NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga hospitalised after a busy day of campaigns. [Photo/ Courtesy]
As presidential campaigns intensify, ahead of the August 8 general election, NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga is increasingly exposing himself as being unfit to be the president. Being president is the toughest job in Kenya. The buck stops at your desk. As head of state, you take responsibility for everything going on in the country. You do not even have time to sleep soundly.
Those who know Raila have confessed that concentrating on anything for more than 30 minutes is something he cannot do with ease. He falls asleep during meetings. This has been evident during the recent campaign events, where cameras have caught the ODM leader sleeping in the middle of a rally. There is even a joke doing rounds on social media that Raila sleeps so much in his rallies so that when he wakes up, he says "kumepambauka, kumekucha."
Raila Odinga appears to be asleep during a Kakamega campaign event. [Photo/ Citizen TV]The other key thing that Raila is in short supply of is stamina, and it is understandable. The former Langata MP is 72 years old, while President Uhuru Kenyatta is only 55. During the past few weeks of countrywide campaigns, NASA events have badly exposed Raila has having low energy, while his rival, who intends to retire on his 60th birthday, holds about 10 campaign events per day and still appears to be in possession a lot of stamina. On Sunday, after holding an unusual high number of campaign events in Kilifi County, Raila Odinga had to be admitted in hospital in what analysts are calling fatigue. His team has claimed that the reason for the admission was food poisoning, but this is laughable. Being president requires a lot of stamina. When you are the president, you can get a 2am phone call to attend to an urgent national issue. Like over the weekend, President Uhuru Kenyatta had to wake at 1am, having barely rested after a long day of prayers for the country, to attend to the emergency of Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph Nkaissery dying abruptly. Old people, such as Raila, are not known to disrupt their sleep in the middle of the night and fully focus on doing anything meaningful. On August 8, one of the reasons Kenyans may decide to permanently retire Raila, who should have called it a career after the 2013 loss, is because he lacks stamina and fitness to be president.