NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga. [Photo/ Courtesy]
This past Thursday, July 6, something happened during a campaign trail that should make NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga stop telling falsehoods about the Jubilee administration, even as he seeks the people’s approval on August 8 to lead the nation. When campaigning in Kericho, a county that strongly supported the election of President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013, Mr Odinga asked the people to confirm that the business of farming had suffered since the Jubilee administration came to power. “Trade and farming has collapsed, true or false? Tea farmers are crying, true or false?” Raila asked Kericho residents, before getting a shocking response. The crowd, mostly made up of farmers from the area, shouted back at the former prime minister that he was lying about tea farming declining under President Kenyatta’s administration. The ODM leader should have seen this humiliation coming. He is probably on the longest streak of peddling lies about anyone. His opponents have previously pushed back on the falsehoods, but it is the people of Kericho who have started the trend of openly calling out lying politicians. Over the past four years, ever since losing the presidential contest to Mr. Kenyatta, Mr Odinga has used unsubstantiated claims against the UhuRuto administration to stay relevant in the news. One of those widely covered subjects is the Euro bond money. Without providing any evidence, Mr Odinga claimed that the Sh88 billion that Treasury CS Henry Rotich had secured from foreign investors to boost development projects in Kenya was stolen by government officials. Mr Rotich came out to account for the money, but this did not stop the NASA presidential candidate from continuing to lie about the alleged theft. To this day, he is yet to provide any evidence to back his claims. An overwhelming majority of Kenyans agree that the Jubilee administration has constructed thousands of kilometres of roads. There is evidence to this. Millions of homes have been connected to electricity since 2013. No doubt about that. But Mr Odinga has disputed these verifiable claims, and many of the development projects that the government has done. The way the ODM boss has been getting away with lying about virtually everything about his opponents seems to have inspired other leaders under the NASA coalition to shamelessly peddle falsehoods. Weeks ago, Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi famously claimed that the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) does not have a station in Voi. Can anyone tell a bigger lie than this? Now that voters have decided to shame leaders who lie when campaigning, it is time for Mr Odinga to finally start telling the truth if he stands any chance of winning the August 8 presidential race.