Raila Odinga’s Hypocrisy Is a Betrayal of the Liberation He Once Championed*
By Hon. Gitobu Imanyara
Former MP, Political Prisoner & Human Rights Defender
On July 6, 2025, Raila Odinga, once a towering figure in Kenya’s fight for democracy, addressed the nation through Citizen TV. He voiced support for Gen Z protesters who have courageously taken to the streets to demand justice, accountability, and real change. He spoke of their bravery. He invoked the language of resistance. And yet, as I listened, all I could hear was the thunderous contradiction between his words and his political choices.
This moment in Kenyan history demands honesty. It demands moral clarity. It demands that those who claim to stand with the people must first step away from the structures that oppress them. Raila Odinga cannot sincerely claim solidarity with Gen Z while his political party, Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), remains a co-manager of a government that abducts, tortures, and kills the very youth he purports to support. This is not a matter of political nuance or strategy. It is a question of integrity.
Let us be plain: Gen Z is not protesting because a politician told them to. They are not in the streets because they want to destabilize the country or embarrass a regime. They are there because they have inherited a system that exploits, impoverishes, and ignores them. Their education is expensive, their job prospects are bleak, their healthcare is collapsing, and their voices have been stifled by both bullets and betrayal. In their righteous anger, they have seen through the entire political class and rightly so.
And yet here comes Raila Odinga, seeking to stand on their stage, draped in borrowed moral robes. How does one claim to fight for justice while propping up injustice? How does one claim to support youth-led resistance while being part of a government that meets peaceful protests with disappearances and death? How can Raila speak of “standing with the people” when he has refused to break ranks with William Ruto’s regime even as young Kenyans are dragged into unmarked cars?
It is political hypocrisy of the highest order. Those of us who fought for Kenya’s second liberation in the 1990s did not do so for personal gain. We risked our lives and our freedom because we believed in a future where no Kenyan would be killed for demanding a better life. I was imprisoned. Raila was imprisoned. Many others paid with blood and exile. But what was that struggle for, if not for the right of every Kenyan to speak, protest, and live without fear?
The Raila I once stood beside would never have tolerated state terror against innocent citizens. He would never have watched silently as mothers searched morgues for the bodies of their disappeared sons. And he would never have cloaked himself in struggle rhetoric while his political allies dined at the table of tyranny.
This is not a personal attack. It is a call to conscience. Because history is watching.
Raila Odinga has a choice. He can either return to the liberation ideals that once defined him, or he can continue on the path of convenience, entrenching himself in elite power deals that render him indistinguishable from those he once opposed. But what he cannot do is have it both ways. He cannot stand with Gen Z while standing inside the very system that brutalises them.
If he is sincere, let him take three immediate steps. First, Raila must withdraw ODM from any coalition, pact, or political arrangement that props up the Kenya Kwanza regime. Anything less is complicity. Second, he must apologise, personally and publicly, to the families of the abducted and slain protesters for the role his party has played in sustaining their tormentors. Third, he must support an independent international inquiry into the atrocities committed by state agencies during this protest wave. Justice for the dead, the maimed, and the disappeared cannot come from internal whitewashes.
But if he will not do this, then let us be honest about what is really happening: Raila Odinga has crossed the line from resistance to preservation. From protest to protection of the status quo. From the voice of the people to a vessel of power.
The youth of Kenya are not fools. They see through this. And their movement has now outgrown the old politics of betrayal. Gen Z does not need saviours. They need allies. They do not want another handshake. They want a break from the broken promises that have defined Kenya’s politics for decades.
To stand with Gen Z is to reject the entire machinery of state-sponsored violence and elite collusion. It is to say enough is enough not just to Ruto’s excesses, but also to the opposition’s cowardice. That is why I stand with them. Not because it is fashionable, but because it is necessary.
And to Raila Odinga, I say this as a fellow veteran of the struggle: there is still time to do the right thing. But not much. History has already begun to write the next chapter, and it will not be kind to those who stood idly by while the blood of Kenya’s youth was spilt on the altar of power. Let your legacy reflect the courage of your past, not the comfort of your present.
(interesting, would have been great if Raila's thoughts could have been added)
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