Businessman Ronny Raburu (left) in a photo he took with former Prime Minister Raila Odinga on March 14, 2025 at Mr Odinga's home in Karen, Nairobi. In 2021, Mr Odinga assigned Mr Raburu with the task of coining a name for his yet-to-be unveiled coalition, and he came up with Azimio la Umoja among other names for Mr Odinga.

📋 Breaking It Down

When former Prime Minister Raila Odinga called businessman Ronny Raburu in 2021 asking for a Kiswahili coalition name that could carry his ambitions after a constitutional amendment collapsed, Mr Raburu says he turned to Tanzania’s history for inspiration.

Now, the Kenya-born businessman who has lived in Tanzania for 25 years says he is pained that the name he proposed – Azimio la Umoja, inspired by Tanzania’s Azimio la Arusha of 1967 – has now been consigned to history following the opposition coalition’s decision to rebrand as The Ukombozi Alliance (TUA) .

“I’m disappointed,” Mr Raburu told the Nation on Thursday. “Baba [Mr Odinga] himself was doing ideological politics. Anything Baba was doing was backed with something. How quickly Baba’s legacy is being discarded has shocked me so much.”

📌 What You Need to Know

The Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition announced on Monday that it had unanimously agreed to change its name to The Ukombozi Alliance, with Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka saying the opposition was reorganising ahead of the 2027 elections.

Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka (centre) addresses journalists, flanked by DAP-K leader Eugene Wamalwa (right), Siaya Governor James Orengo and Democratic Party leader Justin Muturi, among other leaders, at the SKM Command Centre in Nairobi on September 21, 2026. Kalonzo announced the rebranding of Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition to Ukombozi Alliance.

Mr Raburu says the 2021 request came after the courts blocked the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), the constitutional reform process associated with Mr Odinga and then-President Uhuru Kenyatta after their 2018 handshake. Mr Odinga, he says, wanted a name that would preserve the BBI idea of national unity while being relatable to Kenyans by being in Kiswahili.

“He called me and asked me: ‘BBI has collapsed and I need a name that will also embrace the BBI spirit and be a Kiswahili name. So, talk to your friends there and come up with a suitable name,’” Mr Raburu recalled.

He said he consulted friends and elders in Tanzania, including people familiar with the legacy of founding president Julius Nyerere, before sending Mr Odinga about six or seven possible names.

Among them was “Azimio la Umoja”, a phrase Mr Raburu says he adapted from Tanzania’s Arusha Declaration or “Azimio la Arusha” that was associated with Nyerere’s socialist and nation-building project.

📰 Source: Nation Africa