Even in silence Rao summons his supporters to the streets...

He helped make a president and stabilised three hobbling regimes. But he never claimed the presidency, a prize that eluded him in five attempts, out of which he was cheated at least once, by most estimates.

Even so, Raila Odinga, the towering eminence of Kenya’s politics, who died on Wednesday aged 80, was considered by his most ardent supporters to be their ‘president,’ to be ‘the People’s President.’

This was evident in the outpouring of grief that met news of Raila’s passing at the Devamatha hospital in India’s Kerala state, where he suffered a cardiac arrest, failing to respond to resuscitation attempts. Thousands poured into the streets across the country to grieve a man whose death ushers in uncertainty.

As though on cue, thousands poured into the streets across the country to grieve a man whose death ushers in uncertainty.

In life, he would summon his supporters to the streets for various reasons - rejecting an unpopular finance bill, advocating for electoral reform, or demanding the resignation of a president. His silence in death was enough to summon supporters to the streets. They bore branches to signify their mourning. Motorists, too, would hang them on their vehicles and motorcycles.

Raila's passing followed weeks of speculation about his health. He had not been seen in public for a while.

Broken beyond words, his widow, Ida Odinga, was forced to address a crowd of supporters that gathered at the former prime minister’s home in Karen, Nairobi, who had trekked from areas like Kibra as soon as news of his passing broke.

“Poleni sana. Najua nyinyi nyote mmeshtuka kwa yale yametokea (I’m very sorry. I know you are all shocked by what has happened),” a tearful Ida said. “Hatukutegemea ingekuwa hivi lakini imefanyika. Kwa hiyo mtulie (We did not expect this, but it has already happened. I urge you all to be calm).”

President William Ruto captured the enormity of Raila’s significance in Kenya in a condolence speech for the former prime minister, a foe turned ally, with whom he has partnered since July last year.

“His voice spoke for the oppressed. His conviction inspired generations and his vision shaped the course of our history,” Dr Ruto, flanked by Raila’s elder brother Oburu Oginga and Deputy President Kithure Kindiki, said at the State House in Nairobi, as he formally informed the nation of the former prime minister’s death, terming the late “Kenya’s foremost statesman and one of Africa’s greatest sons.”

Raila, the second-born son of Kenya’s founding Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, earned the ‘People’s President’ reference when, after a bitter presidential election in 2017 that the Supreme Court nullified and a do-over that he sat out, he swore himself in as the people’s president in a mock ceremony in January 2018.

For weeks, the former premier had fought off pressure from his allies and supporters who seemed itching to have him swear the oath, largely inconsequential as it would have no effect on former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s hold on power.

“Today is a historic day for the people of Kenya. For the first time in our history, the people have gathered here in their hundreds of thousands to say enough is enough with electoral rigging,” an emphatic Raila told a charged crowd of thousands at the Uhuru Park, moments after he had hoisted his ‘oath of office.’ “We had said that if they are sworn in, we will also be sworn in.”

When he took the mock oath, the country had been moving on from the contentious presidential contest. Raila had managed to keep his base hooked with the promise that he would announce a way forward for them and his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party, which he had since transformed into the National Resistance Movement.

The ceremony was very much a climax as it was an anticlimax. While it offered Raila’s deflated base a much-needed recharge, it stood out for its futility. Raila, then in his fourth bid for the presidency, would not be president. And as though to confirm this fate, Raila would shake Uhuru’s hand weeks later, a capitulation that helped cement the former president’s legitimacy. The former president was facing trouble within his ranks, the biggest of which was an ambitious deputy.

Raila’s odyssey is punctuated by such moments. More than a year before his death, Raila had collected his fourth handshake with a president whose legitimacy he had questioned, the third he would say had stolen his election victory, and the second who had ruled out a truce with the former premier.

That was on July 9, 2024, when Ruto, alongside Raila, announced he was forming a “broad-based” government that would include the latter’s allies as cabinet secretaries. The truce would see the president support Raila’s flopped bid for the African Union Commission chairperson position last February.

Ruto had fired his entire cabinet following youth-led protests sparked by proposals to hike taxes, but whose grievances expanded to include accountability for police brutality, among other issues.

A year earlier, and amid anti-government demonstrations staged by the Raila-led opposition, Ruto had ruled out the very handshake forced on him by his weakened grip on power courtesy of protesting youth and an errant deputy president, whose impeachment in Parliament the Head of State would bless. He insisted that he had defeated Raila fairly in the 2022 election and the former premier should stick to his role as the opposition leader.

Doubtless, the handshake stabilised Ruto’s presidency. Sections of the youth from Raila’s traditional strongholds would sit out the ensuing protests. In Parliament, the president significantly enhanced his dominance.

Before Ruto and Uhuru, there was the late President Mwai Kibaki. In the wake of a disputed 2007 election that many observers believe Raila won, the former Head of State had to seek out Raila to stem the post-election violence that had killed more than 1,200 people and displaced over 500,000. Raila accepted the prime minister role in a coalition agreement midwifed by the late Kofi Annan, a former United Nations secretary general.

Raila’s stature as his ‘people’s president’ is traceable to this era. In the wake of the supporters marched on the streets countrywide declaring “No Raila no peace,” an indication that they thought he had won the presidential contest. The assertion that Kibaki had snatched was not far-fetched. Samuel Kivuitu, the then chairperson of the defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya, could not vouch for Kibaki’s victory. The presidential election, he would admit, had been rigged.

Two years earlier, Raila had set up the contest between himself and Kibaki when he led state officials and the Kanu opposition to oppose a constitution draft the then-president backed. And ODM, slated to celebrate its 20th anniversary next month, would be born.

The two had differed over a memorandum of understanding that Raila said promised him the prime minister’s position. This promise was broken in the early years of Kibaki’s tenure.

The two were not always rivals. In 2002, Raila rallied an opposition desperate to unite into backing Kibaki’s presidential bid. That followed a walk-out from Kanu, which the former premier had engineered in protest of the late former President Daniel Moi’s endorsement of Uhuru as Kanu’s flagbearer.

His ‘Kibaki Tosha’ declaration ended the search for a flagbearer for the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (Narc). After a road accident that disabled Kibaki, it was Raila who led Narc’s presidential campaign.

The opposition defeated Uhuru resoundingly, and Raila was named Roads Minister, a docket in which he left a mark with the demolition of businesses to pave the way for the construction of the Thika Superhighway.

Eight years later, Raila and Kibaki would unite to usher in a new Constitution, acclaimed globally as one of the most progressive. Raila had taken the lead in championing the draft that granted Kenya devolution, earning him praise as the “father of devolution” and the “father of Kenya’s Constitution.”

His history in the trenches during the 1980s and 90s as part of the second liberation struggle that demanded a return to pluralism saw Raila referred to as the “father of democracy.” In his sunset, Raila would simply be known as “Baba (Father).”

Moi, too, had called on Raila when he found the going tough. Amid increased pressure from a rapidly uniting opposition, Moi’s Kanu and Raila’s National Development Party would merge, resulting in the latter’s appointment as Kanu’s secretary general. The pact did not survive Uhuru’s endorsement as Kanu’s flagbearer.

To some, these actions underscored Raila’s apparent selfishness. When he shook Ruto’s hand last year, Generation Z protesters felt him a traitor. Similar accusations greeted Raila’s handshake with Uhuru, especially given that he slighted his political allies.

To others, these were acts of selflessness driven only by love for country. And that is why he rejected pressure from close allies like Rut to refuse a deal with Kibaki that did not have him take up the presidency, choosing one that would help end the bloody 2007/08 post-election violence.

“At a critical moment in our nation’s journey, he always put Kenya first before individual or personal interest,” Ruto said on Wednesday.

Raila was always destined for the stature he acquired. Born into a political family, he watched his father lead Kenya’s freedom struggle in the absence of the founding President Jomo Kenyatta, detained by the British colonial masters. Politicians would troop to their home seeking Jaramogi’s counsel and updating him on the freedom struggle.

“Oburu and I would sit on the verandah outside and listen, sometimes far into the night,” Raila wrote in his memoir The Flame of Freedom. “That was when I began to be aware of political issues.”

Courtesy of his father, Raila would also have the chance to meet regional leaders, like Kabaka Mutesa II in his palace and former Ugandan President Milton Obote, both of whom he met in 1958, aged 13, when Jaramogi took him on a tour of Uganda as he attended the former president’s rallies in Lira.

As a teenager, he also met Presidents Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), Kenneth Kaunda (Zambia), and Kamuzu Banda (Malawi), among other local and regional leaders.

Politics was in his DNA, and he nurtured this love by religiously following the news on the radio. He had always been in the trade, but became active in the 1970s. He decided against contesting the Bondo parliamentary seat in 1974, campaigning for other candidates in his native Nyanza backyard, where he later enjoyed a following described as “cultic.”

Over the years, musicians from the region scrambled to lavish him with praise in their hits, perhaps in the hope that Raila would adopt their song as his campaign signature. Instant fame was guaranteed to the ones whose songs he picked, like Onyi Papa Jey and Onyi Jalamo.

Raila’s love for politics came at a heavy personal cost. Indeed, while his supporters gained a ‘father,’ his family, to whom he was much more than that, often had to make do without one around. With Raila detained, Ida had to endure lonely nights. She would be forced to be a mother and father to their young children, whose lives had been upended by their father's political activism.

Condemned without trial over the abortive coup of 1982, Raila spent nearly a decade behind bars. He was detained separately at the Kamiti, Naivasha, and Shimo la Tewa maximum security prisons, mostly in isolation, and often at the infamous Nyayo House torture chambers.

“A small window of reinforced steel bars, far out of reach, reluctantly splashed a little muted daylight across the tops of the walls, serving only to emphasise the gloom of the cold, unyielding prison cell, designed to deprive its occupant of every vestige of humanity,” Raila wrote of his seven square foot cells.

In detention, he missed his late mother’s funeral in 1984. Raila learnt that his mother, Mary Juma, had died through George Anyona, a political associate who was also detained over the attempted coup staged by junior officers of the Kenya Air Force. A telegram from Oburu informing him of their mother’s passing was withheld by state functionaries for two months.

Raila’s family bore the most toll of his absence. He and Ida scarcely met face-to-face, with the rare meetings, in which they only spoke English or Swahili, attended by a prison officer. But they would share more letters than the single one allowed monthly, courtesy of sympathetic prison officers.

Ida, then a high school teacher, had to navigate raising their three young children (the late Fidel and Rosemary and Raila Jr). The wife of a political dissident, she attracted scrutiny from the security agencies, who constantly trailed her and ransacked their house unannounced.

“You’d ask Junior, ‘Do you remember daddy?’ and he would have no idea what daddy looked like,” Ida once said in an interview.

Even though she would lose her teaching job, Ida took her tribulations in her stride and considered the tailing officers as offering round-the-clock security. She often offered them food. But Raila spent the most time away courtesy of political engagements. A presidential candidate in five cycles, Raila had a second home on the campaign trail. Each time, Ida would “release” her husband to Kenyans. Each time, he came back home bereft of the ultimate prize.

The two met in 1972 through a cousin. Raila worked at the University of Nairobi, while Ida was a second-year student studying Geography. Raila had gone with a cousin to meet Ida’s brother, Peter Oyoo, at Oyoo’s residence in Eastleigh, when he saw Ida, with whom he “chatted easily” and “noticed” she was “an interesting and pleasant person.”

They met over months, and they were eventually married and had four children: the late Fidel, Rosemary, Raila Junior, and Winnie. They had ups and downs, with their lowest moment being Fidel’s passing in 2015.

Raila was born on January 7, 1945, at the Maseno Hospital in Kisumu. Swelling with Pan-African ideals, Jaramogi declined to have Oburu and Raila bear English baptismal names. He, too, had rejected his baptismal name Adonijah.

The former premier attended the Komulo School in Kisumu briefly before his father transferred him and Oburu to the Maranda school, a move aimed at having them reconnect with their ancestral roots and learn their cultural background.

Despite their one-year gap, Oburu and Raila enrolled on the same day and would be classmates in their formative years. A later illness would see Raila spend a year out of school, and he would have to repeat Standard Four.

Jaramogi planned to send the two abroad when Oburu completed his primary school studies. Despite his impressive grades, Oburu was denied a slot at the Alliance High School and Kisii School owing to his father’s political activities. Only Maranda accepted him.

Oburu would leave for the Soviet Union, with Raila, still a boy, having to find his place in communist East Germany.

Many years later, he would fight for his space in Kenya's politics, walking out of his father's shadow to become as consequential, if not more, and emerging as a lifeline for presidents losing grip.

Raila is survived by Ida, Rosemary, Raila Jr and Winnie, and grandchildren.