Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition leader Raila Odinga’s chief agent in the 2022 General Election, Saitabao Ole Kanchory, is speaking out about what he calls disorganisation and internal wrangles in Odinga’s campaign machine which he argues made him lose his State House bid.

In a new book titled ‘Why Baba is Not The 5th’ released on Wednesday, Kanchory calls the August 9 polls that saw William Ruto declared president-elect a “tragicomedy” on Azimio’s part.

He says 78-year-old Odinga, who was contesting for the country’s top job for the fifth time with the help of Narc-Kenya party leader Martha Karua, 65, as his running mate, lost the polls because of a lack of proper strategy and organisation in his campaign team comprising staff at a command centre and poll agents.

“Elections in Kenya are won nor lost; they’re taken. Baba gave it away. He won, yes, but he gave it away. Presidential elections are there for those who are prepared to take it. There has never been an election in Kenya in the last nearly 20 years that has been won, all of them have been taken,” Kanchory told KTN News in a Wednesday night interview to promote the book.

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairperson Wafula Chebukati on August 15 declared Dr Ruto as the winner of the presidential election after garnering 7,176,141 votes, representing 50.49 per cent of the total votes cast. 

Odinga came in second with 6,942,930 votes, which represents 48.85 per cent of the votes cast.

According to Kanchory, the Azimio machine assumed they were the automatic winners of the polls. He accuses Odinga and Karua of being out of touch with the finer details of the presidential campaign and letting the disorganized team handle matters.

“Not once did Baba and Martha personally join our deliberations whether as national chief agents team, at the command centre or called to inquire the process,” Kanchory says in the book, adding that the only time they had a sit-down with the candidates was during the Supreme Court petition process.

He names former ICT Cabinet Secretary Joe Mucheru, former Interior Principal Secretary Dr Karanja Kibicho, and former President Uhuru Kenyatta’s brother, Muhoho Kenyatta, among the people who are to blame for Odinga’s loss.

'Crazy resources'

And although the command centre was “flying in crazy resources”, Kanchory says, it was "hijacked" and there was a push-and-pull on who would control those resources and the resources were not applied to good effect.

“It is not that the command centre was not given resources but the national chef agents team of five; myself, Oduor Ong’wen, Dr Caroline Karugu, Prof Isaiah wa Kindiki and Paul Mwangi, was kept out of the command centre,” the former chief agent writes.

“Azimio team casually squandered the tremendous goodwill it enjoyed from Kenyans.”

Kanchory partly takes responsibility for the work of Odinga’s campaign machine, telling KTN News: “I cannot extricate myself entirely from blame. However, I was not the candidate.”

He claims he made efforts to salvage the situation to no avail.

“If I had been given a bit of a free hand in terms of being allowed to carry my roles as the chief agent, I would have delivered Baba to State House,” he told the broadcaster.