President William Ruto has paid tribute to the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Kisumu, pledging to preserve and advance the political and development legacy of the former ODM leader whose influence was deeply rooted in the region.
Speaking during a church service in Kisumu at the Voice of Salvation and Healing Church, Ruto described Raila as a nationalist and statesman whose political vision transcended ethnic and regional interests, saying his legacy should inform Kenya’s future development.
Ruto said there were three areas in particular where he believed Raila would have been proud of the progress made in the Standard Gauge Railway, jobs through the affordable housing programme and the preservation of his national legacy.
On the railway, Ruto recalled that Raila had supported the SGR as one of the signature projects they had envisioned during their time in ODM.
“I can proudly say, as part of his legacy, that the Standard Gauge Railway has now started from Narok and from Kisumu, and progressively we are going to actualize one of the signature pillars that the Honorable Raila Odinga would have wanted done,” he said.
Ruto also linked the Government’s affordable housing programme to Raila’s earlier push for slum upgrading, saying the two shared a vision of using housing to create jobs.
“He is the father of housing when he started slum upgrading under the NARC administration,” Ruto said, adding that the Government had carried forward that vision and was making housing a major component of national development.
Beyond specific projects, Ruto placed greater emphasis on what he described as Raila’s broader national outlook.
According to Ruto, Raila “was never a sectionalist” and “never believed in tribal politics”. He said was a nationalist and statesman who built a national party and pursued a national agenda.
“That is part of what we inherit and take forward,” Ruto said.
The President acknowledged the difficulty of filling the political space left by Raila, cautioning against attempts to replace him while calling instead for collective efforts to preserve his ideals.
“It may not be possible, and it would never be possible to replace the Honorable Raila Odinga, and nobody should attempt,” he said.
“But we can only work together to make sure that what he believed in, his legacy, lives on and informs the future of the development of our nation,” he added
The pledge by the head of state carries particular political weight in Kisumu, which served as the political bedrock of Raila’s career and remained one of the strongest centres of support for his party, ODM.
Ruto said his presence in Kisumu was also intended to reassure the region that he would work with its leaders and residents, describing himself as a student of Raila and promising that they would “walk together”.
He said the relationship between Raila’s ODM and his UDA party was one of partnership rather than rivalry under the broad-based government.
“Chama cha ODM na chama cha UDA, they are not competitors. They are partners in the broad-based government,” Ruto said.
He pledged to make it his responsibility to ensure that Raila’s legacy, his party and what he believed in continued as the two sides worked together to build Kenya.
The President spoke as he began a weeklong development, meet-the-people tour of the Nyanza region.
