Odoyo Owidi would make you believe that to be around Raila Odinga you must have money. This is not entirely true. Wanga didn’t have more money than Kidero, yet she got the ODM ticket. Had money been the organizing factor, she had five more loaded challengers than her, all who were willing to unload.
Ahead of 2022 elections, Odoyo Owidi tethered himself around the Odingas, and for a moment deluded himself that he understood them, or, put more bluntly, that he had them by the balls. He did not.
Money, I can tell you, is not the main motivation of the Odingas to issue the ODM ticket to a candidate. There are dirt poor candidates who have been issued the ODM flag. Many of the current Luo MPs are very poor, even by Luo standards of wealth. What does Adipo Okuome have? What wealth, if any, does nera (my uncle) Peter Kaluma have, or Jared Okello, or Mwalimu Orero, or Eve Obara?
All these leaders dished no money to the Odingas.
I worked for years in ODM and many of the people who allowed themselves to be conned were being conned by corrupt court jesters, not the Odingas.
Some were being conned by very lowly operatives, people who ordinarily would never meet Raila Odinga, or any of the Odingas, to transact anything.
Just because you were conned by a handler of Raila Odinga, or Mama Ida, does not mean it’s Raila Odinga, or Mama Ida, who conned you.
Odoyo Owidi is bitter with the Odingas because he (Owidi) failed to con his way to parliament using ODM. I will return to this matter in the last paragraph.
The challenge that people like Odoyo Owidi face is to convince those of us who know that he is lying, and who also know, that had he got what he wanted, he would currently be one of the loudest in pushing Raila agenda.
The ODM Party is one of those parties that fund candidates on its ticket. If the money argument by Odoyo Owidi is to hold, why would the party still take from its own coffers to fund candidates?
Raila Odinga, contrary to what Odoyo Owidi wants everyone to believe, is not a stingy person. He gives out money all the time, to people who truly need it, and like the moral giver he is; he never broadcasts his acts of kindness.
The Luo, unlike others, will not abandon Raila Odinga because of attacks by people like Owidi. What walked in Kikuyuland will not work in Luoland. We are not them.
At the risk of sounding excessive let me say this: the Luo will not abandon Raila Odinga without justifiable reasons. Also, ODM ticket will not be given to anyone just anyhowly. Look at parties which gave their tickets anyhowly, that is, carelessly and hapharzadly, where are they? Where is Jubilee today? Look at the people Uhuru Kenyatta built? Do we want our ODM to be that porous? Do we want our party to be the party that produced the second largest pool of political ingrates after Jubilee?
Do we want our party to die? No way!
In conclusion I am glad Odoyo Owidi has joined UDA. Now make it competitive enough to bring you to parliament and I do hope when you manage to do so, you will be happy to see all that work, in all those years, being disregarded, because some Odoyo Ochieng’ or Odoyo Ouma, has suddenly become ‘close’ to Mama Rachel. This is what Odoyo attempted to do, and failed.
It is not Raila Odinga or ODM on trial; it is people like Odoyo Owidi. To quote the preacher, “How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.”
