There were somber scenes at his home in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where mourners including President William Ruto gathered.
Odinga had recently signed a political pact with Ruto that saw his opposition party involved in government policymaking and its members appointed to the cabinet.
Although Odinga was never accused of inciting violence, others — including future presidents Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta — were.
After the turmoil Odinga became prime minister in a unity government put together with the mediation of the international community.
Odinga first rose to prominence as a political activist fighting against the one-party rule of President Daniel arap Moi in the 1980s.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Raila Odinga passed away Wednesday from a heart attack while traveling in India. He was a former prime minister of Kenya and a recurring presidential candidate whose populist campaigns shook authorities and gave him a significant influence on political life in his East African nation. He was eighty years of age.
Following his collapse during a morning stroll, he was transported to the Devamatha Hospital in Kerala State, India, where his death was confirmed. Odinga had a cardiac arrest, according to a hospital statement, and refused to cooperate with attempts at resuscitation.
On the social media platform X, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his sadness over Odinga’s passing and called him “a towering statesman.”. Additional tributes to Odinga honored his dedication to Kenyan democracy. President William Ruto and other mourners gathered at his home in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, amid somber scenes.
Recently, Odinga and Ruto signed a political agreement that would see members of his opposition party appointed to the cabinet and their participation in government policymaking.
However, his goal was to become the president of Kenya, and he ran five times in thirty years, sometimes with enough support to make many think he would win. He came closest to becoming president in 2007 when he lost by a slim margin to incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a contentious election tainted by ethnic violence.
Even though he was never successful, he was regarded by many as a great statesman and figure whose efforts helped Kenya transition from one-party rule to a thriving multiparty democracy.
There was violence after the 2007 presidential campaign.
A member of the Luo ethnic group in Kenya’s western Nyanza province, Odinga’s political career peaked during the 2007 presidential contest, garnering the backing of tribal kingpins who united behind him and drawing sizable crowds to campaign rallies all over the country.
Despite posting strong economic numbers during his first term, corruption scandals had undermined Kibaki’s government, which is part of the Kikuyu ethnic group. The official results showed the closest margin in Kenyan history, with Kibaki’s 46 percent and Odinga’s 44 percent.
Due in part to an untrustworthy electoral body whose head later stated that he was unsure if Kibaki had won the election, Odinga’s camp rejected that outcome.
Following Kibaki’s inauguration, protests broke out in Nairobi almost immediately, and as people were targeted along ethnic lines—Kikuyus organizing retaliatory attacks, Luos and Kalenjins targeting Kikuyus—violence quickly spread to other parts of Kenya.
Days of bloodshed claimed hundreds of lives and destroyed Kenya’s reputation as a stable democracy in a volatile area.
Others, such as future presidents Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, were charged with inciting violence, even though Odinga was never. According to the International Criminal Court’s 2010 investigation, they were one of six suspects charged with postelection violence.
Since charges were dropped, revoked, or thrown out due to allegations of political meddling and witness intimidation, the case never resulted in any successful prosecutions.
In a unity government formed through international mediation following the unrest, Odinga was appointed prime minister. He made three more unsuccessful attempts to become president.
Early actions, imprisonment, and banishment.
In January, Raila Amolo Odinga was born. July 7, 1945, in Kisumu, a city on Lake Victoria’s shores close to the Ugandan border.
Before leaving Kenya to pursue engineering studies in East Germany, he attended local schools. He was the son of Kenya’s first vice president, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. After coming back to Kenya in the 1970s, he established a number of businesses, including a lucrative one that sold cylinders of liquid petroleum gas, and taught at the University of Nairobi.
Odinga first gained notoriety in the 1980s as a political activist opposing President Daniel arap Moi’s one-party system. In 1982, a group of air force officers attempted to seize power and connected him to a failed coup attempt.
The names of Odinga and his father surfaced during the questioning of some suspects, and some of the coup leaders were ultimately found guilty of treason and put to death. Even though the treason charge was eventually dropped, Odinga was imprisoned for the majority of the following ten years.
Odinga recounted the brutal conditions of his captivity and the alleged torture he endured, including being struck by a policeman with a wooden table leg. He maintained that he had never called for violence, even though he had been active in educating and organizing people to end the coup attempt in Kenya.
In 1991, after being released from prison, he briefly lived in exile from Europe.
Politics and a return to Kenya.
When Odinga returned to Kenya in 1992, he was overwhelmingly supported by those fed up with poverty and official corruption, and he was elected as an opposition lawmaker representing a Nairobi constituency in the national assembly.
He unsuccessfully ran for a ticket as the standard-bearer of the ruling party before accepting a job in the government in 2001 as Moi’s energy minister.
He helped bring Kibaki, a popular economist who he supported in the 2002 presidential contest and who would challenge him in the contentious 2007 election, to power.
Odinga’s enthusiasm for politics never seemed to fade, even as he grew older and appeared sleepy at campaign rallies. In fact, some of his opponents acknowledged that he was a great mobilizer.
Odinga told The Associated Press in 2017 that street protests were a democratic measure allowed by the nation’s constitution, in reference to civil disobedience, following his defeat in his fourth presidential campaign.
“The people have the right to oppose a regime if it lacks legitimacy and is not democratic,” he stated.
In 2022, Odinga ran for president for the final time, supported by Kenyatta, the outgoing president, in a contest against Ruto. He claimed that he had been denied victory after losing once more, which sparked a wave of protests in the streets.
He was unsuccessful in his attempt to take over as executive head of the African Union Commission, which oversees the African Union’s operations throughout the continent, earlier in 2025.
Ida, Odinga’s wife, is one of the survivors.
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