NAIROBI – Raila Odinga, a former prime minister of Kenya and perennial presidential candidate whose populist campaigns rattled authorities and gave him an outsized affect on political life in his East African nation, died Wednesday of a coronary heart assault whereas touring in India. He was 80.
His loss of life was confirmed by the Devamatha Hospital in India’s Kerala State, the place he was taken after he collapsed throughout a morning stroll. An announcement from the hospital stated Odinga suffered a cardiac arrest and didn’t reply to resuscitation efforts.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated on the social platform X that he was saddened by the loss of life of Odinga, describing him as “a towering statesman.” Different tributes to Odinga paid tribute to his dedication to democracy in Kenya. There have been somber scenes at his house within the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the place mourners together with President William Ruto gathered.
Odinga had lately signed a political pact with Ruto that noticed his opposition celebration concerned in authorities policymaking and its members appointed to the cupboard.
However his ambition was to turn out to be Kenya’s president, and he ran 5 instances over three a long time — generally with sufficient help that many believed he may win. The closest he got here to taking the presidency was in 2007, when he narrowly misplaced to incumbent Mwai Kibaki in a disputed election marred by ethnic violence.
Though he by no means succeeded, for a lot of he was a revered determine and statesman whose activism helped steer Kenya away from single-party rule and into vibrant multiparty democracy.
Violence adopted 2007 presidential bid
Odinga, a member of the Luo ethnic group in Kenya’s western Nyanza province, reached the height of his political profession within the 2007 presidential race, profitable the help of kingpin leaders from different tribes who merged round him and drawing huge crowds throughout marketing campaign occasions throughout Kenya.
Though Kibaki, of the Kikuyu ethnic group, had posted good financial figures in his first time period, his authorities had been weakened by corruption scandals. The official outcomes — Odinga’s 44% in opposition to Kibaki’s 46% — was the closest in Kenyan historical past.
Odinga’s camp rejected that outcome, provoked partially by an unreliable electoral authority whose chief stated later that he didn’t know whether or not Kibaki had gained the election.
Protests erupted in Nairobi nearly instantly after Kibaki’s inauguration, and violence quickly unfold to different components of Kenya as individuals had been focused alongside ethnic strains: Luos and Kalenjins concentrating on Kikuyus, and Kikuyus mobilizing reprisal assaults.
Lots of of individuals had been killed in days of violence that shattered Kenya’s standing as a secure democracy in a risky area.
Though Odinga was by no means accused of inciting violence, others — together with future presidents Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta — had been. They had been amongst six suspects who confronted felony costs associated to postelection violence when the Worldwide Legal Court docket opened its investigation in 2010.
The case by no means yielded any profitable prosecutions, with costs withdrawn, terminated or tossed out amid claims of witness intimidation and political interference.
After the turmoil Odinga grew to become prime minister in a unity authorities put along with the mediation of the worldwide neighborhood. He unsuccessfully ran for president three extra instances.
Early activism, detention and exile
Raila Amolo Odinga was born on Jan. 7, 1945, in Kisumu, a metropolis on the shores of Lake Victoria close to the border with Uganda.
The son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first vp, he attended native colleges till he left Kenya to check engineering in East Germany. Upon returning to Kenya within the Seventies, he taught on the College of Nairobi and began a spread of companies, together with a profitable one promoting liquid petroleum gasoline cylinders.
Odinga first rose to prominence as a political activist preventing in opposition to the one-party rule of President Daniel arap Moi within the Nineteen Eighties. He was linked to a failed coup plot by a gaggle of air drive officers who tried to take energy in 1982.
Among the coup leaders had been ultimately convicted of treason and executed, and the names of Odinga and his father got here up throughout interrogations of some suspects. Odinga was accused of treason, and although the cost was later dropped, he spent a lot of the following decade in detention.
Odinga described the cruel circumstances of imprisonment and alleged torture, together with an assault by a police officer who hit him with a picket desk leg. He insisted that whereas he had been concerned in educating and mobilizing individuals to result in change in Kenya on the time of the coup try, he had by no means advocated violence.
He briefly went into exile in Europe in 1991 after he was free of jail.
A return to Kenya, and politics
Odinga returned to Kenya in 1992 and gained a seat within the nationwide meeting as an opposition lawmaker representing a constituency in Nairobi, profitable huge help amongst individuals disaffected by official corruption and poverty.
In 2001 he accepted a place in authorities as Moi’s vitality minister, unsuccessfully angling for a ticket because the ruling celebration’s standard-bearer.
He was instrumental within the rise of Kibaki, an economist with out a in style contact that he backed within the 2002 presidential race and who could be his rival within the disputed election of 2007.
Whilst he grew older, showing drowsy at marketing campaign rallies, Odinga by no means appeared to lose his zest for politics, and even a few of his rivals conceded that he was a superb mobilizer.
In 2017, talking on civil disobedience after he misplaced his fourth presidential marketing campaign, Odinga informed The Related Press that avenue protests had been a democratic measure permitted by the nation’s structure.
“If a regime is undemocratic, if a regime doesn’t take pleasure in legitimacy, the individuals are justified to withstand that regime,” he stated.
Odinga’s final marketing campaign for president was in 2022, when he was backed by the outgoing president, Kenyatta, in a race in opposition to Ruto. He misplaced once more and went on to complain that he had been cheated of victory, and launched a wave of street protests.
Earlier in 2025, he misplaced a bid to turn out to be the chief head of the African Union Fee, the physique that runs the continentwide African Union.
Odinga’s survivors embody his spouse Ida.
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Muhumuza contributed from Kampala, Uganda.
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