His Nigerian biographer styled him as an enigma in Kenya’s politics. An apocryphal narrative from family sources recalls the day that an incensed Raila Odinga abandoned his three siblings in a car on Ngong Road, Nairobi, in the 1970s. He had only recently returned from training in East Germany and had taken up a job at the University of Nairobi.

His elder brother, Oburu Oginga, was then an elected councillor in Kisumu Municipal Council. Their two sisters, Beryl and Akinyi Wenwa Odinga, were in high school. The family matriarch, Mama Mary Odinga, was striving with the role of both father and mother, their father Jaramogi Ajuma Oginga Odinga, doing time in detention without trial, apparently conveniently forgotten by the Jomo Kenyatta government.