Veteran Kenyan politician and former prime minister Raila Odinga has expressed interest in seeking the chairmanship of the African Union Commission, currently held by Moussa Faki Mahamat of Chad, according to his party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
Odinga spoke when he met former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi on Thursday, February 15, ODM said on X.
“I am ready to go for the championship of the African Union,” the party quoted him as saying.
ODM cited the former Nigerian leader Obasanjo as saying that Odinga was “the right person to take over the mantle” of the African Union Commission, which is the continental body’s secretariat and undertakes its day-to-day activities.
Mahamat, a former Chadian prime minister, was first elected chairman of the African Union Commission in 2017.
He was re-elected in 2021 for another four-year term that will end in 2024.
Odinga, 79, was the prime minister of Kenya from 2008 to 2013.
