Winnie Odinga: Beryl and Raila had an argument the last time they met while he was alive
By Ascah Mwango, December 6, 2025Winnie Odinga has revealed that her Aunt Beryl Achieng Odinga and her father, the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, had a small argument the last time they met while he was alive.
Speaking on Saturday, December 6, 2025, during Beryl’s burial ceremony in Bondo, Winnie recounted how Beryl had gone to visit Raila about a week before he travelled to India.
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The East African Legislative Assembly Member of Parliament said that when she first tried to bring Beryl to meet her father, both were feeling unwell and hesitant to move.
After going back and forth with messages between them, Raila finally met Beryl halfway. What looked like tension at first quickly turned into laughter as the siblings shared a light-hearted moment during their last encounter. Winnie added that now, both are reunited and at peace.
“The last time I saw her, she came to see Baba, a week before India, and she was sitting in one sitting room and Baba the other. He was meeting some people, and when he finished, he asked me to call her. When I went to call her, she said she was not moving so well if he could kindly come.
I went and told him, and he said even him he was feeling sick, he could not come, go tell her to come. So I went back, and she said, ‘Tell him that he must come here.’ So I went back and forth and in the end, when I was taking her, he came and met her halfway, and where I thought they were fighting, they started laughing, ” she said.
Beryl Achieng Odinga is being laid to rest today at the ancestral family cemetery in Kang’o Ka Jaramogi, Bondo, Siaya County. She passed away on November 25, 2025, at a Nairobi hospital at the age of 73.
Raila Odinga passed away on October 15, 2025, in Kerala, India, after suffering a cardiac arrest while receiving medical treatment. He was a towering figure in Kenyan politics, remembered for his role in multiparty democracy and his tenure as Prime Minister from 2008 to 2013.