By Onyinkwa Onya
Raila Odinga has in a matter of days achieved in the South Sudan peace process, what the IGAD, AU and UN could not achieve for years on end. He is the same Raila Amollo that the international community felt was the best suited to mediate peace in Cote d’Ivoire when it was on the brink of disintegrating. The same one whose list of close personal friends include Olusegun Obasanjo, Pombe Magufuli and Cyril Ramaphosa. The one whom some of the most reputable Universities and think tanks in the West invite to deliver lectures to the most eminent audiences you can assemble anywhere on the globe. He is a global icon.
That is why when on the local political arena, whenever you hear a village politician who holds night meetings with his acolytes in which they converse only in their village dialect, repeatedly hurl such village insults as ‘yule jamaa wa vitendawili’, you ought to be reminded of the fact that even if France and Saudi Arabia sometimes find themselves in one tournament every four to eight years, they are by no means equals. We are past the group stage. We are now in the ‘Vitendawili phase’, there are those still in the fight, and those now in the flight.
