The budget week of June 2024 presented unprecedented political activities in the country. During the public participation hearings, almost all the petitions opposed the Finance Bill. However, the Finance and Planning Committee largely ignored the many contestations and went ahead to publish the Bill as originally envisaged.
The country witnessed uncharacteristic citizens’ resistance to the tax proposals, which they considered punitive. Protests have previously been the domain of opposition leaders. Kenyans are used to regularly seeing the faces of Raila Odinga and his compatriots during such civil disobedience. The protests are riotous and involve youths who are rowdy and more often than not unruly. These young men come mainly from the slums and the security forces have always found it easy to cage them in their respective hamlets for purposes of containment. They were the foot soldiers of the political top dogs.
The police regularly responded with teargas canisters, live bullets, truncheons and batons. The running battles normally turn violent and lead to destruction of property, injuries and loss of lives. The new wave of protests was this time around youth initiated and was organised virtually. It was executed on the ground with military precision. Surprisingly, the young people taking part remained focused on the objectives and avoided the usual drama of the old demonstrations. The group comprised the young sharp generation who relied more on the use of smart technology to coordinate their activities. They included professional cadres in their ranks and appeared generally well educated. Doctors were there to provide medical emergency services on site. Lawyers were at hand to offer pro bono legal services for those arrested and locked up in various police cells. They have been christened Gen Z and claim global citizenship as opposed to narrow parochial political cleavages. This new generation has broken ranks with the established political order and known godfathers. They have created a process that only they understand and operate. They have ushered in the dawn of a revolutionary era that threaten to shut out the Uhuru generation leaders from national responsibilities. However, their open idolising of Dr Fred Matiang’i, the immediate former Interior Cabinet Secretary, exposed their soft underbelly. Every such movement requires leadership with faces and names. In their formative stages as emerging adults, Dr Matiang’i was the most efficient and high-performing government official. He must have made a lasting impression and had positive impact on them. It was therefore natural that his name would pop up involuntarily among these demonstrator. Unfortunately, Dr Matiang’i is physically absent from the country.
The loss of Azimio in the last presidential elections appears to have shell-shocked him out of active public life. Babu Owino seems to be the natural nexus between the dynamic old guard and the emerging versatile and tribeless young generation of Kenyans.
When he first vied for the coveted SONU chairmanship in 2011, Babu Owino, whose official name then was Paul Ongili, dramatically altered the matrix of student politics in the country. At the time, SONU set the pace for student activism in all public universities. He had enrolled in 2008 to study Actuarial Science, a course that had been newly introduced and attracted top KCSE examination students. It was an elite programme considered to be studied by mathematics wizards. Those who joined as self-sponsored students paid handsomely for the course, coming only second to medicine. Owino was therefore not your ordinary student. He belonged to what was the revered choppies group. Yet his upbringing in the low-class Kondele estate of Kisumu set him apart.
He was more comfortable among the students who were struggling with their education in terms of financing and studying. The students faced many challenges chiefly the delayed release of results and sometimes outright disappearance of marks. This was occasioned by the huge number of students courtesy of Module 2 programmes and an inadequate number of lecturers. Hitherto, student politics was driven by antiestablishment ideologies and normally would be led by students whose claim to liberation credentials was their disadvantaged economic backgrounds. They claimed to be representatives of the lumpen proletariat. But when Babu arrived on the scene, he combined radicalism with an excessive display of flamboyance. For the first time in the history of student politics, the campaigns involved long convoys of top-of-the-range SUVs. Huge amounts of cash were being doled out, akin to inducements in gubernatorial campaigns. The campaign materials were of classic designs and in glossy paper materials. Billboards replaced canvas posters.
It was clear there was a paradigm shift in student politics. Nobody knew from where he got the superfluous funds. He was not a puppet of the university administration and at the same time not a prodigy of any city politician. He pulled it off on his own and at the first attempt, he clinched the coveted seat. He financed the campaigns of his lineup of officials. His team romped home and he established a solid student government that stood up to the university administration. Babu Owino came, saw and conquered. Like the proverbial hyena, he had tasted political blood and trained his eyes on higher positions.
Once he graduated in 2012, he immediately enrolled for another degree at Parklands to study law. Being a student once again, he made another stab at the helm of the student union. People expected that the students out of experience and history would not take him seriously. However, Mr Owino had learnt the intricacies of the student body politic. He had also mustered the art of manipulating the system and fully understood the inner workings of the electoral process. During his first stint, he managed to access key business and political players in the city. He established strategic networks that were useful in bankrolling his second move. He easily won the seat once again. The system was stunned. Being a law student, he exploited the legal lacuna and successfully vied for the third time. To stop him, the government introduced changes to the Universities Act 2012 that reviewed the sections that governed the student leadership and representation. However, Babu had also had his fill with student leadership and was headed elsewhere. He vied for the Westlands MP seat in 2013 but lost at the party nominations to Hon Tim Wanyonyi. He maintained his public presence and focused on capturing the Embakasi East constituency. He easily won the ODM party primaries and went ahead to beat his opponents despite the government machinery attempting to manipulate the outcome in 2017.
He quickly became a prominent feature in the Nasa presidential rallies. He was able to captivate the masses with his youthful and ghetto slang clichés. “Tialala” and “Ria” became part of the national political lexicon. Despite not holding any position in the party ranks, he became the default curtain raiser in almost all of the Opposition chief Raila Odinga’s campaign rallies across the country. He leveraged on his past student networks across the country to secure his position at table of national politics.
Once in Parliament Babu Owino did not disappoint. By his choice of expletives, he quickly outpaced and eclipsed long-standing members of the house. He became an instant star in parliamentary debates and always got prime slots in the Speaker’s schedules of time allocation. Outside parliament, he became the de facto leader of the youthful wing of the resistance movement led by Nasa leader Raila. The mobilisation of the youth to participate in street protests squarely fell on his shoulders. He undertook the responsibility with gusto and registered remarkable success on account of his deep pockets.
His colleagues had only one option, either to love or hate him because he could no longer be ignored. His performance at the constituency was quite impressive and he was poised for an easy sail for reelection in 2022. The handshake pact between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila helped make his political work much easier. He would soon be included in parliamentary committees and this further enhanced his profile in national politics and the business wheeler-dealing system. He therefore established networks of reliable allies across the political divide. In the ODM party he was fiercely loyal but remained one of the few who could politely disagree with the party leader. Babu baffled the Azimio family when he questioned the sincerity of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s support to Raila in the 2022 presidential elections.
He expanded his political operations beyond his constituency and Nairobi to the other regions of the country. He has therefore built a national reach and international connections. The imminent exit of Raila from active national politics has thrown the ODM fraternity into anxiety and confusion. His immediate second-in-command did not seem to have the gravitas to hold the giant party together. Wycliffe Oparanya and Hassan Joho, both former governors and deputy party leaders, have lost their lustre and no longer have the oomph for political revitalisation. The second tier of Minority Whip Opiyo Wandayi, party chairman John Mbadi and secretary general Edwin Sifuna do not seem to have any agenda platform alternative to Raila’s well beaten path. Unless they reinvent themselves in time they might be consigned to oblivion with Raila’s departure from the helm of opposition politics.
A number of key operatives around Raila who belonged to third generation of the second liberation movement have decamped. They have chosen to cast their lot with the government and the ruling party UDA. Notably, Silas Jakakimba who was a long serving personal assistant to Raila have since been elected UDA Secretary General for Homa Bay County. Power abhors a vacuum and Babu Owino’s political activities across the country is heroically filling the void. If he learns the language of the millennials and Gen Z and embraces their pain, then the chance of a lifetime has presented itself at his doorstep.
Political and public policy analyst