Charity Ngilu: Pentagon was ready to swear in Raila after disputed 2007 polls
By Joel Masibo, October 16, 2025Former Kitui County Governor Charity Ngilu has said that former Prime Minister, the late Raila Odinga, played an integral part in restoring peace and harmony after the 2007/2008 post-election violence.
Speaking on a local TV interview on Thursday, October 16, 2025, a day after the former Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader died while undergoing treatment in India, Ngilu said Raila’s selfless nature saved the country from further bloodshed.
Ngilu said Raila conceded defeat in the hotly contested presidential polls in 2007, contrary to his allies’ opinion in the Pentagon.
Ngilu, a senior political figure who was part of the opposition constellation in the 2007 general election, opened a window onto the trauma, choices, and restraint taken by the late Raila Odinga that marked Kenya’s worst political violence in recent memory.
“During the 2007/08 elections, we were in the Pentagon house ready to swear in Raila Odinga, but he came and sent us all out, saying that he would not allow the country to descend into chaos just so he could become president,” Ngilu said.
Disputed results
Kenya’s presidential election of late December 2007 ended in the announcement that incumbent Mwai Kibaki had been re-elected. The result was immediately rejected by the main opposition leader, Raila, and by many international observers who reported irregularities.
Violence and protests erupted in many parts of the country almost immediately after the result was announced. The unrest would unfold over weeks and eventually claim from hundreds to over a thousand lives and displace hundreds of thousands. Human rights defenders and later inquiries described the crisis as both politically and ethnically fuelled, with organised actors and community networks playing roles in the violence.
What was Pentagon?
Within ODM and the broader opposition movement of 2007, the Pentagon referred to the tight group of senior strategists and political principals who coordinated campaign strategy and responses. It became shorthand for Raila’s inner leadership circle and their meeting places during the campaign and crisis.
According to Ngilu’s assertions, opposition figures had assembled, apparently prepared to go ahead with a symbolic or formal swearing-in of Raila, an act that would have openly challenged the declared result and risked inflaming wider unrest. Ngilu said Odinga himself ordered them out, arguing that he would not let the country “descend into chaos just so he could become president.”
Ngilu went ahead to describe Raila as a leader who prioritised national stability over an immediate seizure of contested power. She hinted that opposition leaders were indeed deliberating over responses, mobilising supporters and at points threatening more direct acts of political defiance, but ultimately the crisis moved toward negotiation rather than the creation of rival state organs because of Raila Odinga’s stance.
Why that restraint mattered
The decision not to set up a rival presidency reduced the risk of formal institutional collapse. Instead, heavy international and local mediation (including by Kofi Annan and other diplomats and leaders) helped push Kenya toward the National Accord and Reconciliation Act, the power-sharing deal that created a coalition government and made Odinga prime minister in April 2008, restoring peace and stability in the country once again.