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. 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.”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.“Because BBI had failed, I felt something that would somehow resemble building bridges would match the situation,” he said.Mr Raburu noted that it was not lost to him that Jaramogi was once associated with the “Azimio” brand.“Somebody once told me, ‘You see this as Azimio thing? His dad had done it in the ’60s when KPU was banned. They called it a Azimio la Wananchi.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, what a great coincidence that I coined this for him and I simply reminded him of his dad?’” he said.Days later, he says, he saw Mr Odinga launching the phrase publicly in Nakuru. This later evolved into the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Party, bringing together ODM, Jubilee, Wiper, Kanu and several smaller parties behind Mr Odinga’s fifth presidential bid.The late Raila Odinga, then the Azimio presidential candidate, at the Azimio Manifesto launch at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi, on June 6 2022. Also Read: ODM’s headache - Party faces tough test to retain Nairobi political base The addition of “One Kenya” followed negotiations with Mr Musyoka’s One Kenya Alliance. The coalition agreement filed with the Registrar of Political Parties tied Mr Odinga, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Musyoka together ahead of the August 2022 General Election and limited withdrawals by constituent parties before and immediately after the contest. Mr Odinga and his running mate Martha Karua lost the 2022 presidential election to William Ruto and Rigathi Gachagua. Azimio thereafter became Kenya’s main opposition formation.For Mr Raburu, however, the new Ukombozi Alliance name lacks the ideological weight he says Mr Odinga attached to political branding.“It’s now sloganeering,” he claimed. “It’s just looking for a name that will fit the day and win the election if it can. There is no ideology to it.”Mr Raburu, who comes from Karateng in Kisumu County, has built much of his adult life in Tanzania. He first moved there as an employee in the tourism sector and later ventured into business as a tour operator. He is now a partner in a company that also builds luxury tented camps for the tourism industry in Tanzania and Kenya.He says his fluency in Kiswahili and his long stay in Tanzania made him useful to Mr Odinga, who had a deep affection for the country and its liberation history.“My Kiswahili is okay. I speak like Tanzanians,” he said. “I speak like someone in Bongo as I’ve been here for 25 years.”
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