Raila supported Somaliland's pursuit of recognition

Military officers escort the casket bearing the body of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga during the funeral service in Bondo, on October 19, 2025. [File, Standard]

There are men whose names become punctuation marks in a nation’s story. A pause in the country’s weather. A shift in its breathing. The kind of men who compel a nation to confront difficult questions about its future and the direction it wants to take. Raila Amolo Odinga was one of those men.

Across Kenya, he will be remembered as a central figure in the struggle for pluralism and constitutionalism. Across the wider region, he will be remembered for his insistence that democracy is not a seasonal posture, but a sustained public ethic. In Somaliland, however, his legacy carries an additional dimension. He was one of the few senior African leaders who was willing to treat our case as a question of justice and political honesty.