He was speaking in an interview on eNCA on Thursday evening.
Odinga says despite al-Shabaab's terror attack, the country will not pull troops out of Somalia.
"We will not be intimidated or blackmailed by these desperate acts of terrorism because we did go to Somalia for a reason and that was to protect our own territorial integrity which was under threat.
"We already had a lot of terrorist attacks before our troops went to Somalia. Our presence in Somalia has helped to stabilise that country, we have weakened al-Shabaab substantially in Somalia and normalcy has returned to a very substantial portion of the Somali territory," said Odinga.
His statement follows last week’s terrorist attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, in which more than 60 people have been killed. Forensics teams from around the world are in Kenya helping to recover bodies and identify the terrorists behind the attack.
“Al-Shabaab is part of al-Qaeda, it’s part of a bigger international terrorist organisation and as you know this is not an issue that can be eradicated overnight. It has a process, but the international community is determined to proceed with this and Kenya must play its part in this whole confrontation,” he said.
- This story has been updated with more comments from Raila Odinga.
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