Odinga: the relentless Pan-Africanist

Kenya's Raila Odinga, a pan-Africanist who dominated politics for half a century

- Jim Onyango

Firebrand philosopher: Kenyan politician Raila Odinga, who died in India this week at the age of 80, was as complex as the country he sought to transform, the writer says. Photo: The Standard

(The Standard)

When Nigerian scholar Babafemi Badejo published Raila Odinga: An Enigma in Kenyan Politics in 2006, he captured something moving about the man who would dominate Kenya’s political imagination for half a century.

Badejo described Odinga as “a man difficult to define, both revered and reviled, charismatic yet divisive”. Nearly two decades later, as Raila Amolo Odinga takes his final bow, that description still holds.

Odinga, who died this week at 80, was far more than a politician. Kenyans affectionately called him Baba, the father of the nation’s democratic conscience and Jakom, the chairman whose voice defined opposition politics for decades.

He stood as Africa’s foremost opposition leader and a tireless champion of democracy, a moral compass whose defiance outlasted regimes, reshaped constitutions and inspired generations. His life mirrored Kenya’s own turbulent quest for identity and his political creed, rooted in devolution, inclusion and social justice, resonated far beyond the country’s borders.

He carried with him a certain aura, an energy that filled public spaces and left even the most hardened journalists quietly awed.

The news of his death, on the morning of October 15 in faraway India where he was receiving treatment, hit Kenya like a tsunami and jolted Africa into collective mourning.

The flood of tributes from people whose lives and careers had been shaped by Odinga included one from Nelson Havi, a former president of the Law Society of Kenya, which captured the nation’s mood: “All men die, but some die with consequences that reshape nations.