A reckoning with Baba

0: Requiem

Following the passing of a great man, we often race to eulogise him. And as our traditions require, to the sins of the departed we must grant a merciful amnesia. After all, it is an act of kindness to just let mourners grieve.

Following the demise of Raila Amolo Odinga, I have, therefore, waited patiently for the pulpits to empty of its most impassioned mourners. Now that the shock of the bereaved has cooled, and they are allowing politicians to turn his gravesite into a podium for political plays, surely I cannot be censured by my kingsmen and counted amongst those who rush to sully the dead. The highest tribute we can offer the departed is not the comfort of lies but the dignity of truth, and that is all I have to offer.

I. Carrying his father’s cross

Raila was born on 7 January 1945, to Kenya’s first vice-president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Jaramogi, the man who said “Not Yet Uhuru”, was an extraordinary man. His principled stand against the consolidation of power by Johnstone Kamau alias Jomo Kenyatta, who was Kenya’s first president, marked the beginning of his political crucifixion. In 1966, when Jaramogi resigned as Vice President and formed his own political party to challenge the government’s increasingly authoritarian drift, Jomo unleashed the full machinery of the state against him.

Three years later, a routine presidential visit in Jaramogi’s turf which was met with riots was quickly turned into the Kisumu massacre of 1969. Government forces opened fire on crowds. The result, almost 100 dead, with women and children being murdered dozens of kilometres away from the epicentre of the riots as well. This massacre subsequently became the pretext for banning Jaramogi’s party and detaining him without trial.

Jaramogi would spend eighteen months under detention, followed by years of house arrest, watched by security agents who monitored every step he took. His phones were tapped, his visitors tracked, and his movements restricted to a shrinking radius around his Bondo home. Even after his eventual release, he remained a political pariah: he was denied a passport, barred from addressing public gatherings, and systematically erased from the narrative of Kenya’s independence.

When foreign journalists sought Jaramogi out, looking for the eloquent intellectual who was said to be way ahead of his time, they found a man barely bearing the weight of what could have been. They found a ghost of what might have been, had Jomo not ruined Kenya for good.

Jaramogi is the man we must crown as the road not taken in Kenya’s post-colonial nationalism. The political repression and systematic exclusion that befell Jaramogi metastasised into a broader marginalisation of the Luo community. It transformed Luos from central actors in the independence struggle into political pariahs. Under both Kenyatta and his successor Daniel Toroitich Arap Moi, Luos found themselves locked out of the civil service, the upper ranks of the military, and all the parastatals that formed the backbone of Kenya’s political system. The assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969, the mysterious murder of Robert Ouko in 1990, and countless other killings of prominent Luo leaders reinforced this narrative of Luo suppression, hardening into collective trauma.

Roads in Nyanza crumbled while those in Central Province gleamed with fresh tarmac; hospitals in Kisumu lacked basic medicines while those in Kiambu received state-of-the-art equipment. As a schoolboy during the days of Moi, I recall that the agonising journey from Kakamega to Nairobi through Kisumu was constantly telling me something that I was too young to understand: in Kenya, where you come from matters. The economic strangulation I was feeling through the dilapidated roads was not merely neglect but deliberate policy. It was designed to remind an entire community, my community, of the price of political dissent.

Raila would spend four years studying engineering in East Germany, returning in 1970 to a community transformed by repression. He found the Luo searching for a vessel to carry both their dreams of restoration and their rage. To be Jaramogi’s son, the son of the man who chose principle over power, was to inherit a great obligation. Raila quickly emerged as a vocal supporter for political reform against Moi’s one-party regime. Eventually, like Jomo did to his father, Moi swept him into detention for his trouble. In 1982, Raila was implicated in a failed coup attempt. He was arrested and detained for six years without trial on accusations of treason. After his release in 1988, he was twice more detained for agitating to end one-party rule. Facing continued repression, he fled Kenya in 1991, and sought refuge in Norway.

When multipartism arrived in Kenya, Raila returned from exile. The Luo community, and others who also nursed their wounds after the travails that befell Jaramogi, finally found a vessel in his begotten son. But a vessel for what? This question would haunt Kenya for the next four decades.

II. FORD becomes easy prey

As Kenya prepared for multipartism, Jaramogi’s political party, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), emerged as the coalition of the exiled, the detained, and the marginalised. For a moment, it seemed that Kenya might witness a great transformation. But transformation requires more than shared grievances: it demands discipline, ideological coherence, and the quieting of personal ambition for the greater good. FORD had none of these. What it had were Big Men. These were Jaramogi, now elderly but still commanding; Kenneth Matiba, the Kikuyu industrialist who had suffered his own detention and subsequent brain damage but emerged with a messianic conviction; Martin Shikuku, the perennial provocateur; and the younger turks, such as Raila, who circled the contested throne.

To Moi’s delight, his prey were fighting amongst themselves. FORD quickly fractured into two rival parties: FORD-Kenya and FORD-Asili. Each faction claimed the mantle of opposition, but in truth, both were merely ethnic vehicles decorated with democratic rhetoric. The son of Jaramogi stayed with his father in FORD-Kenya. Loyalty, yes, but also calculation. Firstly, this assured him the Luo vote. In addition, he was also biding time for the old man to fade, and his own ascendancy to seem natural rather than patricidal.

Because of this fracture, the landmark multiparty general elections in 1992 were a tyranny of numbers. Although FORD commanded nearly two-thirds of the electorate as a unit, their division allowed Moi to retain the presidency with 36.6% of the vote.

In this election, Raila won a seat in parliament under his father’s party to represent Langata Constituency. After his father’s death in 1994, Raila fought for leadership of the FORD-Kenya but lost. In 1996, he left the party and joined a new political outfit, the National Development Party (NDP). Soon, Raila earned himself a new nickname: “Tinga”, Swahili slang for “tractor”. Although the tractor was in his party’s logo, Raila was also starting to develop a reputation amongst his supporters as a strong unstoppable force that would plough through any obstacles before him.

The name Tinga was used affectionately for Raila by his followers especially around the 1997 election. It cemented his image as a man of action, a leader who could tow the nation out of stagnation and press on towards reform. Through the NDP, Tinga then vied for the presidency in the 1997 election. He emerged third, behind incumbent President Moi, and Emilio Mwai Kibaki. Despite the loss, Raila still retained his parliamentary seat, and elevated his stature as major figure in Kenya’s politics.

III. The First Handshake

After losing the presidential elections, Raila did the unthinkable. He forged a deal to join Moi, selling out his NDP party in a merger with the ruling KANU party. This was the same ruling party that had detained him without trial for 8 years, and the same party that had crushed the legacy and spirit of his father. In return, Moi appointed Raila Odinga as Minister for Energy in 2001. The following year, NDP was dissolved and formally merged into the “New KANU”, and Raila became its Secretary General, signalling the creation of the first coalition cabinet in Kenya’s history.

The Luo community was bewildered. Sit with this image for a moment: Tinga, the son of Jaramogi, standing beside Moi at KANU rallies, defending and legitimising a regime that had killed his people. Regardless, others defended him, claiming that Tinga was playing 4D chess and would “reform KANU from within”. Moi was the “professor” of politics, a titan that had ruled Kenya with an iron fist for two decades. They said that Tinga would “moderate Moi’s excesses”, and “position Luo interests at the table.”

The truth is, the tractor had joined the road it was meant to plough. Tinga had hoped Kenya’s longest serving dictator would endorse him as heir in the 2002 presidential race which Moi was now ineligible to run. In his handshake with Moi, Raila was showing us the primary tactic he would deploy for the rest of his political career.

When the time to pick an heir came, Moi snubbed Raila and chose Uhuru Kenyatta, Jomo’s son, instead. In retaliation, Raila led a faction of KANU dissidents in revolt. He called for an internal vote to pick the KANU candidate. And when Moi declined, Raila and his allies quit KANU, broken and betrayed.

IV. A Kingmaker with no power

When he stepped out of the presidential race and urged Kenyans to unite behind Kibaki, Raila confounded his rivals and supporters alike. To them, his political moves seemed unpredictable, and so a new nickname emerged: “Agwambo”. Derived from the Luo language, the tag roughly translates to “the enigma”, capturing Raila’s uncanny instinct as a political survivor. When Agwambo declared “Kibaki tosha!” (Kibaki is enough), he transformed himself from an unprepared contender into a kingmaker in the coming 2002 general election.

With his newfound allies, Agwambo championed this unified opposition, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC), and campaigned for Kibaki who was injured in a road accident prior to the election. NARC was everything FORD had promised but never delivered. It was disciplined, focused and united against Moi’s anointed successor, Uhuru Kenyatta. Unlike the backroom agreement he had with Moi, Agwambo made sure that this one was made in writing, signed, and witnessed. In this insurance policy, Agwambo would become the Prime Minister, executive power would be distributed, and the era of the Imperial Presidency would end. Kibaki, the man whose ambition was so muted that it masqueraded as humility, signed the document.

As planned, NARC achieved a stunning victory over Moi’s candidate, ending KANU’s 40-year rule that had endured uninterrupted since Kenya won its independence from the British in 1963. Kenyans, exhausted by KANU’s corruption, were filled with a sense that the arc of history had, finally, bent towards justice. Kenya erupted. Dancing in the streets. Matatus blaring music. Spontaneous celebrations across the country.

However, despite NARC snatching the presidency and sweeping a parliamentary majority — Raila also won re-election as MP — the alliance quickly faltered. To Raila’s chagrin, the Prime Minister position he had been promised never materialised. Just like Moi before him, Kibaki betrayed him, dismissing the MoU as a mere “gentleman’s agreement”, which was politically inconvenient and legally unenforceable. Kibaki, advised by the same Kikuyu elite who had dominated the previous regime, reverted to Moi’s script of centralising power. Agwambo, the enigma, had been outmanoeuvred.

Kibaki was right. The MoU was merely a piece of paper. It had no constitutional grounding, no institutional teeth, and it relied entirely on trust: a most uncommon commodity in politics. If you are wondering why a seasoned operator like Raila would place his political future on trust, you too, like his supporters, are going to be disappointed by the truth. Raila, the enigma, had fundamentally misunderstood power. He thought it was about access, about being in the room where decisions are made. But power is really about structure, about building institutions that endure.

Agwambo accused Kibaki publicly of reneging on the deal. At the national constitutional conference (2003–2004), he then pushed for a new constitution that would not only dilute the president’s powers, but also create a strong prime minister’s office for himself.

Preferring to retain a strong presidency, Kibaki opposed this. This conflict culminated in the 2005 referendum on Kibaki’s proposed constitution. Agwambo led the “No” campaign against it, arguing that it entrenched the imperial presidency further. In November 2005, voters sided with Agwambo, rejecting the draft constitution. An angry Kibaki retaliated by dismissing his entire cabinet and excluding Agwambo and his allies from the new reformed cabinet. This effectively dissolved the NARC partnership and banished Raila back into the opposition.

V. Silver tongues and hands of clay

After this bitter fallout, Agwambo and other ex-NARC members founded a new opposition vehicle. They called it the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). An orange had been used as a symbol for the “No” campaign on the previous referendum ballot. Quickly, ODM became more than a party, it became the vehicle for every Kenyan who had felt marginalised and cheated by the Kibaki government. Since Agwambo chaired ODM and led the opposition, his supporters started referring to him affectionately as “Jakom”, a Luo word meaning “chairman.” One would even hear his lieutenants say “Jakom has spoken.” It was a new honorific, arising naturally from his newfound role.

Jakom would stand before crowds in Nyanza, Coast, or Rift Valley, and speak in parables that resonated deeply with the people. He invoked Luo mythology: the stories of Lwanda Magere, the warrior whose skin could not be pierced. He deployed Biblical imagery: Moses leading the Israelites to Canaan. He also mixed Swahili proverbs with English slogans, code-switching with the fluidity of a man who had perfected politics as performance.

As the 2007 general election approached, ODM rallied a strong wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. And Jakom’s political liturgy was riveting. “Kibaki Tena?” (Kibaki again?) Jakom would ask, and the crowd would roar back “Hapana!” (No!). He condemned the corruption and ethnic marginalisation in Kibaki’s government, promised more equitable land distribution, and championed devolution of power. But beneath the rhetoric, there was nothing. ODM had built no institutional structure. It had no coherent ideology beyond “not Kibaki.” It had no internal democracy, no mechanisms for resolving disputes, and no vision for governance beyond capturing the presidency. What it had was Jakom. Jakom was the party. The party constitution was whatever Jakom “has spoken”. Strategy emerged from his instincts. Candidacies were decided by his word. And when aspirants competed for nominations, they appealed not to party organs but to Jakom.

Kibaki, despite promising to rule for only one term, also sought re-election. He cobbled together his own coalition, which included KANU, and named it the Party of National Unity (PNU). The resulting campaign was hard-fought, and it polarised the nation along ethnic lines. Early tallies put Jakom ahead in the presidential vote. His rallies were enormous, and every poll showed him winning. When the parliamentary results came, ODM had won a strong majority. However, after a suspicious delay in the announcement of the presidential results, Kibaki was declared the winner, albeit by a very narrow margin.

The election was stolen. Of this, there is little doubt. Jakom immediately cried foul, alleging the result had been rigged. International observers also questioned the credibility of the tally. The Electoral Commission’s chairman, Samuel Kivuitu, would later admit that he did not know who had actually won. In a hurried televised ceremony, occurring just two hours after the declaration of the presidential results, Kibaki was sworn in. Meanwhile, the nation held its breath.

Then Kenya burned.

Outrage over the stolen election ignited widespread protests, spiralling into the worst political violence in Kenya’s history. What followed was not spontaneous. Spontaneous violence is chaotic, directionless. This was organised. Ethnic militias, pre-positioned, armed, with lists of targets. In Rift Valley, Kalenjin youth (ODM’s base) attacked Kikuyu civilians (Kibaki’s base). In Central Province and Nairobi, Kikuyu militias retaliated. Mungiki, the Kikuyu gang that had long served as informal enforcers for the Kikuyu elite, enacted ritualised violence: beheadings, mutilations, the wanton performance of terror. In the turmoil that followed, over 1,300 people were killed. About 36% of these were murdered by the police, and some 600,000 Kenyans were internally displaced. For a moment, Kenya teetered on the brink of Rwanda.

Now, Jakom’s role here requires careful excavation. Did he order the violence? No direct evidence suggests this. But did he enable it? Absolutely. His campaign had been built on ethnic arithmetic. He had mobilised the excluded, channelled their fury into electoral politics, watched as that fury metastasised into ethnic violence: the Kalenjin land claims, Luo political exclusion, Coastal economic marginalisation, and Luhya frustration. This rhetoric was not explicitly violent, but it was permissive. In context, “Defend your votes” meant “defend your communities.” And defending communities, in a country where political identity is ethnic identity, meant war. And when the war erupted, ODM did not immediately call for calm. Theirs was a strategic silence. They calculated that bloodshed was leverage. This was Raila’s Faustian bargain.

The calculation worked. The international community could not afford to ignore a burning Kenya. Under intense international pressure, Kibaki and Jakom were forced to negotiate a power-sharing agreement. This Grand Coalition government, nicknamed “nusu-mkate” (half a loaf of bread), was a masterclass in state capture. The two men would settle to govern side by side not as partners but as rivals forced into proximity by the threat of further violence. Kibaki retained his seat as President, and Jakom grabbed the newly created post of Prime Minister. In classic elitist fashion, cabinet positions were distributed like spoils. Every ethnic group in the coalition received its share, and the government swelled to over 40 ministers: the largest, most expensive Cabinet in Kenya’s history.

VI. The Crumbs of Power

The nusu-mkate arrangement restored a fragile calm. Raila’s acceptance of a subordinate role as Prime Minister, despite his belief that he had won the election, was seen as a sacrifice to stabilise the country. Although theirs was an uneasy cohabitation, the coalition government would later on deliver great reforms. Most notably, it gave Kenyans a new constitution that, in addition to imposing limits on executive power, also introduced the devolution of power to local counties: a dream once held by Jaramogi. This Constitution was also hailed for expanding civil liberties in Kenya through a Bill of Rights.

In August 2010, this constitution was approved by Kenyans in a national referendum. However, we must admit that it was actually born of external pressure rather than internal transformation. The ICC was looming, and donor patience was exhausted with the precarious political space. And as Jakom enjoyed his seat in government, his rhetoric also began to change. Gone were the soaring parables. In their place: bureaucratic language, technocratic justifications, and the dreary vocabulary of coalition management. When activists protested against corruption and police brutality, Raila was often on the side of caution. He defended Kibaki and the government, urging the aggrieved to wait for investigations to conclude, investigations that often led nowhere. Once again, Jakom had become what he once opposed: a moderating voice, and a shock absorber for the elite.

The most revealing moment came with the ICC indictments. Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, both members of Kibaki’s coalition and both implicated in organising the 2007 violence, were charged with crimes against humanity. Jakom could have championed accountability. He could have positioned ODM as the party of justice. Instead, he hedged, and his response was tepid. Why? Because Uhuru and Ruto were transforming their indictments into nationalist credentials. Their narrative that the “ICC is a neocolonial court” was resonating with the people. And Jakom, ever the tactician, understood that accountability was now politically expensive. He chose expediency over principle, and in doing so, he soiled the moral high ground that might have distinguished him in the coming elections.

Meanwhile, the coalition government continued to face persistent friction. In 2009, Raila had started boycotting cabinet meetings and accusing Kibaki of sidelining ODM ministers. In early 2010, a public dispute arose when Raila suspended two ministers over corruption allegations, a move Kibaki overturned, exposing the limits of Jakom’s power. He had the title he had always coveted but not the power. Kibaki controlled the security apparatus, the provincial administration, and all the strategic ministries. Raila managed the rest, crumbs of power falling from the King’s table.

VII. Evidence “kwa kalatas” (on paper)

When the nusu-mkate government’s term ended in 2013, the Prime Minister post was constitutionally abolished, and Raila was banished back to the trenches. Now the dominant opposition figure, he sought the presidency again in March 2013. This time he led the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) alliance, accompanied by Kalonzo Musyoka, his running mate, against Uhuru Kenyatta who united with his co-accused at the ICC, William Ruto, in their Jubilee Alliance.

Compared to 2007, this election was peaceful. However, it was not without controversy. Uhuru was declared the winner with 50.07% of the vote, just barely avoiding a runoff. On the other hand, Jakom received 43.31%. This time, Raila appealed to his supporters to “Let the Supreme Court determine whether the result…is the correct one”, even as he alleged widespread irregularities and pursued legal redress. “Any violence now,” he insisted, “will destroy this nation forever.” Regardless, the Supreme Court ultimately upheld Uhuru’s victory, citing the lack of sufficient evidence of fraud. Having exhausted legal channels, Raila begrudgingly accepted the court’s decision.

VIII. When victory feels like a loss

During Uhuru’s first term (2013–2017), something shifted in Raila again. He was no longer simply a politician. He became a spectre, a haunting presence in Kenyan politics. He travelled internationally and gave lectures across the world on democracy. He applied great pressure upon the government over issues of corruption and ethnic favouritism. Unfortunately, a tragedy forced Raila’s private life to take centre stage. In 2015, Jakom lost his first-born son, Fidel.

As is the practice in Kenyan culture, we tend to refer to a parent by the name of their firstborn child. For Raila, the nickname “Baba Fidel” gained poignancy after his son’s untimely death. Some of Raila’s most vicious political rivals also publicly called him Baba Fidel, a heartfelt acknowledgement of his loss.

Eventually, Baba, which simply means “Father” in Swahili, became the ultimate nickname by which Raila would be known. Crowds would chant “Baba! Baba!” at his rallies. To call him Baba was to claim him as family, even though his rivals such as Ruto mocked his supporters by asking whether they had no fathers at home. To his followers, however, calling him “Baba” signified a deep affection: he was their father, looking out for their future. And Baba geared up for another affray with Uhuru in the next general election.

The 2017 presidential election marked Baba’s fourth attempt at the presidency. This time, he fronted the National Super Alliance (NASA), a broad coalition uniting a fresh set of opposition figures. Uhuru bid for a second term hand in hand with his blood-thirsty sword, William Ruto. The campaign was tense. Just days before the vote, a top election official, Chris Msando, was found tortured and murdered, raising alarm about the integrity of the election process.

When the elections came, Baba lost, or won, depending on whom you asked. The electoral commission declared Uhuru the winner (with 54% to Raila’s 45%), but Baba disputed the tally, citing irregularities in the transmission of the results. In an unprecedented move in African politics, Kenya’s Supreme Court nullified the election and ordered a fresh vote.

This court victory vindicated Baba’s perennial claims of rigging. However, Raila insisted that deep reforms be made to the electoral commission before a rerun can be held. When his demands were not met, he boycotted the re-run election, and a majority of voters followed his example. Uhuru was re-elected in the rerun with a shameful 98% of the votes, but on very low turnout. As a result, he acquired no legitimacy from the public as head of state.

Then ODM called for protests. Dozens were killed by the state. They were mostly young men, mostly Luo, mostly poor, in Nairobi’s slums and Kisumu’s estates: ODM strongholds. In protest, Baba took a bold and controversial step: on 30 January 2018, he staged a symbolic “swearing-in” ceremony in Nairobi, declaring himself the “People’s President” in front of thousands of supporters. This act of defiance (which was viewed by authorities as treasonous) was responded to by the arrest and deportation of some of Baba’s associates, though Raila himself was not prosecuted. Kenya was back on the precipice again, and seemed to be headed for another political confrontation. However, a dramatic reconciliation altered the course of history.

IX. Another day, another handshake

On 9 March 2018, Baba shocked the nation by appearing together with Uhuru and shaking hands on the steps of Harambee House. The nation was bewildered. No consultation. No explanation. Just a handshake, and suddenly the resistance was over.

What was the handshake? Officially, it was a reconciliation. A commitment to healing ethnic divisions. A promise of constitutional reform. In practice, however, it was an elite pact: two politicians deciding that the cost of confrontation exceeded its benefits. Uhuru needed to stabilise his presidency, which had been tarnished by corruption and murder. Baba, on the other hand, needed to lift the curse of perpetual opposition.

In addition, the two kingpins formed a joint task force known as the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which they claimed would address the root causes of political strife. Baba became a vocal proponent of the BBI. As usual, the BBI’s proposed constitutional amendments came with a Prime Minister position for Raila, and more cabinet positions for his cronies.

The Luo community, who are often stereotyped as politically principled to the point of self-sabotage, made peace with this contradiction through a particular logic: Raila eats so that we can eat. His accumulation was seen not as betrayal but as insurance. When Baba wins, there will be something to distribute. The problem, of course, is that winning meant Baba’s integration into the very system that robbed and killed his people.

In 2021, Kenya’s High Court and Court of Appeal struck down the BBI process as unconstitutional, ruling that the President could not initiate a constitutional amendment. By early 2022, the Supreme Court also concurred that the entire BBI process was procedurally flawed, effectively nullifying the BBI amendments. Despite this setback, the handshake era had lowered the political temperature and handed Baba a government-backed alliance as he geared up for one last presidential campaign.

X. The Exhaustion

By 2022, Raila was 77. He had now run for president five times. He had lost four times (or five, if you believe the 2017 rerun was legitimate). And ran again he did. Backed by Uhuru as a result of their handshake pact, Baba entered the August 2022 election as a frontrunner. He led the Azimio la Umoja coalition with running mate Martha Karua, advocating anti-corruption and social welfare reforms. Ironically, he ran as “the system” candidate, the very system he had spent his career opposing. His main opponent was Ruto: his former ally against Kibaki and a founding member of ODM.

At this age, those vitendawili that Baba had once used to mesmerise, began to falter. In Kisii, he forgot his points mid-sentence, trailing off into fragments. In Mombasa, he mixed his metaphors, starting stories he couldn’t finish, and substituting vigour with volume. He would begin in Swahili, switch to English, return to Dholuo, lose the thread, improvise, and end with a slogan that the crowd could chant to cover the silence. This was not the dementia of Biden, no. It was exhaustion, the exhaustion of a man who had performed politics for decades.

And the crowds? They still came. Still chanted. But the fervour was liturgical now. They came because Baba had called, because not coming would be betrayal. However, the vision of liberation had long left them.

The election was extremely close. Odinga narrowly lost, with official results giving Ruto 50.49% of the vote to Odinga’s 48.85%. Like clockwork, Raila immediately disputed the result. In a dramatic scene, four of seven commissioners of the electoral commission refused to endorse the tally, citing “opaqueness” in the final count. Again, Raila condemned the outcome as a “travesty” and filed a petition at the Supreme Court. In September 2022, the Court upheld Ruto’s victory and dismissed Raila’s claims of fraud, cementing his fifth presidential defeat. And although Raila conceded, this time, the concession felt less like statesmanship and more like exhaustion.

Now 77 years old, he still found himself leading public resistance to Ruto’s vile policies. In 2023, he encouraged a series of demonstrations against increased taxation and the high cost of living. These protests, spearheaded by disenfranchised youth, were met with a harsh crackdown by the state. Police used abductions, torture and deadly force to silence the pro-democracy demonstrations, echoing the repression of past regimes. Although Raila rallied the supporters to continue pushing for accountability despite the high price that many of them had to pay, he would eventually turn his back against them in yet another unprecedented handshake.

With the presidency now out of reach, Baba announced his candidacy for the African Union Commission chairpersonship. And Ruto’s government, the government that was killing the youth in the streets, backed him. The man who had mobilised millions against state power for decades was now seeking a state-sponsored handout.

When young Kenyans, exhausted by Ruto’s corruption and economic collapse, took to the streets, Raila negotiated with Ruto again. He called for dialogue, positioning himself as an elder statesman. But he did not march. Did not lead. Did not risk. He ensured that his cronies in ODM were absorbed into Cabinet, delegitimising the GenZ protests. The young people noticed. And they moved on. Not with anger, but with resignation.

XI. A strange legacy

When Baba died on 15 October 2025, aged 80, he left behind a strange legacy. In Kenya’s lore, Baba is not a villain. He is something more complicated, more tragic. His brilliance was tactical, never strategic; his mobilisation was spectacular, never institutional; his resistance, always a prelude to capitulation. Every political confrontation he faced ended in handshake. Every mobilisation ended in negotiation. Every promise of reforms ended in power-sharing.

From his father, Raila had inherited a mythology, the Odinga name; the wound of Luo exclusion; and the dream of transformation. He performed that mythology for fifty years. And in performing it, he kept it alive, but also prevented it from evolving beyond performance into something meaningful. His vitendawili were magnificent. They animated millions. They created the emotional infrastructure for political solidarity. But they were empty, promising Canaan without delivering, gesturing towards liberation without specifying its architecture.

The greatest tragedy is not even that Raila failed to become president. The tragedy is that through his repeated patterns of mobilisation followed by power-sharing, he taught Kenyans, especially young Kenyans, that transformation is impossible, that the house always wins. If Raila Amolo Odinga, with all his wealth and his pedigree, deployed across decades of political mobilisation, could not transform Kenyan politics, what does that tell us about the system he was fighting?

Perhaps Raila’s legacy is not that of individual failure but of systemic victory, of Kenya’s political elite demonstrating that they can survive any challenger and accommodate any insurgent. Perhaps the system is too resilient, too adaptive, too skilled at absorbing dissent. Perhaps liberation will not come at all.

And for the vultures circling around Bondo, looking to use Raila’s gravesite as a springboard for the general elections in 2027, please, just go back home. Let the man rest. And let us, those of us who remain, who still believe that liberation is possible, begin the harder work. We must build institutions that do not depend on individuals, organise solidarities that transcend ethnic mobilisation, and refuse to compromise until structures actually change.

Or else, let us admit, finally, that liberation is just a dream. That the system has won. That since we cannot beat them, the best we can do is join them.