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Nation

Raila’s anniversary, Ruto alliance, party divisions: Oburu returns to a full in-tray

ODM Party Leader Oburu Oginga at Lake Naivasha Resort during a broad-based Government retreat on August 10, 2026. He is back in the country after a three-week stay in the UK for medical attention.Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Dr Oburu Oginga is back in the country after a three-week stay in the United Kingdom for medical attention.He returns to a busy political and party calendar that will place him at the centre of events marking the first anniversary of the death of his younger brother, Raila Odinga.Dr Oginga returned to the country last Friday, September 25, with the party announcing his return the following day and saying the Siaya Senator was ready to resume his responsibilities.His return comes at a critical moment for ODM which has lined up a month-long programme to honour Raila, its founding leader, as it navigates a changed political landscape following his death in India on October 15, 2025.Dubbed “Mwezi wa Baba”, the programme will begin on Friday, October 2, with a nationwide candle-lighting ceremony and include rallies and memorial activities in different parts of the country before culminating in Nairobi on October 31.Dr Oginga therefore returns to a party preparing for one of its most politically significant periods since Raila's death.During his absence, ODM has operated under the stewardship of National Chairperson Gladys Wanga, who has led a series of activities, including mobilisation in the Maa community and Nyanza.His absence was particularly conspicuous during President William Ruto's recent five-day tour of Nyanza, where Ms Wanga and other senior ODM officials accompanied the President and openly backed the broad-based government arrangement.The tour provided a snapshot of the political direction taken by a section of ODM under Dr Oginga's leadership since Raila's death.Ms Wanga told President Ruto during the tour that almost the entire ODM leadership in Nyanza was present, with only one senior leader missing — an apparent reference to Dr Oginga, who was then in the UK.President Ruto used the tour to emphasise his relationship with ODM and his intention to continue working with the party as part of the broad-based government.“I want to assure you, as the national leader and as a student of the late Raila Odinga, that we will walk together. ODM and UDA are not competitors; they are partners in the broad-based government,” Dr Ruto said in Kisumu.ODM party leader Dr Oburu Oginga. He is in the United Kingdom for medical attention.Dr Oginga's return now gives him an opportunity to take charge of the party's affairs as debate over ODM's future intensifies.ODM has planned activities across several regions, beginning with the October 2 candle-lighting ceremony. The party will hold a major memorial rally in Kakamega on October 9, followed by activities led by the Raila family between October 10 and 15.The main memorial service is scheduled for Kang'o Ka Jaramogi in Bondo on October 15, exactly one year after Raila's death.The programme will then move to Garissa on October 17, the Coast on October 18 and 19, Kajiado on October 21 and Turkana between October 23 and 25 before concluding with a major rally in Nairobi on October 31.The anniversary preparations have, however, also exposed differences over who should lead the commemoration.Raila's widow, Mama Ida Odinga, has separately established a national steering committee to coordinate family-led celebrations.The committee, chaired by Prof Adams Oloo and deputised by Rarieda MP Dr Otiende Amollo, brings together representatives from government, political institutions, civil society, academia, the private sector and the Odinga family.Mama Ida said the celebrations would be about the people who loved Raila and that the family would retain a central role in determining partnerships and activities.“This celebration does not belong to the committee; it belongs to the people. Baba's people are all welcome,” she said.The family committee's programme is expected to run from October 10 to 17, overlapping with ODM's own month-long calendar.The parallel preparations have raised questions over the ownership and character of the anniversary, with ODM and the family organising separate programmes to honour the former Prime Minister.For Dr Oginga, therefore, the anniversary season will be both commemorative and politically consequential.Raila's death left ODM facing the difficult task of redefining itself without the politician who had dominated its identity for decades.Mama Ida Odinga and Siaya Senator Oburu Oginga during Raila Odinga’s funeral in Bondo, Siaya County.Dr Oginga, Raila's elder brother, took over the leadership of the party amid competing views about its political direction.The party has since become divided between leaders supporting continued cooperation with President Ruto under the broad-based government and those who have joined the Linda Mwananchi movement and positioned themselves in opposition.

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Nation

Dutchman, Kenyan woman clash over Sh2.2m ‘love’ gift ends in court

The heart of the dispute is an alleged unfulfilled promise to marry, occupation of the house by another man, police bribery and a fight over recovery of the money.A Dutchman’s four-year relationship with a Kenyan woman has ended in a court battle over gifts, including Sh2.2 million he says he sent towards development of a matrimonial home they were to share as a couple after marriage.But the woman, Ms SL, says the money was voluntarily given as gifts during their relationship and denies promising to marry the foreign national, Mr BD, or build a matrimonial house with him.The heart of the dispute is an alleged unfulfilled promise to marry, occupation of the house by another man, police bribery and a fight over recovery of the money.The dispute has since moved from the failed relationship to a criminal case in which Ms SL is accused of cheating and obtaining the money through trickery and a civil suit in which Mr BD is seeking Sh2.4 million compensation and recovery of a three-bedroom storey building from Ms SL in Vikwathani, Bamburi, Mombasa.The High Court on Friday dismissed Ms SL’s attempt to stop the criminal proceedings, leaving the competing accounts of the relationship, money and property to be dealt with in the cases before the magistrate courts.According to Ms SL’s account, the relationship began after Mr BD pursued her through relatives from 2019. She described him as a Dutch citizen who visits Kenya about once a year.From late 2020 to mid-2023, she said, Mr BD used to send her money through M-Pesa, often Sh100, Sh200 or Sh1,000 for airtime or lunch "as his intended girlfriend". She said Sh70,000 was also sent for the burial of Mr BD’s father, while other amounts were used to roof his own house at Likoni. She said they first met in person towards the end of 2022.However, the prosecution gave a different account. The DPP said Mr BD told police investigators that their relationship began in 2019, he proposed marriage and they agreed to build a home together.The criminal charge states that between May 25, 2020 and February 13, 2024, Ms SL allegedly obtained Sh2.2 million by pretending she would build a matrimonial house for them.Ms SL said the relationship had already changed. In September 2023, she told Mr BD she intended to marry another man.She said he did not take the news well, and that he threatened her and later went to her home with others and caused disturbance demanding the return of what he had bought her.She denied agreeing to marry him or build a matrimonial home, saying the Vikwathani house was hers and had been built using her own resources on a plot next to her mother’s house.Her case is that the money was given voluntarily as gifts within a domestic relationship and that receiving it was no crime. She says Mr BD would not accept the end of the relationship, and that he used the police and the prosecution to pressure her into marrying him and to punish her when she married someone else. Mr BD, however, denied that narrative and told the court that they agreed to marry and build a home together. He said he sent her money from the Netherlands to buy land and fund construction, with transaction records showing remittances exceeding Sh2 million. He said his suspicions arose in February 2024 when he visited the property and found Ms SL living there with another man, who chased him away from the house he believed he had helped finance. He said their relationship began in 2019 after he pursued Ms SL through relatives.The criminal complaint followed after the man complained to the police the Ms SL had defrauded him. He recorded a statement describing a relationship that began in 2019, his proposal of marriage, and a joint decision to build a home, for which he sent money for the purchase of the plot and for construction. Ms SL said she was arrested at her Vikwathani home on February 29, 2024 by officers from Shelly Beach Police Station.She said she was released on a Sh20,000 police bond after a prosecutor advised the parties to negotiate, but was re-arrested on March 6 and charged the following day after another prosecutor approved the charge. She spent eight days in remand at Shimo La Tewa.In addition, she alleged that Mr BD boasted of having bribed the police, the prosecution and even the courts, and there are audio recordings of this and of the investigating officer admitting that the case is not criminal. The High Court found that the recordings had not been produced, transcribed or authenticated. “This court cannot act on evidence that a party says exists but has chosen not to produce,” Justice Ngaah Jairus said.The judge rejected the argument that the dispute was purely a failed relationship or property matter.“Whether the money was a gift or was obtained by a fraudulent trick is precisely the kind of disputed question of fact, which must be decided by the trial court after hearing evidence tested by cross-examination,” Justice Ngaah said.A civil case over the property was filed on May 29, 2024, after the criminal complaint and charge. Ms SL argued that the property dispute belonged in the civil court.

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Nation

‘I gave Raila the name Azimio, and I’m sad it’s no more’

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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