The late Raila Odinga (right) with Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna at Capitol Hill in Nairobi on February 2, 2024.

📋 Breaking It Down

When four key ODM officials relinquished their positions to take up Cabinet slots in the broad-based government in 2024, then ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna believed he had found a way out of an increasingly uncomfortable job.

The party was preparing to fill positions left vacant by the departure of two deputy party leaders - Hassan Joho and Wycliffe Oparanya - as well as National Chairperson John Mbadi and Opiyo Wandayi, who had joined the Cabinet. The Nairobi senator saw an opportunity to relinquish his position as secretary-general and take up one of the deputy party leader slots.

But Raila Odinga, who was presiding over the meeting, had other ideas.

📌 What You Need to Know

“Not you, Edwin. Sit down,” Mr Sifuna recalls Raila telling him when he rose to leave the room, as the late ODM leader had requested all aspirants to do before the discussion began. The remark drew laughter from the other leaders in the room.

Nairobi Senator and The Equitable Party (TEP) leader Edwin Sifuna during a joint media engagement at Four Points By Sheraton Nairobi Hurlingham on October 9, 2026.

Also Read:   Gachagua opens door for Sifuna-Mt Kenya alliance in 2027

The intervention, Mr Sifuna says, ended his attempt to use the recruitment process to escape a job that had become increasingly difficult as ODM navigated its relationship with President William Ruto’s administration.

In a revealing account of his relationship with his former boss, Mr Sifuna says he had reached a point where he wanted to stop being the person required to defend the party’s decisions in public, particularly when he believed those decisions risked compromising its political identity.

The encounter, which he places at a meeting in Upper Hill in August 2024, offers a glimpse into the relationship between the two men before Raila’s death and the subsequent rupture between Mr Sifuna and sections of the ODM leadership.

📰 Source: Nation Africa