Doctored video falsely shared as Kenyan leader appointing Odinga to cabinet post
- Published on March 19, 2025 at 11:34
- 5 min read
- By Peris GACHAHI, AFP Kenya
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Kenyan opposition politician Raila Odinga and President William Ruto signed a cooperation agreement they said would foster unity in the country and help to solve problems facing ordinary people. Days before the signing, a post shared on TikTok purported to show Ruto announcing the appointment of Odinga as the country’s new prime cabinet secretary. But the footage is doctored; the original video, from 2022, shows Ruto announcing the appointment of Musalia Mudavadi to the position that he currently holds. The clip was spliced with unrelated footage of Odinga to give the impression he was the one being appointed.
“Ruto appoints Raila Odinga as new prime cabinet secretary,” reads the text overlaid on a TikTok post published on March 2, 2025.
The post was shared more than 2,000 times before it was deleted. In the video, Ruto appears to say: “The other very important position and that is the position of the prime cabinet secretary, and I have appointed my brother Raila Odinga into that office.”
When Ruto says “... my brother”, the clip cuts to Odinga walking towards a podium. The audio then noticeably changes as Ruto appears to say Odinga’s name.
The audio then resets and Ruto adds: “He will share and coordinate national government legislative agenda across all ministries and state departments in consultation with and for transmission to the party and coalition leadership in both national assembly and the senate.”
The clip, which is presented as “breaking news”, also includes unrelated text promoting the so-called Hustler Fund, a Kenyan government loan project also known as the Financial Inclusion Fund.
Ruto-Odinga deal
Ruto and Odinga signed a working agreement at Nairobi’s Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC) on March 7, 2025 (archived here).
The pact outlined a framework for collaboration between the country’s two largest political parties -- the ruling United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and the opposition’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) -- formalising what has been termed a “broad-based government” (archived here and here).
Odinga, who lost the Africa Union Commission chairmanship race to Djibouti’s Mahamoud Ali Youssouf in January, was Ruto’s main opponent in the 2022 presidential election (archived here and here).
The opposition figure, who has unsuccessfully contested the presidency five times, has had a series of cooperation agreements with different sitting presidents who were once political rivals (archived here and here).
One such agreement led to Odinga serving as the country’s prime minister between 2008 and 2013 in the late Mwai Kibaki’s government, following the deadly 2007 post-election violence (archived here and here).
The TikTok video purporting to show Ruto appointing Odinga as Kenya’s new prime cabinet secretary is, however, doctored.
Doctored video
AFP Fact Check conducted reverse image searches on keyframes from the clip to find the original footage.
A longer version was published on YouTube by Kenya’s national broadcaster KBC on September 27, 2022 (archived here).
At the time, Ruto was announcing the appointment of Mudavadi as the country’s prime cabinet secretary.
From the video, AFP Fact Check established that Mudavadi’s name was replaced with Odinga’s in the TikTok clip.
We repeated the process for the brief footage of Odinga seen in the TikTok clip.
The searches led to a joint press briefing by Odinga and Mudavadi published on YouTube by Azimio TV on August 21, 2024 (archived here).
Mudavadi is cropped out of the frame in the TikTok video.
The two men were speaking about Odinga’s bid to lead the Africa Union Commission (AUC).
Ruto’s government has not announced a cabinet position for Odinga, nor has it been confirmed by credible sources.
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