• Uhuru made a speech at National Prayer Breakfast in the US.
• Raila said they drove themselves to the first meeting and agreed to meet again at Harambee House, where they made public their peace deal.
Image: The Star
President Uhuru Kenyatta has revealed that his close advisers vehemently opposed a truce between him and ODM leader Raila Odinga after the disputed 2017 elections.
Uhuru, who made a speech at National Prayer Breakfast in the US, said some of his allies told him not to reach out to Raila at a time when the country was burning.
"I was surrounded by people who said we have power, why the hell do we have to talk to those guys,” he told the meeting.
The 68th US National Prayer Breakfast dubbed “Reconciliation, Faith and Peace Building” was hosted by the United States Congress and organised by the Fellowship Foundation in Washington DC.
It brought together more than 2,000 international guests, including political and business leaders, the US Congress, members of the diplomatic corps and clerics.
Uhuru said he had indicated to the people around him that he wanted to reach out to Raila not to discuss sharing of power, but to talk about the reasons why Kenyans fight after elections.
"It just happened that Raila was also thinking along the same lines, but the problem was that he was also surrounded by people who told him that he must grab power," he said.
Raila, who also addressed the gathering, said he was also hesitant to meet Uhuru because the people around him were not for it.
"After long discussions, he came driving himself and I also went driving myself," he stated.
Raila said it is during the second meeting that they decided to bring other people on board. "He came with one person and I went with one. We then told them the issues we had discussed and wanted to be put in writing," he explained.
They identified nine issues that they wanted to be tackled, among them ethnic antagonism, lack of a national ethos, divisive elections, corruption and shared prosperity.
The meeting between the two at Harambee House, Nairobi, on March 9, 2018, went down in history as a defining moment for the country after they shook hands on the steps of the building and restored peace across the country.
The Building Bridges Initiative was then formed to end years of hostility and the team went round collecting views on the nine issues identified as problems ailing the country.
Raila told the prayer breakfast meeting that he had been Uhuru’s rival in the election though they had worked together in the past.
"We have a history because we have worked together. When I was the Minister for Roads, he was the leader of Official Opposition. We again teamed up to defeat a constitution that Kenyans did not want. When we formed the grand coalition government, I was Prime Minister and he was Deputy Prime Minister," he said.
Raila said Kenya has had only two peaceful undisputed elections, one that ushered in Independence and the other in 2002. Uhuru noted that divisions have existed during elections and in some cases creating generation differences.
"Whenever divisions occurred, it is not those in leadership who suffered. It was the people who suffered, they shed blood and had their properties destroyed," he said.
The President added that it became clear that it was impossible to bring prosperity and long-term economic stability for the nation to grow and develop without peace.
"Everybody used to plan their businesses around the election cycle. Once elections came, everything stopped. Businesses stopped one year before an election and one year after an election. We worked for three years and took a two-year break as we wait for politicians to decide what to do."
He said it was for this reason that he felt it was necessary to reach out to Raila to come up with long-lasting solutions.