Faith Odhiambo: LSK President making waves

Law Society of Kenya (LSK) President Faith Odhiambo has impressed Kenyans by fighting tirelessly over the ongoing protests triggered by the hugely unpopular Finance Bill.

Speaking out against extra-judicial killings, working to find, free and represent abducted and arrested protestors. She is reminding rogue players about the law and ensuring that justice is swift. For this, she has garnered praise from far and wide.

Faith made history when she became the 51st President of LSK, and the second woman to be elected President after former CS Raychelle Omamo.

Kenyans are getting to see just how incredibly driven she is, with a laser-sharp focus on everything she seeks to do, but she is accustomed to having a lot on her plate.

In a previous interview with The Standard, Faith said she has studied basic Arabic, and basic Italian and can speak French well enough to get by in a French-speaking country. That is, of course, in addition to her three regular languages – Luo, Kiswahili and English.

She also swam competitively growing up, in relation to which she also did a lifesaving course, and is a Certified Public Secretary (CPS).

Growing up, her mother saw to it that she and her siblings were always busy doing various courses, leaving little room for mischief, also because she did not believe in the straitjacket approach of being confined to one skill.

Her father, a lecturer at Maseno University, also encouraged the academic aspect of it.

Just as she wore many hats under her parents’ wings, Faith would go on to wear many more and bigger hats professionally, including the hat she wanted to wear since childhood – that of a lawyer.

“As a child, I loved the movie called The Practice. What stood out for me was one litigant called Eleanor. The way she stood before the Supreme Court. How she argued, and the fact that it was a big deal for a woman to be presenting a case before the Supreme Court,” she said.

The fictional hotshot lawyer may have been the inspiration for the real-life hotshot lawyer that Faith is today. “But I think you grow up and learn that what you see on TV Is not the reality of practice,” she said.

Although one might say her reality is even better. She has been a board member and secretary at the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA), served as Nairobi Representative at LSK, became Vice President of the society and now you can call her Madam President.

When she became Vice President, LSK had been racked by public leadership feuds for two years, so she and her team had a lot of work ahead of them to restore the society’s fractured reputation.

At first, she did not want to vie for the post, and one of the reasons was the small matter of her having been in that previous council. Word on the corridors was that people did not want to elect anyone who fit that narrow description.

“The truth is that lawyers have been upset these last two years. There was a strong push towards not wanting anyone in the previous council,” she told The Standard then.

The challenges she had faced as a council member then had been exhausting for her as well, and she wanted to just take some time away from it “to revamp and reflect and take stock because I felt that it had been such a tedious two years.”

A lot of people, however, encouraged her to do it anyway due to her track record.

“For instance, I was running the Public Interest Litigation and Human Rights Committee, and we were able to do a lot in terms of the rule of law and fighting derogative and arbitrary government directives and also fighting for the space for lawyers. People pointed such things out,” she said.

Eventually, she decided to go for it, a bit later than most, but with a strong support system. She and a couple of her friends who were vying for different positions formed a campaign team and launched a campaign that was different from the usual.

Running for elections in LSK can be a daunting prospect because one has to run nationally. She had an advantage in that she was not alone on her campaign trail, so where she could not reach, someone else on her campaign team would cover. People who had vied before also showed her the ropes.

Campaigning was not a walk in the park, because unlike before when one could campaign to a large group of people at once, Covid-19 changed the game.

“It was more of a door-to-door campaign. Going from law firm to law firm. It is more tedious, but it is a bit more professional,” she says.

“Doing it that way is more low-key, but it is more effective because somebody gets to interrogate you, and when you win them over, they will support you to the ballot.”

Support her they did, and she graciously accepted her new role as Vice President on March 11, 2022, a role she held for two years. After another vigorous campaign, she succeeded Eric Theuri as President of LSK, beating her closest rival by over 900 votes.

When she became vice president after a tumultuous period in the LSK, she said the public should expect a more robust law society, a society which would seek to work with the government to protect the rule of law and ensure the government did not overstep its mandate, fighting for the independence of the Judiciary and for Parliament to live up to its mandate.

Kenyans today agree that she has done just that. She has also managed to turn around LSK’s image in the eyes of the public, by cleaning house in the roles she has held.

“People look up to us to resolve disputes. To direct them on what is the best route to take when they are having challenges. So if we cannot put our house in order, then what position are we in to tell members of the public how to address their challenges and their problems?” she said.

“So we need to work on that and win back that honour and glory that is needed from us as the members of the law society of Kenya. I think this council is up to the task.”

Just as she promised, LSK today is at the forefront of ensuring that justice is delivered. Under her leadership, LSK has also brought several petitions against corrupt government individuals, one of them being a petition to the High Court against the CS Agriculture Mithika Linturi and other parties mentioned in the fertiliser scandal.

Fighting corruption was one of the promises she made during her campaign, and in an interview with her alma mater, the University of Nairobi (UON), she termed it a scourge in our country.

“Corruption is not a matter for negotiation or protracted deliberations that bear no fruit. It is a vice against which firm; decisive action must be taken to achieve the desired paradigm shift. We must take instant steps to stem the systemic corruption within our country, and particularly within our legal justice system,”  she said in the interview with UON.

“It cannot be business as usual, we will rally all members to ensure that we call out all enablers of corruption amongst our membership, and take up the fight against corruption by ourselves as a society because those with the constitutional responsibility and authority to do so have failed.”