By Atwemereireho Alex
alexatweme@gmail.com
In remembering Baba Raila, we are not simply elegizing a man; we are commemorating a phenomenon, a force that altered the trajectories of Kenya and, by extension, the hopes of Mother Africa.
From his birth on January 7 1945 in Maseno to his passage in October 2025, Raila Odinga lived not merely as a politician but as an emblem of resistance, of hope, of redemption, of Pan-African aspiration. For his death is not merely an ending: it is a closing of a glorious chapter in Africa’s chronicle of striving, sacrifice, and sovereignty.
‘‘He was not merely a man in politics, but a conscience in motion; a pilgrim of justice who carried the burdens and dreams of a continent upon his shoulders.
His voice rose beyond the borders of Kenya to echo through the corridors of African hope. In him burned the sacred fire of liberty, a flame that neither prison walls, nor defeat, nor death could extinguish.
Today, as the continent bows in solemn reverence, we do not mourn the fall of a leader; we celebrate the ascension of a legacy that will forever illuminate Africa’s long and unfinished march toward freedom, dignity, and unity.’’
From the earliest days, Raila’s life was destined to curve around the contours of leadership. Born into a Luo family deeply steeped in Kenya’s struggle for freedom, as son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (Kenya’s first Vice-President) and Mary Juma, Raila’s childhood was saturated in politics and moral urgency.
At Nyanza mission schools; Kisumu Union Primary, Maranda Primary, and later Maranda High, he was more than a student: he was already absorbing the scents of injustice, the breath of promises unfulfilled, the inevitability of duty.
His father’s principled resignation from Kenya’s vice-presidency in 1966 over differences with Jomo Kenyatta would loom large not simply in public history but in Raila’s inner compass.
In 1962, at the cusp of independence’s first flush, Raila’s father arranged for him to travel to East Germany. At the Herder Institute in Leipzig and later at the Technical University of Magdeburg, he immersed himself in mechanical engineering.
He graduated in 1970 with credentials in welding and mechanical engineering, hard skills, yes, but more importantly, the seedbed of systemic thinking, discipline, and moral logic.
These were years that shaped not only mind and technique but ideology: the Cold War’s sharp edges, the debates bubbling across Africa and Eastern Europe; the sense that engineering a just society was as much a technical as a moral undertaking.
Returning to Kenya in 1970, Raila Odinga first wore the mantle of scholar and entrepreneur. He lectured at the University of Nairobi’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, co-founded East African Spectre-Kenya’s pioneering manufacturer of LPG cylinders, and served in the Kenya Bureau of Standards, rising to Deputy Director by 1978. In these roles, he was forging not only personal accomplishment but national self-reliance: every cylinder produced, every standard enforced, was a gesture of dignity and sovereignty.
But a scholar-entrepreneur cannot stay above the tempest when the tempest involves the very soul of a nation. Raila’s moral and political calling intensified under the authoritarianism of the Daniel Arap Moi era.
Kenya, though independent in legal form, was still shackled in practice by repression and single-party dominance. Raila was arrested in 1982, accused of complicity in a coup attempt, and detained without trial for six years, much of it in solitary confinement. He did not deviate.
He did not break. In prison, he learned more about Kenya than any classroom could impart: the weight of suffering, the texture of fear, the persistence of hope. He emerged hardened in resolve yet wise in humility.
Upon his release, Raila did not retreat. He resumed political activism, opposing one-party rule and campaigning for multiparty democracy. In 1991, following renewed threats, he went into exile in Norway, but returned in 1992, entering electoral politics under FORD-Kenya, later founding the National Development Party, and ultimately the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
Through ODM he became the voice of millions who believed Kenya could and must be more-more just, more inclusive, more democratic.
Though the presidency eluded him on multiple occasions; 1997, 2007, 2013, 2017, 2022, his campaigns were never merely attempts to win power; each was a mirror held to Kenya’s imperfections, a summons to reckon with its injustices.
In 2007, after a disputed election that unleashed carnage and ethnic strife, he agreed to a unity government in 2008 and served as Prime Minister till 2013.
That government, born of blood and negotiation, was itself an achievement: it forced Kenya to confront its fault lines and to rewrite its Constitution in 2010, one of the most progressive, rights-rich charters on the continent.
Throughout, Raila was unflinching in his critique of corruption, inequality, ethnic favouritism, and power misuse. He was a perpetual challenger: not always victorious in the polls, but always undeterred, always speaking. He embraced dissent and dissent embraced him.
He bridged divides, formed coalitions, and when the moment demanded, stretched his hand in peace. His famous “handshake” with President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2018, facilitating the Building Bridges Initiative, though it faltered, testified to his belief in reconciliation in the African tradition of mending rather than annihilating difference.
His love for Kenya was visceral: for the soil, for her people, for her promise. He spoke often of Wanjiku, the ordinary citizen; of the young whose hopes were deferred; of the poor made invisible.
He was not a distant father of the nation; he strove to be a father to the nation, as many called him, affectionately, Baba. And he loved Africa – Mother Africa, not as abstraction but as calling.
Pan-Africanism for him was praxis: integration, unity, continental solidarity, and the elevation of African voices in the world. He engaged vigorously with African institutions and believed that the freedom of one African state meant little unless it was shared by all.
As he advanced in age, Baba never retreated into nostalgia. His twilight years were animated by a rare intergenerational empathy. When Kenya’s Generation Z rose in protest in 2023 and 2024, demanding accountability, lower taxes, and an end to corruption, Raila stood publicly with them. Though he belonged to a liberation generation born in the 1940s, he recognized in the youth the same fire that had driven him through prisons and exiles decades earlier.
He lauded their courage, condemned police brutality, and urged dialogue. He saw in Gen Z’s digital resistance a new frontier of African self-assertion, a continuum of the struggle for dignity that his own life had epitomized. Many of the young chanted his name not as a politician of the past but as the living conscience of Kenya’s unfinished revolution. In that communion of generations, the arc of Kenyan activism found both its roots and its renewal.
His political life was not without contest or controversy. In losing elections, sometimes narrowly, he was accused of being a spoiler or of clinging to ethnic bases. Some criticized his alliances; others, his adjustments. Yet greatness is not the absence of flaw but the persistence of faith amid contradiction. The measure of a political life lies not only in what one defends but in what one transforms, and Baba transformed much, inspiring more.
Then came the final chapters. In 2025, he was nominated for the chairmanship of the African Union Commission, an affirmation of his continental stature, even though he did not succeed.
He continued to critique, to guide, to mentor. And in mid-October 2025, while undergoing treatment in Kochi, India, he suffered a cardiac arrest and passed away aged 80. The Kenyan state declared seven days of mourning; the continent paused.
Baba’s life, viewed chronologically from birth to death, reveals more than a sequence of events, it offers a tapestry of themes: resilience in the face of imprisonment; principled opposition to authoritarianism; love of people, especially the marginalized; vision for Africa, not merely for Kenya; commitment to law, democracy, and fairness. These are the pillars of his legacy.
In conclusion, the death of Raila Amolo Odinga is not mere loss; it is consecration. It closes a chapter rich in struggle yet richer in achievement. It affirms that a life dedicated to justice, even without the crown of the presidency can shape constitutions, consciences, and generations.
Pan-Africanists will remember him not simply as a Kenyan statesman but as one who believed Africa’s freedom meant more than political independence; it meant dignity, rights, participatory governance, unity, and the audacity of self-determination.
May Baba rest in power. Though he is gone, his ideals remain. Though his voice is stilled, his echo mobilizes. Though this chapter is closed, the story of Africa’s becoming continues, and in that story, Raila Amolo Odinga’s name will endure as one of its most luminous pen-strokes.
And perhaps, somewhere beyond the horizon, where the sun melts into eternity, one can almost hear him hum that old Harry Belafonte tune he loved, “Farewell Jamaica.” This time, he took a trip on a sailing ship, but he won’t be back for any day. Yet his melody will linger in the heartbeats of Kenya, and his spirit will sail forever upon the tides of African freedom.
The writer is a lawyer, researcher and governance analyst.