Born in 1945, Odinga, the son of Kenya's first Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, is known best for his fiery political tackles and his political engineering tactics which work miracles with crowds at political rallies, making him Kenya's most populist politician.
The new Kenyan Prime Minister, schooled in East Germany, earned the wrath of former President Daniel Moi, who made him a political detainee for eight years in the 1980s, for an attempted coup and later for advocating against the single-party rule in Kenya.
Loved by his native Luo tribesmen, Odinga has been a key player over the years, stepping into the political limelight during his high-profile appearances in court.
Odinga's rise to the top was thwarted for years by the propaganda by the Moi regime that attempted to portray him as little-schooled.
In his biography published last year, Odinga made reference to his role in the 1982 coup which earned him the wrath of his opponents, who tried to paint him as an advocate of violent change of government.
Odinga, whose late father remained as founding opposition figure in Kenya until his death in 1994, is known for his populist approach to politics.
Critics say he is "too radical in his approach to make a good leader''.
In Kenyan politics, Odinga, respected most for his ability to remain inscrutable (as his nickname, Agwambo, Luo word for evil spirits suggests), has managed to remain relevant in Kenyan politics for more than three decades.
Known to have changed more political parties than any other politician, he said all the world's best known leaders also changed parties in their attempts to improve the lives of their countrymen and women.
Odinga was schooled in East Germany from where he graduated with a Masters Degree in Engineering, which gave him the post of a lecturer at the Nairobi University, from where he later rose to become the Deputy Director of the Kenya Bureau of Standards.
A shrewd businessman, Odinga's East African Spectra Limited, which supplies oxygen cylinders across Eastern and Central Africa, has grown from a small family firm to a middle-level corporation, much to the delight of his political supporters.
He has used his success in business to show that he would champion the interests of the investors, himself being one of them.
The fiery opposition leader maintained his late father's contacts in the world of politics across Africa, and has the highest number of political friends in West Africa, especially in Nigeria.
The son of Oginga, whose ambition to lead Kenya ended with his death in Feb. 1994, Odinga took over the mantle of his father, first challenging senior politicians in his father's then Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) for the party's leadership.
Odinga spent most of the 90s in parliament, first opposing Moi and then, after finishing third in the 1997 presidential election, joining his government.
At that point, Odinga prided himself as having helped Kenya to move forward after a post-election gridlock.
In the 1997 elections, when then opposition leader Kibaki was moving to court to challenge the results of the elections in which Moi lost his absolute majority in parliament, Odinga offered to bail out Moi with his National Development Party (NDP)'s 25 Members of Parliament, which effectively enabled Moi to rule to 2002.
He later left the Moi party to help Kibaki win the 2002 elections, following a pledge to make him Prime Minister.
Odinga's series of political maneuvers had earned him the title of a political king maker in Kenya, and doubts emerged as to whether he would ever become President.
He then put a serious bid for the Presidency in the last elections, and he is believed to have won the race.
But a series of election irregularities, which foreign and domestic observers said were enough to alter the results of the elections in favour of Kibaki, have been blamed for the political crisis that has robbed Kenya of its fabled position as East Africa's stable democracy.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was called in at the insistence of Odinga as an international mediator to help "get Kenya out of a bunker", where it had gotten into after the ill-fated Presidential elections.
The outcome of the mediation was the coalition government that saw the emergence of Odinga as Prime Minister.
Nairobi - 14/04/2008
Panapress
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