Raila Odinga: From a rebel who sported a stubborn Lenin goatee to ‘Baba’

Raila Odinga boards a prison lorry in the 80s. [File, Standard]

If anyone had described Raila Odinga as BABA in 1988, he would have found himself in deep trouble with the authorities.

 Today almost everyone calls him BABA. And that is indeed a mythical transition.

Let’s begin this tale differently. That the new teacher always had a novel in his hands. Some of the titles he read were prohibited at the time. 

You’d see him with Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Detained and Petals of Blood. When he taught, he always went off on a tangent and would discuss the ‘repressive regime’ of the time. 

The 1982 coup had happened only six years back and the main suspect, Hezekiah Ochuka had been hanged in Kamiti a year earlier.

One day, word started to go round that the new teacher was no longer around – that men from the Special Branch came for him.

 It was also whispered that his habit of digressing to political talk during lessons invited trouble for him - 1988 was a time that you did not just engage in political talk especially in official spaces. 

At a morning parade the following day the headmaster spoke to the school. He said the name Raila should never be uttered again! It was the first time that most of us ever heard of that name. 

We wondered who that was. Why was the name so scary? Little did we know that we were going to have that name around us for quite a while – the name has remained alive to this day, more than thirty years down the line.

Following the fear instilled in us and the fact that information at the time rarely spread beyond a village or a town as is today, we were to hear the name again two years later when news spread that there had been trouble in Nairobi on July 7 1990. 

Police had tackled political activists in the city. There had been terrible injuries. Two days earlier on July 5 former Transport and Communication Cabinet Minister Kenneth Matiba, a former Mayor of Nairobi Charles Rubia and Raila had been arrested. 

It was said on BBC that that was the third time that Raila was being arrested and taken to detention.

Perhaps this demonising of the name Raila is what built a sense of the mystery around the man. It made us afraid of uttering it which built curiosity in us.

 It made us always want to know who the man behind the name was. It is a name that had cost us a teacher. We wanted to put a face and a voice to it.

Handshake man: Raila Odinga, Archbishop Manasses Kuria and Michael Wamalwa at a Ford Kenya political rally in Thika in April 1996. The Archbishop was the peacemaker but anti-riot police had to be called in. [File, Standard]

That was to happen rather unexpectedly much later, months after the repeal of section 2A of the constitution that had criminalised other political parties apart from the ruling Kanu.

Scanty information from people that listened to BBC said that Raila had returned to the country. It was in early 1992 a few months to the hotly contested first multiparty elections. 

His picture began to appear in the newspapers. We now had the opportunity to put a face to the name. We saw that he spotted a goatee- not so grown though, and a mop of hair. 

His look reminded one of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevists- that had dethroned Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. 

That caused the claim that Raila nursed communist ideologies. He also wore the round-neck suits of Lenin, Josef Stalin, Leon Trotsky and Chairman Mao.

After putting a face to the name, we now looked for his voice. There was no voice on local radio or television because there was only one radio station in the country-KBC. 

A new television had been opened (KTN) but it was accessed by the privileged few in Nairobi. 

We heard his voice on Dira ya Dunia, the popular British Broadcasting Corporation’s 1830 hrs program. It was an odd voice. 

You couldn’t associate it with the name. It was neither deep nor rough. It didn’t boom. He sounded quite soft-spoken. It was a voice that loved cracking harsh jokes. 

So where was the bad man who was described as the enemy of the people of Kenya?

In the 1992 elections, he won the Lang’ata seat.

Raila Odinga took over Mwai Kibaki's presidential campaign when the latter was injured in a road accident and flown to London for medical treatment. Here, Raila and other opposition leaders with Kibaki when he returned to the country from Britain. [File, Standard]

Two years or so after serving as MP one of the main newspapers in the country did a profile of him, the writer described him as ‘the soft-spoken man who could easily be misunderstood because of his hard stances and forthrightness.’’ 

The writer added ‘’he appears to be closer to his wife Ida than anybody else in his life’’

The hard stances were to continue where he sometimes joined Kenneth Matiba in staging walkouts on parliamentary sessions. 

Matiba, the member for Kiharu, believed that he had won the 1992 elections and was rigged out. He had resolved to appear in parliament only technically so that he did not lose his seat. 

Raila never missed such opportunities- any opportunity at all, to protest against what he considered an overbearing government. 

His political style remained hard, rebellious- he was the quintessential opposition politician of the 80s and 90s. 

Feb 2008: President Mwai Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga sign coalition agreement at  Harambee House. Looking on are Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete, Chief mediator Kofi Annan and former Tanzania President Benjamin Mkapa. [File, Standard]

He would oppose anything that was not perfect. His protestations were not only against government policies but also within his own party Ford Kenya. 

The hallmark of this rebellion was soon after his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, the leader of Ford Kenya died in January 1994.

The leadership of Ford Kenya now moved to the first Vice Chairman Michael Kijana Wamalwa. Somehow that did not go down well with Raila even after it was said that his father had wished it that way. 

Raila rejected Wamalwa’s leadership and protested against all stances taken by the new chair. As director of elections, he organised party elections alongside what Wamalwa would order.

Jared Onuko, a standard eight school dropout and a resident of Migori town, immortalised President Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM leader Raila Odinga handshake in a painting. [Caleb Kingwara, Standard]

The matter was temporarily, or so it seemed, mediated by retired Anglican Archbishop Manasses Kuria who advised for party elections to be moved to Thika Stadium. 

At the dramatic 1995 event hate and tribal epithets rang out between Wamalwa’s faction and Raila’s. An exchange of fists and stone-throwing ensued, riot police had to be called in. 

That was the time Raila’s now-infamous picture was taken- it shows him in a cowering position between three men as he tries to pull his hat over his face. On his part, Wamalwa sat calmly paces away watching the drama as though nothing was happening.

That violent event even though it left Wamalwa as leader of Ford Kenya broke the party into two.

 Raila walked out with all Luo Nyanza region members of parliament save for James Orengo the member for Ugenya and Prof Anyang Nyongo the member for Kisumu Rural. 

Raila formed National Development Party- NDP. At the 1997 election NDP beat Ford Kenya emerging number three at the presidential election after Moi of Kanu who garnered 2.4 million votes, Mwai Kibaki of DP with 1.8 million votes.

The man at work. [File, Standard]

 Raila Odinga of NDP was number three with 600,000 votes. Wamalwa Kijana of Ford Kenya came in fourth with 500,000 votes.

It was after the 1997 elections that a softer side of Raila, politically speaking, began to emerge. It manifested through talks between his party NDP and Kanu in 2000. 

Most Kenyans were taken aback- was that Raila? Cooperation was declared when in 2001 Raila and two other NDP MPs joined the cabinet. 

Raila was appointed Cabinet Minister for Energy. The man whose name had been feared began to be seen in a different light.

Kenyans that had followed Raila’s stances for decades started to wonder what made the man tick. More surprises were afoot though. 

Perhaps using his closeness with President Moi, Raila walked deeper into Kanu and carved out a more interesting bargain. A Kanu National Delegates Conference was called in February 2002 at the Kasarani gymnasium.

Raila who still spotted a semi-Lenin beard was enjoying an amicable relationship with President Moi. His face was lit, the sneer that had belonged there was gone. 

Everyone wondered what was cooking.

When official business began the country was shocked to hear Raila being declared the new Kanu Secretary-General. Joseph Kamotho the long-serving official in that capacity was left with a forlorn look on his face.

Raila’s new journey in politics had begun. Or was it his laying the ground for his future operations that validate the mantra that there are no permanent friends or enemies in politics, only permanent interests.

 That was affirmed towards the end of that year-2002 after he led a rebellion in Kanu after President Moi settled on Uhuru Kenyatta, considered a greenhorn then, as his successor. 

All seasoned Kanu leading lights joined Raila in a mass walkout. They all trouped to a new outfit called LDP, then owned by one Dennis Kodhe.

It was at the 2002 elections that Raila and Wamalwa’s paths crossed again. Leading the Kanu rebels, Raila’s team sought refuge in the outfit that Mwai Kibaki, Wamalwa Kijana and Charity Ngilu had built – the National Alliance Party of Kenya. 

The arrival of Kanu rebels gave birth to a more expanded formation that was now called the National Rainbow Coalition. The mammoth political formation rode over the country by storm, a wave that two months later swept the ruling party Kanu out of power.

And it came to pass that the former dissident addressed the nation during this year's Jamhuri Day celebration at the invitation of President Uhuru Kenyatta. [Emmanuel Watson, Standard]

The name that we were afraid to utter back in school back in the 80s was now on everyone’s lips. 

In central Kenya, he was called Njamba (hero) owing to his Kibaki Tosha [It’s Kibaki] declaration at Uhuru Park in December 2002). The declaration pushed other opposition presidential candidates into relative insignificance. 

In Nyanza, he was now Agwambo- the mysterious one. That was a title he got after he broke Kanu.

The NARC government was to be rocked by new dynamics. There was blame over dishonouring an earlier Memorandum of Understanding between NAK and LDP. 

That there had been a promise to give Raila the position of Prime Minister. That had been ignored by the NAK side. By then (2003) it was common knowledge in the country now that of two wrangling sides Raila had to belong to one. He has never been known to sit quietly on the fence.

That quarrel in NARC led to the heated elections of 2007, where Raila got a new name. He was now Arap Mibei in Rift Valley. 

The ferocious contest between him and the man he had endorsed in 2002 sent the country to the brink of a precipice. 

From that heat, Raila emerged with a new job as Prime Minister.

It was while he served next to his erstwhile rival at the 2007 election- Mwai Kibaki, that they mid-wifed a new constitution.

Under the new dispensation, the country now enjoys expanded space socially, politically and economically, perhaps that is why Raila has come to be known as BABA.