By Apa Mwambeo
Luos will readily show you genuine friendship and trust – they rarely doubt, scheme against or back bite at anybody. They are a straightforward and brave lot. It is a Luo who is definitely willing to take the bullets bare-chest, the most daring creature after Jesus of Nazareth’s infamous death on that rugged cross.
They are always ready to reveal the most sacred national and ethnic oracles to any passing ear, because they are a sincere people – the exact opposite of their rivals, the Kikuyu.
Though most people have insisted that being Luo is by a divine and direct intervention in maternities, I want to state that this tribe’s tag comes with much dross and loss than good. These traits are their predisposition to political frustrations that escorted our revolutionary Jaramogi Oginga to the grave and will drop politically fatal blows on our one and only Flame of Freedom, the indomitable Raila Amolo Odinga.
The platform upon which I audaciously say that no Luo may ever be a president in Kenya in the foreseeable future is based on my analysis of how some very senior Luos behaved when the nation needed them most. Despite its piercing bluntness, this statement is prophetically considered and is bound to happen. You only need to recreate recent happenstances to see why.
The Luo and most of the coastal communities, including the Taita from where I belong harbor some dangerously similar attributes. However, the Luo’s academic status predisposes him to even more danger that a typical coastal  man like me will not likely face. There is that wanton show of pride and class that dismembers my Luo brother from other East African primates on the left. Their know-it-all disposition eventually reduces them to average politicians who cannot win a presidential race even when the entire country is supporting them.
I am a frustrated person because I cannot afford the spectacle of a Kenya that will never have a Luo president. As it is; it is only a Luo that would have taken us to a new path that will avail us the sanity to reconsider our historical and ethnic miscalculations. However, the likes of Miguna Miguna, Oduor Ong’wen, Prof Oyugi Ankong’o, Dr Evans Kidero, Shem Ochuodho, Raphael Tuju, Anyang’ Nyong’o, James Orengo and other self declared reformers who have ever hovered over the emaciated self of Jaramogi’s and Raila’s political bodies have definitely failed to deliver us. They are the proverbial foolish tick that remained on the skin of a slaughtered cow while the meat was shared at a distance.
If the gods do not come to our rescue, our brothers from the lake will continue to tear at each other until cows come back home. Their dangerous race for supremacy, or sycophancy, will serve Kenya more loss than good. It is for this reason that the likes of Miguna Miguna and Jomo era Tom Mboya took on Raila and Jaramogi respectively, with consequences that still haunt Kenya for the next half a century. Â They could not tame their hubris for the good of the nation. Their boldness to foolishly spill the blood of those they perceived as obstacles to their political pursuits turned out to be nothing else but the apex of sour-grapes-syndrome. Oh how difficult it is to consolidate the left, they are a stubborn people of the kingdom!
What larger good did Miguna Miguna’s hubris serve? He claimed to have gone into exile to fight for for for what? What was this man’s beef with the former PM? Why didn’t Mboya remain closer to Jaramogi than foolishly kiss that bullet at daytime? He died a hero? Tell that to the birds!
Someone tell Kidero that he is the first person who is hugging and kissing a bear! They have never supported anyone, no matter how much you endear yourself to them!
Luos, it is only when you start to view your tribal icons as national and regional figures that Kenyans in Western, Coast, Kisii and Eastern will feel represented in Raila Odinga. If you insist on your rudeness and overpossesion of him, you make Jakom a tribal head in Bondo or elsewhere in Luo-Nyanza.