Abstract:
The paper traces the political problems that Kenya currently faces particularly the
country’s inability to construct a united national consciousness, historical relationships that
unfolded between the country’s foremost founders, Jomo Kenyatta and Oginga Odinga and the
consequences of their political differences and subsequent-fallout in the 1960s. The fall-out saw
Kenyatta increasingly consolidating power around himself and a group of loyalists from the
Kikuyu community while Odinga who was conceptualized as the symbolic representative of the
Luo community was confined to the wilderness of politics. This paper while applying the
primordial and essentialist conceptual framework recognizes the determinant role that the two
leaders played in establishing the foundations for post-independent Kenya. This is especially true
with respect to the negative consequences that their differing perspectives on Kenyan politics
bequeathed the country, especially where the evolution of negative ethnicity is concerned. As a
result of their discordant political voices in the political arena, there were cases of corruption, the
killing of innocent Kenyans in Kisumu in 1969, political assassinations of T J Mboya, Pio Gama
Pinto and J M Kariuki among others as this paper argues.
