Breaking the Odinga spell on the Luo

The late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga. [File, Standard]

Sifuna rallies in Kisumu and Vihiga marked the end of Odingaism

The Odinga Dynasty is gone, despite scattered pockets of nostalgia. It pursued politics and money simultaneously, and aroused complex forces of fear and adoration of father and son. It started with Jaramogi Oginga Odinga becoming political instead of just a Kisumu businessman running the Luo Thrift. Jaramogi credits Jomo Kenyatta for converting him into politics to become a Luo political leader.

As Jomo’s political student, he learned political expediency and prioritising politics over everything else, without forgetting everything else. He seemingly passed that lesson to his second son, Raila Amolo Odinga. For roughly 65 years, they dominated Kenya’s political environment and became a cult for the Luo to adore and fear. President William Ruto, with his stated commitment to Kubadilisha Hii Kenya, has helped to free the Kavirondo from the bind of the Odinga Cult. The Edwin Sifuna rallies at Vihiga and Kisumu marked the end of Odingaism.

Cult building started in the 1950s during the Mau Mau War. Trying to create ‘new’ colonially acceptable leaders for Africans, the government organised and rigged the first election for Africans to the colonial Legislative Council, LegCo, in 1957. Among the elected were Jaramogi in Nyanza, along with trade unionist Tom Mboya in Nairobi, and Daniel arap Moi in the Rift Valley. The media favoured and portrayed Mboya as the new leader of the Africans, which bothered other elected Africans.

Jaramogi captured imagination in June 1958, pricking Mboya’s political balloon. The only leaders that Africans recognised, he asserted in the LegCo, were those like Kenyatta who were in jail. In response, Mboya organised a mass mobilisation on Kenyatta Day, October 20. The subsequent power rivalry between Mboya and Odinga ended in 1966 when Odinga was booted out of KANU.

Instead of diminishing Odinga’s influence, however, the booting expanded Jaramogi’s hold on the Luo. He consolidated influence in the events of 1969, including Mboya’s death. With no other Luo acquiring Mboya’s stature, Jaramogi became a cult figure, with his followers believing he could do no wrong because it was the others who were always wrong.

In 1978, he helped Moi to consolidate power by telling the Luo to accept Moi; they did. His close relations with Moi took a hit when he reportedly claimed that Moi had called him ‘baba’. In dreaming of creating a new socialist party, he was largely responsible for making Kenya a constitutional one-party state in 1982. In that year, his son Raila was involved in a failed coup, which he blamed on Constitutional Affairs Minister Charles Njonjo, who thereafter was labelled Msaliti. The Odingas featured prominently in multi-party agitations leading to the 1992 elections, in which Jaramogi performed poorly. He then cooperated with Moi against other opposition players and died in 1994 as a revered Luo.

Raila inherited Jaramogi’s Luo base and lost it in death. He showed his power in the 1997 election by ensuring that independent prominent Luo leaders like Achieng Oneko, Anyang’ Nyong’o, and James Orengo lost the election. After returning to Raila’s political tent, Orengo and Nyong’o were elected in 2002 and became key players in Raila’s political schemes. Starehe boy and Mwai Kibaki’s Cabinet Minister Raphael Tuju showed independence and lost the 2007 election. As the subsequent prime minister, Raila suspended William Ruto as minister, only for Kibaki to reinstate him. Raila forced his way into both the Uhuru and Ruto governments in 2018 and in 2024.

Ruto, however, brilliantly exploited Raila’s dislike for Rigathi Gachagua and the disorganised ODM. Subsequently, Raila’s dynastic influence died with him in 2025. The Sifuna rallies in Vihiga and Kisumu showed that ODM leadership was slipping while Luo leadership was migrating to Babu Owino, a Kisumu town-raised man who shouted ‘Kama si Baba ni Babu’.

Paradoxically, Raila’s brother and Ruto’s new Luo point-man, Oburu Oginga, seemed to reconcile with Gachagua. The Odinga spell on the Luo is no more.