When you hear the name Caroli Omondi, you may feel like we are introducing you to a young girl called, Carol who is ODM’s flower girl. Wait a minute!

You better believe it. This is not your any other Carol.

Caroli is an engine power. He is the energy behind the most genuinely powerful democratic party in Africa as many will quietly whisper in corridors where political fortunes are made and unmade.

He has nurtured influence, he has dined on tables that saw Kenya’s future reshaped long before many in the valleys of Homa Bay ever knew the price of a vote or the weight of a manifesto.

In the beginning, when multiparty politics felt like a distant dream to some, he was there – a young lawyer with eyes on the pulse of power and the patience of an old griot. Caroli’s story is woven into the sinews of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) itself – a party born of dissent during the great constitutional battles that swept Kenya in 2005.

It was a time when the phrase “Yes or No?” carried the weight of a nation’s hope and leaders walked muddy roads asking the citizenry to choose a new dawn or remain in the dusk. In those heated camps, ODM shimmered like jua kali fire – bright, unpredictable and irresistible.

Caroli Omondi helped keep that fire burning. He was not merely an aide.

When he served as Chief of Staff in the Office of the Prime Minister between 2008 and 2013, he became a keeper of secrets, a negotiator in dark rooms, and an unseen reservoir of calm when tempers flared.

A Nairobi elder once said, Mbegu ya leo ni mazao ya kesho. Meaning, the seeds planted today bear fruit tomorrow. Caroli understood this better than most. Yet sometimes the story of a man becomes entangled with the spirit of the party he serves, and this is where irony takes its place in a quiet corner.

Decades after he first stepped into power circles, he would stand on national television and unspool a tale that startled those who thought they knew him well.

Omondi told Citizen TV’s viewers that he had personally spent millions of shillings on the party when Raila Odinga stood as its presidential flagbearer in 2013.

“In 2013, I think I spent about Ksh600-700 million ($4.65- 5.43 million) of my money,” he declared, his voice steady but tinged with both pride and relentlessness.

“I bought 25 vehicles, I gave T-shirts for $2 million. I gave candidates more than Ksh100 million ($774,600). I paid their agents Ksh90 million (697,140(. All those are documented,” he said, his words slicing through the usual political euphemisms.

His admission was more than mere a confession; it was a mirror held up to the party’s soul, revealing how much of its lifeblood – its financing – relied on the generosity and strategic largesse of a few wealthy figures rather than a broad, transparent base.

Even as Senator Eddy Oketch countered, insisting that ODM’s fundraising remained rooted in grassroots mobilisation, Caroli’s account echoed in homes from Kisumu to Msambweni like a drumbeat that could not be ignored.

Yet Caroli’s narrative did not end at personal sacrifice. He waded deeper, suggesting that early founder members included figures who would later sit on opposite benches.

He claimed that Rigathi Gachagua once brought Ksh2 million to ODM’s infancy, sent by Uhuru Kenyatta, long before the tapestry of alliances and rivalries had fully hardened.

It was an anecdote that made many heads tilt in disbelief, like elders who hear of strange events at boundary borders beyond their land, uncertain whether to laugh or frown.

Caroli spoke of these things as though they were pieces of ordinary stuff – everyday parts of a larger political puzzle few bothered to assemble.

His revelations sounded like an old man recounting legends, yet all men around him were fully grown.

Then came the fresh dilemma that has held political watchers in suspense.

In late 2025, Caroli announced he would not seek re-election on an ODM ticket, signalling a planned break from the party that had carried him into Parliament for Suba South since 2022.

“It is not my intention to seek re-election on an ODM ticket,” he told reporters, his tone measured but resolute.

His words landed like heavy stones in the soil of the party’s future, begging questions about loyalty, identity, and ideology at a time when ODM stands at a crossroads.

For years the party has relied on complex financing — from the Political Parties Fund, where according to figures debated in Parliament it received over Ksh.1.3 billion for the 2023/2024 cycle, to personal contributions and largesse from wealthy patrons.

In the National Assembly debates, Caroli himself argued for clearer definitions and reform of how parties are funded under the Political Parties Act, pointing out that without definition and equity, the system is unfair to many, including independent aspirants who receive nothing.

“Ours should not be a system where money talks louder than the voice of wananchi,” he said in one session, his earnestness translating into rare applause from both sides of the aisle.

But this very stance has placed him at odds with party stalwarts who still cling to established ways and old alliances.

Some historians of Kenya’s political evolution, like Professor James Ogude, have noted that parties like ODM were never merely vehicles of ideology but intricate networks of friends and financers, where personal wealth often buttressed political dreams more than transparent public support. Their accounts remind us that from 2005 onward, the question of who pays and who leads has always been tangled together.

Perhaps that is why Caroli’s departure is not a simple break, but a story of tension between the old ways and the promise of something new.

In his contemplative moments, one hears him quote the Luo proverb, “Limo ochukuo, pod lake dano nokwayo; mondo giwach chieng’” — you must carry your spear sideways if you mean to make a powerful strike.

He means that politics is not merely about forward motion but about angle, patience, and positioning.

And now, in this season of shifting sands, many ask: will Caroli Omondi’s new political journey reshape not only ODM but the very understanding of party financing in Kenya?

Will a man who poured funds into campaigns become the voice that demands accountability and structural reform? The answer remains unwritten, hovering like smoke over the Rift Valley at dawn.

As elders say, “Chiemo chiro ni mondo ichung’ gi thuolo mar ariyo” – A word that settles is one that is spoken calmly after a storm.

For Caroli and ODM, the storm has only just begun. And Kenya watches closely, knowing that in the dance of politics, financing writes the rhythm to which all others must move.

Caroli’s story, like ODM’s, is still being written and we are concluding the introduction.

• A Tell Media report / By Kirimi Kirema – courtesy