When the news broke that Raila Amolo Odinga had died in India on the morning of October 15, 2025, it was as if Kenya exhaled — not in relief, but in recognition. A chapter that had refused to close for nearly half a century had finally done so, not through concession or defeat, but through death. The man who had stood at the threshold of power more times than any other in Kenya’s history — and perhaps in Africa’s post-independence politics — was gone.
For decades, Raila had been the perennial nearly man of Kenyan politics: the revolutionary who came close, the reformer who redefined the system yet was never fully embraced by it, the man who helped make presidents but never quite became one. His career was a chronicle of near-victories and unfinished revolutions — an unending duel with destiny that both ennobled and exhausted him.
The Making of a Contrarian
Born in 1945, the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first Vice President, Raila inherited not wealth but a legacy of dissent. His father had famously turned his back on Jomo Kenyatta’s administration, accusing it of betraying the promises of independence. The young Raila absorbed that oppositional spirit like mother’s milk.
After studying engineering in East Germany — where socialism, worker solidarity and the architecture of the state fascinated him — Raila returned home with both technical training and ideological conviction. His engineering mind would later show in his politics: pragmatic, systematic, sometimes coldly analytical. But in a political culture driven by tribe and charisma, his rationalism was often his undoing.
He entered politics in the late 1970s, at a time when Daniel arap Moi’s one-party state brooked no dissent. Raila’s agitation for multiparty democracy saw him jailed, tortured and isolated. Yet, like the phoenix he admired, he always re-emerged. Each time, leaner, shrewder — and a little more calculating.
The Politics of Almost
Raila’s story is written in the grammar of almosts.
He almost toppled the one-party state. He almost became president. He almost dismantled the culture of impunity.
But each “almost” came with a paradoxical triumph — because in trying, he shifted the ground beneath Kenyan politics.
In 1997, he ran for president for the first time and came third — but cemented himself as a national figure. In 2002, he famously led the “Kibaki Tosha” movement, uniting the opposition behind Mwai Kibaki. That coalition ended 24 years of Moi rule — yet Raila was soon alienated by the same power he helped deliver.
In 2007, he came closer than ever. The polls were disputed, the results contested, and Kenya plunged into bloodshed. The subsequent peace deal made him Prime Minister, a title that acknowledged his legitimacy but denied him the presidency he believed he had earned.
In 2013 and again in 2017, he ran, rallied millions, and lost — narrowly, contentiously. His refusal to concede earned him admirers for courage and critics for obstinacy. When he was sworn in as the “People’s President” in 2018 in a mock ceremony, it was both defiance and symbolism — an act of protest against an establishment that he believed had stolen his destiny.
Even his handshake with Uhuru Kenyatta that same year — a moment meant to heal the nation — became another “almost.” It promised unity but fractured his opposition base. To his supporters, he had matured into a statesman. To his detractors, he had capitulated.
The Weight of History
Raila’s life was a bridge between Kenya’s liberation generation and its democratic awakening. His father fought colonialism; Raila fought its post-independence mutations — authoritarianism, corruption, ethnic patronage. Yet like many reformers who live long enough, he began to resemble the system he had sought to change.
By the time he sought the African Union Commission chairmanship in 2024, the firebrand had become a global elder, respected abroad even as his domestic star dimmed. His rhetoric softened, his edges rounded by time, but the central tragedy remained: Kenya loved Raila but did not trust him enough to make him president.
Some said it was tribal arithmetic — the Luo vote could never outnumber the Kikuyu-Kalenjin blocs that alternated power. Others said it was his temperament: a man too radical for the cautious middle. But perhaps it was simpler — Raila was the conscience of the republic, and conscience rarely wins elections.
The Nearness of Greatness
To call him “the nearly man” is not an insult but a description of the arc of his life — one that shadowed Kenya’s journey from colonialism to capitalism, from dictatorship to democracy. He stood for ideas that were often ahead of his time: devolution, electoral justice, energy reform, transparency. Yet he was forever caught between vision and viability.
His relationship with power was intimate but incomplete — he was always in its corridors, seldom in its throne room. And yet, in a deeper sense, he was Kenya’s political axis. Every presidency of the last four decades was shaped, challenged, or legitimized in response to him. His defeats defined others’ victories. His persistence gave Kenya its democratic pulse.
Like Sisyphus, he kept rolling the boulder of reform up the mountain, only to watch it tumble back down. But each time, the mountain moved a little.
The Man Behind the Myth
Behind the rhetoric and rallies was a man of surprising tenderness. He loved literature and reggae, football and debate. His marriage to Ida Odinga was a partnership forged in the fires of prison, exile and protest. He doted on his children, especially his late son Fidel, whose death in 2015 marked him deeply.
Raila had a mischievous humour and a gift for reinvention. He could command a rally with thunder and, minutes later, trade jokes in Dholuo with market women. He relished confrontation but valued loyalty. In public life, he carried the gravitas of a prophet; in private, he could be disarmingly ordinary — fond of tea, storytelling and long, unhurried conversations about the destiny of nations.
The Final Campaign
In death, Raila finally accomplished what eluded him in life — a unanimous Kenya. For once, all sides grieved him without reservation. His supporters mourned their unfulfilled dream; his rivals honoured an adversary who dignified politics by his presence.
His passing forces a reckoning: that Kenya’s democracy, though maturing, still owes a debt to those who never quite arrived but cleared the path for others.
Raila Odinga’s life invites us to measure success not only by the offices we hold but by the ideas that outlive us. He never became president, but he helped make Kenya more democratic, more self-aware, more restless for justice.
In that sense, the nearly man may, in the end, have come closest of all.
“History is not written by those who win,” he once told a crowd in Kisumu. “It is written by those who endure.”
Raila Odinga endured — and in doing so, etched his name into the very idea of Kenya.
May the man who almost became president rest as a patriot who already became immortal.
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