Former Kenyan prime minister and revered long-time opposition chief Raila Odinga was buried within the west of the nation after a service attended by 1000’s on Sunday.
“Now lastly Baba is dwelling,” his son, Raila Odinga junior, mentioned beside his father’s casket, draped within the Kenyan flag.
The burial concluded days of memorials that at occasions led to chaos, with at the very least 5 mourners dying at different occasions and dozens injured at a public viewing on Saturday.
Odinga died on Wednesday aged 80 in an Indian hospital.
He turned prime minister after the bloody and disputed 2007 election, and was the principle opposition chief for a few years, shedding 5 presidential campaigns, most not too long ago three years in the past.
He retains a devotional following within the west of the nation. Former US President Barack Obama, whose Kenyan household hails from the identical area, referred to as Odinga a “true champion of democracy”.
Politicians, family and throngs of his supporters waved Kenyan flags and held his image aloft as they gathered at Sunday’s memorial service, which was held at a college in Bondo.
“Even within the grave, he nonetheless stays our hero,” one mourner informed the AFP information company.
Army personnel carried Odinga’s coffin to the entrance, the place a choir sang and audio system, together with Kenyan President William Ruto, remembered him.
“His braveness, his imaginative and prescient, and his unyielding religion in our collective future will ceaselessly illuminate the trail of our nation,” Ruto mentioned in a submit on Fb in regards to the occasion.
“His return to Bondo was not merely a homecoming; it was the embrace of a grateful Republic bidding farewell to considered one of its biggest sons, a patriot who devoted his life to the reason for justice, democracy, and the enduring unity of our beloved Kenya.”
Odinga was buried close by at his late father’s homestead, the place there’s a household mausoleum.
A number of memorial occasions had already taken place, together with a state funeral in Nairobi on Friday and a public viewing in a stadium in his dwelling metropolis of Kisumu on Saturday.
On the viewing, tens of 1000’s filed previous his open coffin, many crying out the phrase “we’re orphans”.
No less than three folks have been killed when police opened hearth to disperse mourners, with dozens extra injured within the chaotic scenes that adopted.
