Former Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya has thrown a grenade into ODM’s fragile post-Raila succession talks, declaring he’s done shadowing the late icon and flatly rejecting Oburu Odinga’s newly assigned role as party leader in a bombshell interview that’s set Luo politics ablaze.
The ex-deputy party boss, speaking from his Butere ranch on Monday, just 13 days after Raila Odinga’s graveside vows of unity, didn’t mince words: “Mimi nimetosha kuongoza ODM, nimetosha kuridhi baba, nimekuwa Deputy wa Baba for 13 years. Oburu Odinga hawezi ongoza ODM.”
His raw Sheng-laced retort, blending fatigue with fire, shows a brewing mutiny in the Orange Democratic Movement, where Raila’s October 15 cardiac death has left a leadership vacuum wider than the Gulf of Aden.
Oparanya’s outburst paints him as the reluctant revolutionary finally shedding his understudy skin.
For 13 years, since hitching his star to Raila’s waggon in 2012, the 65-year-old CS has been the loyal lieutenant—brokering Nyanza votes, quelling youth unrest in Kisumu’s tear-gas alleys, and even swallowing a 2022 deputy presidency snub with a smile.
But Raila’s inside-government pivot and cabinet nods for ODM brass like Joho and Mbadi nursing grudges over unfulfilled promises like a Western Kenya mega-dam.
“I’ve carried the load; now Oburu? He’s family, but not fit for the frontlines,” Oparanya pressed, his calloused hands gesturing like a preacher at a harambee, eyes fixed on the camera as if addressing Raila’s ghost.
The Oburu Oparanya ODM leadership clash erupted as the party NEC, still raw from Bondo’s funeral dirges, anointed the 82-year-old senator as interim helm, a nod to Luo lore’s elder respect but one that reeks of a stopgap for insiders.
Oburu, Raila’s quieter sibling with a penchant for backroom diplomacy, has mediated feuds from Ethiopia’s borders to Nairobi’s courts, but critics like Oparanya dub him “the advisor, not the anchor.”.