help reignite the energy for a renewed campaign against the Kenya Kwanza regime.
But Mr Odinga is out of the country and giving no indication of his next step. It has become almost an established practice that every time the veteran opposition leader needs to make an important political move, he takes a long overseas visit, and then comes back to a heroic welcome with an eagerly awaited pronouncement.
After losing his bid for the African Union Commission chairmanship in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, he flew to Dubai from where pictures surfaced of his visit to a shopping mall. There was no official statement of his whereabouts, but the fact that he was joined by some key political allies and ODM party leaders indicates that he was not in Dubai just to rest or to lick his wounds, but to craft a political move that will be announced on his return.
Among those seen with him in Dubai were the Cabinet Secretary for Mining and Blue Economy Hassan Joho, Kisii governor Simba Arati, National Assembly Minority Leader Junet Mohammed and East African Legislative Assembly member Suleiman Shahbal.
President William Ruto (left) and Raila Odinga at the African Union Commission headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 15, 2025.
Mr Joho was one of the two ODM Deputy Party leaders, alongside Cabinet Secretary for Cooperatives and SMEs Wycliffe Oparanya, who relinquished their party positions on being appointed to the Cabinet under the broad-based government crafted by Mr Odinga and President William Ruto. The vacancies paved the way for Arati to get one of the slots.
The African Union election loss has occasioned great speculation on Mr Odinga’s next move as he will now not be relocating to the continental body headquarters in Addis Ababa. He had stepped aside from his party leadership position, leaving an old ally, Kisumu governor Anyang’ Nyong’o, holding the seat on interim basis.
It is expected that Mr Odinga will not only take back the seat, but also re-engage fully in local politics, and in particular provide direction for a party that is clearly divided on the path leading to the 2027 elections and its working arrangement with Dr Ruto’s UDA party and the Kenya Kwanza coalition.
All eyes will be on whether Mr Odinga will push to formalise the deal with Dr Ruto, which might mean ODM agreeing to back his re-election bid. Another option would be resuming opposition leadership and making his sixth stab at the presidency, or if at 80 years old needing to step back, throw his considerable weight behind another contender.
The only thing which is clear right now is that top on Mr Odinga’s in-tray will be the urgent need to get ODM in order. The aftermath of the AU loss revealed the deep fissures the party, with a large number of MPs loudly pushing for ODM to put its own ambitions on hold and back Ruto’s bid for a second term.
A debate in Parliament last week showed the extent of anger within the party, but which was curiously directed at opposition leaders from Mr Gachagua’s Mt Kenya region who allegedly celebrated Mr Odinga’s loss in Addis, and were now expecting him to help remove Dr Ruto from power.
Many of the ODM legislators who spoke swore to ‘revenge’ by backing Dr Ruto’s re-election bid to the hilt, and also delivered broadsides against colleagues in the party leadership who were lukewarm to the idea.
Taking the most barbs was ODM secretary-general, Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, who has been the most outspoken critic of a formal alliance with Dr Ruto’s UDA party and the wider Kenya Kwanza coalition.
Ever since Mr Odinga technically abandoned Azimio and threw his weight behind Dr Ruto in return for government backing for the African Union quest, Mr Sifuna has been consistent in pointing out that those ODM leaders who gained Cabinet positions, including Mr Joho, Mr Oparanya, Mr John Mbadi at National Treasury and Opiyo Wandayi at Energy, went in their individual capacities and not as the result of any formal alliance.
ODM leader Raila Odinga (left) and Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka.
Mr Sifuna may have actually been echoing Mr Odinga’s line to the effect that he only ‘donated’ expertise to the government while ODM remains in opposition. He has also been insistent that ODM will field a presidential candidate in 2027, but his position has drawn increasingly sharp rebuke from some of the most influential figures around the party leader who are signaling support for Dr Ruto’s re-election.
Some have gone to the extent of threatening to have the Secretary-General removed from ODM leadership, accusing him, without any evidence, of being in league with Mr Gachagua.
Mr Sifuna is not the only ODM leader uncomfortable with what is emerging as fawning support for Dr Ruto. Influential figures such as Kisumu’s Anyang’ Nyong’o and Siaya governor James Orengo are also clearly not happy with the prospect of Mr Odinga’s party being reduced to an appendage of Dr Ruto’s political machine, but their voices are far more muted and hesitant.
Some of the strident narratives being spun by a growing number of ODM legislators signal that the rationale for supporting a second term for Dr Ruto is the only guarantee that the populous Mt Kenya vote will not dictate the 2027 outcome.
Even more than MPs from Dr Ruto’s Rift Valley power base, it is now Mr Odinga’s ODM legislators, who are most aggressively pushing what seems like a campaign to isolate Mt Kenya region that supplied nearly 50 per cent of his 2027 vote.
It is now widely accepted that since his impeachment, Mr Gachagua has captured the hearts and minds of the vote-rich area despite appointment of another Mt Kenya leader, Prof Kithure Kindiki, as Deputy President.
There is uncertainty on whether Mr Gachagua will be in the race as a candidate— unless his impeachment is overturned by the courts. He has, however, given strong indications that he will work with Mr Musyoka.
The former Deputy President has also mended fences with Mr Odinga’s 2022 running mate, Martha Karua, who will be in a strong bargaining position for a Mt Kenya slot in the alliance being cobbled together, with the other possible principal being Mr Wamalwa.
But the Mt Kenya vote could be split, to President Ruto’s advantage, as it is evident that Mr Kenyatta’s camp is looking elsewhere.
Impeachment
Mr Gachagua, in the period before his impeachment, made a big show seeking to mend fences with Mr Kenyatta, whom he had relentlessly bashed on Dr Ruto’s behalf during the 2022 campaigns when the outgoing president backed Raila’s candidacy.
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and ODM leader Raila Odinga at the Mombasa International Airport on September 16, 2022.
Mr Kenyatta never responded to the overtures and possibly has never forgiven him, but the two at least are agreed the need to support a non-Kikuyu for president. This is partly to help defuse negativity around Mt Kenya using the tyranny of numbers to dominate the political and economic landscape, and also break the Kikuyu-Kalenjin stranglehold on State House since independence.
The 2022 elections provided a historical moment in that for the first time since return of the multi-party system in 1992, the Mt Kenya region did not vote to a man for one of their own. The one Mt Kenya candidate, David Waihiga of the Agano Party, tailed the field of four with a paltry 31,987 votes, 0.23 per cent of the total count.
Should Mr Kenyatta and Mr Gachagua back rival non-Mt Kenya aspirants, it will have the effect of splitting the mountain vote, but they will also create room for other contenders from the region to try and make their mark.
It is also likely that knowing he is not getting the vote which propelled him to victory last time, Dr Ruto will move to further divide the Mt Kenya vote by secretly sponsoring another presidential contender from the region.
Consolidate forces
For now, however, his main priority will be to consolidate his forces by formally bringing Raila into the fold. That will come with its own complications as the Kenya Kwanza power matrix is already settled with Prof Kindiki as Deputy President, Mr Musalia Mudavadi — who is folding his Amani National Congress to join UDA – as Prime Cabinet Secretary, and Moses Wetang’ula from Ford Kenya as Speaker of the National Assembly.
Creating a slot for Mr Odinga or his ODM nominee might upset the apple cart. There has been talk of reviving the National Dialogue Committee (Nadco) recommendations to effect constitutional changes bringing back the post of Executive Prime Minister for Mr Odinga, but Mr Mudavadi is already the de facto Prime Minister, albeit via an ordinary Cabinet appointment rather than constitutional office.
There is also the fact that in satisfying chieftain, Mr Mudavadi and Mr Wetang’ula, who both ditched Mr Odinga in 2022, to provide the winning margin for Dr Ruto, are both from the same western Kenya region. This raises the question: might one of them have to give way?
However, a recent push by ODM MPs to have Mr Wetang’ula removed as National Assembly Speaker after ignoring a court ruling annulling his 2022 designation of Kenya Kwanza as Majority Party at Azimio’s expense was scuttled after what was said to be urgent intervention from Dr Ruto and Mr Odinga.
Then there is Prof Kindiki, whose main brief on appointment as Deputy President was to halt haemorrhage of the Mt Kenya vote after Mr Gachagua’s ouster.
Prof Kindiki has turned the DP’s official mansion in the Karen suburbs into a meeting place for frequent delegations from the Mt Kenya region, but his campaign to have them stick with Dr Ruto appears to be struggling.
If he is not delivering, then his place as Dr Ruto’s running-mate come 2027 cannot be guaranteed. There are, in fact, indications that the slot, with the additional sweetener of first stab at the Ruto succesion, is being dangled before various groupings.
ODM will, therefore, be firmly in play if it consummates a deal to support Dr Ruto’s re-election bid in 2027, but Mr Mudavadi also expects nothing less than his own name on the ballot when the time comes.
