Raila Odinga
Raila Amolo Odinga was a Kenyan politician who served as Prime Minister from 2008 to 2013. He was the Member of Parliament for Langata Constituency from 1992 to 2013. He was also the leader of Azimio la Umoja–One Kenya Coalition Party.
Odinga ran for President of Kenya five times, with none of his attempts being successful. Each time, Odinga alleged electoral fraud.
In 1997, he finished third as the candidate of the National Development Party. In 2007, he ran again for the presidency under the Orange Democratic Movement and lost to Mwai Kibaki. In 2013, 2017, and 2022, Odinga was the runner-up as a candidate for the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy, National Super Alliance and Azimio la Umoja respectively. After his loss, he filed for petition against President-elect William Ruto at the Supreme Court of Kenya. The court decided against him, and Odinga pledged to respect its ruling.
In February 2024, he announced his candidacy for the African Union Commission Chairperson, but was defeated by Mahamoud Ali Youssouf in the February 2025 ballot.
Early life and education
Kenya Colony
Raila Odinga, a member of the Luo ethnic group, was born at the Anglican Church Missionary Society Hospital in Maseno, Kisumu District, Nyanza Province, on 7 January 1945. His parents were Mary Juma Odinga and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who served as the first Vice President of Kenya under Jomo Kenyatta. He went to Kisumu Union Primary, Maranda primary in Bondo and Maranda High School, where he studied until 1962, when he was transferred by his father to Germany.East 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 that in 1965 sent him to the Technische Hochschule of Magdeburg in the GDR. In 1970, he graduated with a master's degree in mechanical engineering. While studying in East Germany during the Cold War, as a Kenyan he was able to visit West Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie. When visiting West Berlin, he used to smuggle goods not available in East Berlin and bring them to his friends in East Germany.Personal life
According to his book entitled "Flames of Freedom", Raila showed that he was given a Christian name Rayila upon baptism. But, before him being christenend his father Jaramogi Oginga had refused to give him a Christian name.Jaramogi wrote to a Christian priest informing him of his intention to baptize his three children with purely African names who included Omuoda Agola, Oburu Odinga and Raila to be baptized. The priest accepted on condition that he first gets them Christian names as those already recognized in the Church. However, during the real baptism event, Jaramogi refused the set conditions,which made the priest refuse to baptise the three children including Raila Odinga. Him being a traditional African man, Jaramogi had wanted his children to have names of illustrous ancestors which the bishop strongly declined. He had wanted them to be named Ng'ong'a Molo Oburu, Rayila Amolo Odinga and Ngire Omuodo Agola.
Baptised as an Anglican Christian in the Church Missionary Society in his childhood, Odinga later became a born-again Christian.
Odinga was married to Ida Odinga. They lived in Karen, Nairobi, and had a second home at Central Farm in Siaya County. The couple had four children: Fidel, Rosemary, Raila Jr. and Winnie. Fidel was named after Fidel Castro and Winnie after Winnie Mandela.
In an interview with BBC News in January 2008, Odinga asserted that he was the first cousin of US president Barack Obama through Obama's father. However, Barack Obama's paternal uncle denied any direct relation to Odinga, stating "Odinga's mother came from this area, so it is normal for us to talk about cousins. But he is not a blood relative."
Odinga briefly played association football for Luo Union as a midfielder. He was a supporter of English Premier League club Arsenal.
Odinga was appointed by the African Union to mediate the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis, which involved Alassane Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo.
Odinga wrote Flame of Freedom, a 1040-page autobiography which talks about his life from childhood. It was launched on 6 October 2013 in Kenya and subsequently in United States on 15 October 2013.
Nicknames
Odinga accrued several nicknames during his political career. These include "Tinga", "Hummer", "Baba", "Jakom", "Agwambo", "Joshua", "Rao" and "People's president".Early career
Business and entrepreneurship
Odinga returned to Kenya in 1970 and in 1971 he founded the Standard Processing Equipment Construction & Erection Ltd, the only company manufacturing liquid petroleum gas cylinders in Kenya.Civil service career
In 1974, Odinga was appointed group standards manager of the Kenya Bureau of Standards. After holding this position for four years, he was promoted to be the deputy director in 1978, a post he held until his 1982 detention.Political career
1982 Kenyan coup attempt
At 3 a.m. on Sunday, 1 August 1982, a group of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force led by Senior Private Hezekiah Ochuka attempted to overthrow the government of President Daniel Arap Moi. After the failed attempt to overthrow him, President Moi re-organized Kenya's security architecture, staffing it with his loyalists and then he ensured a law was passed in parliament that gave him emergency powers while placing the provincial administration under the office of the president.Odinga was arrested and charged with treason after being accused of being among the masterminds of the 1982 coup. He was released six years later in February 1988 but was detained again that August; he was finally released in June 1989.
Detention
In an era of unrelenting human rights abuse by the Kenyan government, Odinga was placed under house arrest for seven months after evidence seemed to implicate him along with his late father Oginga Odinga for collaborating with the plotters of a failed coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi in 1982. Hundreds of Kenyan civilians and thousands of rebel soldiers died in the coup. Several foreigners also died. Odinga was later charged with treason and detained without trial for six years.A biography released 14 years later in July 2006, apparently with Odinga's approval, indicated that Odinga was far more involved in the attempted coup than he had previously admitted. After its publication, some Members of Parliament in Kenya called for Odinga to be arrested and charged, but the statute of limitations had already passed and the information contained in the biography did not amount to an open confession on his part. Among some of his most painful experiences was when his mother died in 1984 but the prison wardens took two months to inform him of her death.
He was released on 6 February 1988 only to be rearrested in September 1988 for his pro-democracy and human rights agitation at a time when the country continued to descend deep into the throes of poor governance and the despotism of single-party rule. Kenya, was then, by law, a one-party state. His encounters with the authoritarian government generated an aura of intrigue about him and it was probably due to this that his political followers christened him "Agwambo", Luo for "The Mystery" or "Unpredictable", or "Jakom", meaning chairman.
Odinga was released on 12 June 1989, only to be incarcerated again on 5 July 1990, together with Kenneth Matiba, and former Nairobi mayor Charles Rubia, both multiparty system and human rights crusaders. Odinga was finally released on 21 June 1991, and in October he fled the country to Norway amid indications that the increasingly corrupt Kenyan government was attempting to assassinate him without success.
Multi-party politics
At the time of Odinga's departure to Norway, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy, a movement formed to agitate for the return of multi-party democracy to Kenya, was newly formed. In February 1992, Odinga returned to join FORD, then led by his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. He was elected Vice Chairman of the General Purposes Committee of the party. In the months running up to the 1992 General Election, FORD split into FORD-Kenya, led by Odinga's father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, and FORD-Asili led by Kenneth Matiba. Odinga became Ford-Kenya's Deputy Director of Elections. Odinga won the Langata Constituency parliamentary seat, previously held by Philip Leakey of KANU. Odinga became the second father of multi-party democracy in Kenya after Kenneth Matiba.When Jaramogi Oginga Odinga died in January 1994 and Michael Wamalwa Kijana succeeded him as FORD-Kenya chairman, Odinga challenged him for the party leadership. The elections were marred by controversy after which Odinga resigned from FORD-Kenya to join the National Development Party.
Member of Parliament
In his first bid for the presidency in the 1997 General Election, Odinga finished third after President Moi, the incumbent, and Democratic Party candidate Mwai Kibaki. He however retained his position as the Langata MP.KANU-NDP merger (New KANU)
Immediately after the 1997 election, Raila appeared alongside Kibaki to denounce the results, saying that they were rigged. In the subsequent months, however, he forged a deal to support Moi, entering into a cooperation deal between his party, NDP, and Moi's KANU party. He accepted a position in Moi's cabinet as Energy Minister, serving from June 2001 to 2002, during Moi's final term. In 2002, the NDP and KANU formally merged, with the NDP being dissolved and the new party being dubbed the "New KANU". In the subsequent KANU elections held later that year, he was elected the party's Secretary General.In 2002, much to the chagrin of Odinga and many other hopefuls in the party, Moi endorsed Uhuru Kenyatta – son of Kenya's first president Jomo Kenyatta but a relative newcomer in politics – to be his successor. Moi publicly asked Odinga and others to support Uhuru as well. This was taken as an affront by many of the party loyalists who felt they were being asked to make way for a newcomer who, unlike them, had done little to build the party. Odinga and other KANU members, including Kalonzo Musyoka, George Saitoti, and Joseph Kamotho, opposed this step arguing that the then 38-year-old Uhuru was politically inexperienced and lacked the leadership qualities needed to govern. Moi stood his ground, maintaining that the country's leadership needed to pass to the younger generation as well as someone that Moi could rely on personally.
Dissent ran through the party with some members openly disagreeing with Moi, despite his reputation as an autocrat. It was then that the Rainbow Movement was founded, comprising disgruntled KANU members who exited KANU. The exodus, led by Odinga, saw most big names fleeing the party. Moi was left with his handpicked successor almost alone with a party reduced to an empty shell with poor electoral prospects. The Rainbow Movement went on to join the Liberal Democratic Party, which later teamed up with opposition Mwai Kibaki's National Alliance Party of Kenya, a coalition of several other parties, to form the National Rainbow Coalition.