It was early 2004, I had just returned to Kenya after retiring from the United Nations and began seeing Raila Odinga regularly to catch up with what was going on politically, but more importantly, to enjoy his always enlivening company.
We would meet for meals at Roots, a popular koroga Indian restaurant in Parklands where diners could sit in outdoor stalls. There were usually three or four of us and I noted that Raila would always sit in the back corner facing outwards, with the stone wall behind him.
“Surely you don’t think that spot will protect you from someone determined to kill you,” I said to him on a day we were alone.
Raila laughed. “What makes you think that I believe this spot will protect me? I sit in the corner facing the outside so that I see who the killer is.”
The response chilled me to the bone, because there was absolutely no bravado in it. He knew the risks, the State-centred oligarchic system left no room for any serious change, but he was not going to be deterred from doing what he felt as an unshakeable calling, taking on the rich and powerful to make life better for the impoverished multitudes and an inclusive, democratic Kenya encompassing all our marginalised communities.
I got another shock around that time when Raila asked me to review the draft text of his superb and indispensable biography, Raila Odinga: An Enigma , by Nigerian scholar Babafemi Badejo. As I have said before, Raila was not an enigma for those who knew him well. But the book’s surprisingly candid text contained an item that alarmed me: a lengthy description of Raila’s role in the planning (but not execution) of the failed August 1982 coup. I thought the account did not need to be so detailed, it could hurt him badly when he next ran for office.
“But the account is accurate,” Raila asserted. “I know,” I replied, but that does not mean you have to spell it out in such detail. Nope – he wanted it that way.
That level of candidness is unheard of in political figures anywhere, and it is this authenticity, combined with his commitment to uplift struggling Kenyans. That was a key to his passionate quarter-century of cross community, national support. None of our presidents has ever commanded such respect and affection, despite the vast patronage and services they dispense.
Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga speaks to journalists in Nairobi on May 1, 2023.
Photo credit: File | Nation
That Raila continued to enjoy such support despite “losing” four elections is an unheard-of African phenomenon, not just a Kenyan one. A Star headline summed it up perfectly yesterday in its headline: “Most consequential politician in history of Kenya bows out.” It added, “for more than four decades, he stood at the centre of Kenya’s most defining moments, shaping the trajectory of Kenya’s democracy like no other.”
It is a shame no Kenya political scientist or sociologist thought of studying this, hopefully some will do so now.
When I returned to Kenya after my long exile, which included having my nationality being stripped illegally in 1986 after time spent in Nyayo House dungeons, I saw how much I had to learn about Raila. Particularly central was the profound physical and psychological trauma he had suffered in the nine years of torture as a political detainee. He never talked about this trauma, so the media never referred to those brutal, indelible scars.
To give one example of the scars: It is well-known that Raila kept many of his views on sensitive political issues to himself. That kind of “secrecy” naturally troubled his colleagues. It was also virtually impossible to know who his main advisers were! Ironically, these handicaps ended up creating in Raila a huge personal and political asset: the enormous self-conviction that was a major key to his political success. A Swedish torture expert told me ages ago that this kind of secrecy and accompanying lack of trust in others was a central handicap such people lived with.
I was in particular awe of him for his total lack of bitterness about the trauma and illnesses that hounded him literally to his dying day. Nor did he ever complain about the rigging that repeatedly prevented him from becoming president.
It is worth quoting here a NY Times article published on Thursday by Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent whose reporting on the 2007 election was a pivotal factor in the unprecedentedly urgent action the international community took to stop our post-election violence:
“I remember the night Odinga was about to win the Kenyan presidency. I was sitting in my house in Nairobi watching the election results stream in on TV. Raila was decisively leading and he was about to do the impossible: unseat an incumbent president, which is difficult anywhere, and usher in a peaceful transfer of power on a continent where there were precious few examples of that ever happening.
Kenya's Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
Photo credit: Reuters
Raila had built a multiethnic coalition and, as we could all see from his enormous rallies and the votes coming in, genuine popularity. But when I woke up, his lead had vanished. Election officials simply changed the vote tabulations. Observers, including me, were shocked by the brazen rigging. Chaos erupted. Kenyans felt wronged.”
I can safely add that this was not the only election that was rigged to prevent Raila from becoming President.
October 15, 2025: My own small hell began early on Wednesday morning, when at 1.30am New York time came the Nairobi call I had been dreading. It was from John Onyando, a journalist and publisher who is a very close friend. He said he had seen a post that Raila had died but he could not find any verifying report.
My heart seemed to stop momentarily but then rallied. False reports of Raila’s death had been appearing, and there a strong denial of Raila’s being ill by his office. So I told John to not panic while I called Maurice Ogeta, head of Raila’s close protection security who was in India with him. His voice was shaking as he answered. I just asked, Is it true Maurice? He was crying, got out the word yes, and hung up.
In that one moment, I thought my entire world had ended. I felt totally unmoored, as if I had lost not just the dearest friend but a country. For 45 years I had loved and adored him, my political life was centred entirely on him. For me, he was Kenya, and also its’s only saviour. In the past 30 years there had been no remotely comparable figure with the political strength to bring about significant change.
Beginning with Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, all our presidents curtailed our freedoms and rights to entrench their own power and wealth. But Raila for decades now had had a vast well of popular support which enabled him, without ever holding power, to force successive administrations to enlarge democracy and inclusion for the struggling masses, as well as for the many marginalised communities that languished in the farthest corners of this great land.
This article is about Raila the person and so is not the place to spell out his astonishing achievements. But I should mention the two other major ones he successfully pushed, free primary education and the superhighways that now dot the national landscape and have put paid to crippling and hugely traffic jams.
In a passionate tribute, President William Ruto described Raila as “as a colossus of Kenya’s politics, an indomitable warrior in our struggle for freedom and prosperity, and a statesman of boundless selflessness.”
The body of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga at Nyayo National Stadium in Nairobi for the state funeral service on October 17, 2025.
Photo credit: Lucy Wanjiru | Nation Media Group
Makueni Senator Dan Maanzo, once a Raila opponent, pointed out that that every president after Mr Moi knew they would have to link up with Raila to continue governing.
Presidents have come and gone, the inequities kept deepening, but Raila’s heroic figure provided hope, a safety valve, giving Kenya a modicum of political stability despite the severity of constantly exploding impoverishment.
Without Raila, Kenya will be a radically different country. It’s entirely possible that the vacuum he leaves will create a mass movement capable of successfully demanding change. Or there might be even greater mayhem unleashed by our guardians.
In terms of other seasoned opposition challengers I support, such as Musyoka Kalonzo or Martha Karua, I had always felt that even if they won the presidency, they did not enjoy the mass passionate support that is needed even by a president to take on the powerful and wealthy who control all the central levers of the country.
He could be very stubborn as well. Before the 2007 election, I pressed him to do some interviews with the western media because our international “partners” were firmly in the Kibaki campaign. He reluctantly agreed to do the NY Times and the Financial Times. But on the day of the NY Times interview, four days before the election, he told me to cancel. “How many votes will the NY Times get for me?”
“Not even a single one, but good interviews might help make you president.” So he did the interviews – and very well!
The New York Times headline was, “In Helicopter or Hummer, Kenya Contender Dazzles.” The article began with a rally at Suswa. “At the sound of the copter blades, a thousand Maasai tribesmen crane their necks upward. It is as if their saviour is dropping from the sky. “Railaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” they yell. Out comes Raila Odinga…who may very well become Kenya’s next president.”
A few days later, I was with Raila when he took calls from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, each of whom began the conversation by complimenting him on the respective interviews! Months later, Raila said I had been wrong – “I did not become President.”
Contrary to his public image, Raila was a total softie, and he could not be hard on people. In fact he was one of the nicest, gentlest people I knew, with absolutely no pretensions. For example, when visitors came to their Karen home, either Raila or Mama Ida would open the door most of the time. Which brings me to Mama Ida. She is also a wonderful, caring person but extremely independent as well, sometimes challenging him on key issues.
A painful chapter of Raila’s life was his controversial decision to collaborate with President William Ruto to stabilise the country and push for reform from within. But in the six weeks I spent in Kenya in June and July I told him that I had talked to about 300 young people in his strongholds of Nairobi and Mombasa and learnt that the vast majority of them still believed in him. But many also said he needed to push President Ruto harder for action on their multiple hardships.
I myself had been pleased that he had agreed to work with President Ruto. While I had complete sympathy for the Gen Z protesters, the spiralling violence that might have deposed Mr Ruto could easily have resulted in the lawless hell and destruction we have seen in Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and Libya, to mention a few.
Raila was of course, pained by the anger of the youth protesting against him. They were a central part of his base. But I explained that his team had not developed a stronger counter-narrative for why his Ruto compact was the only way out of the crisis. His opponents were dominating the discourse. An effective narrative centred on Raila’s long history as an insurgent who pushed the authorities, but when it became clear that continuing the protests would see mass deaths, he had always sought accommodation. He gave up his quest for electoral justice and the presidency in 2008 under Kofi Annan’s negotiations. In 2018, his “Handshake” with President Uhuru Kenyatta stopped the mounting violence and forged a path of communal amity between embedded rival communities. I am very grateful I visited Kenya in June and July and was able to spend a good time with Raila – and to discuss with him his astonishing achievements.
We have thankfully seen a better narrative is emerging in the massive love of Raila that is resonating everywhere in Kenya. But he is not here with us to witness it.
