NAIROBI, Kenya — The Secretariat for former Prime Minister and Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Party Leader Raila Odinga has vehemently dismissed circulating reports regarding his health, branding the information as baseless, fake, and malicious propaganda.
In a statement released on the morning of Sunday, October 5, the Secretariat assured the Kenyan public that Mr. Odinga is in good health and not indisposed. Furthermore, the statement directly accused a group of opposition politicians of orchestrating the campaign of misinformation.
The Secretariat stated that a specific political faction is responsible for the deliberate falsehoods, claiming it is a calculated effort to pressure Mr. Odinga into political alignment with them. The statement read, in part:
“The political formation of impeached former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and his struggling team of Kalonzo Musyoka and Eugene Wamalwa, among others, are on a familiar campaign of misinformation on the health of former Prime Minister and ODM Party Leader Raila Odinga.”
The Secretariat linked the current campaign to previous efforts aimed at derailing Mr. Odinga’s bid for the chairmanship of the African Union Commission earlier this year, accusing the rivals of leveraging various channels to spread unverified claims.
The statement continued: “Gachagua, Kalonzo & co have co-opted sections of the traditional media that are happily picking feeds from bloggers, including AI-generated images, and broadcasting them as some kind of investigative Breaking News.”
The ultimate goal of this deliberate strategy, according to the Secretariat, is political leverage: “The hope of this team then and now is to bully Hon. Raila to provide a back for them to ride on in their struggle against President William Ruto.”
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The Secretariat emphasized Mr. Odinga’s long-standing tradition of transparency regarding his medical matters, confirming that he would publicly disclose any serious health condition if one existed. They recalled previous instances: he informed the country about a hospital procedure while serving as the sitting Prime Minister in June 2010, and again when he was diagnosed with COVID and hospitalized in 2021 as the Opposition Leader.
The statement concluded: “He would do the same today were he to be in the health situation his opponents wish.”
While confirming that Mr. Odinga travelled out of the country on the evening of Friday, October 3, the Secretariat clarified that he did not travel to Europe, as some bloggers had alleged.
The statement reaffirmed Mr. Odinga’s dedication to the current administration’s goals: “Home or away, Hon. Raila remains committed to the ideals of the Broad Based Government. He remains steadfast in his belief that extreme threats to the nation require extreme compromises in the interest of the nation. We understand his opponents frustration with this.”