Obama family matriarch has died in a Kenyan hospital at 99
Nairobi (Kenya): Sarah Obama, the matriarch of former U.S. President Barack Obama's Kenyan family has died, relatives and officials confirmed Monday. She was at least 99 years old.
Mama Sarah, as the step-grandmother of the former U.S. president was fondly called, promoted education for girls and orphans in her rural Kogelo village.
She passed away around 4 a.m. local time while being treated at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral hospital in Kisumu, Kenya's third-largest city in the country's west, according to her daughter Marsat Onyango.
She died this morning. We are devastated, Onyango told The Associated Press on a phone call.
"Mama was sick with normal diseases she did not die of COVID-19, a family spokesman Sheik Musa Ismail said, adding that she had tested negative for the disease. He said she had been ill for a week before being taken to the hospital.
President Barack Obama has sent his condolences to his family, he said.
My family and I are mourning the loss of our beloved grandmother, Sarah Ogwel Onyango Obama, affectionately known to many as Mama Sarah but known to us as Dani or Granny, the former president posted on Twitter, with a photo of the young Obama with his grandmother.
We will miss her dearly, but we'll celebrate with gratitude her long and remarkable life.
She will be buried Tuesday before midday and the funeral will be held under Islamic rites.
The passing away of Mama Sarah is a big blow to our nation. We've lost a strong, virtuous woman, a matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values, President Uhuru Kenyatta said.
She will be remembered for her work to promote education to empower orphans, Kisumu Governor Anyang Nyong'o said while offering his condolences to the people of Kogelo village for losing a matriarch.
She was a philanthropist who mobilized funds to pay school fees for the orphans, he said.
Sarah Obama, was the second wife of President Obama's grandfather and helped raise his father, Barack Obama, Sr. The family is part of Kenya's Luo ethnic group.
President Obama often showed affection toward her and referred to her as Granny in his memoir, Dreams from My Father.
He described meeting her during his 1988 trip to his father's homeland and their initial awkwardness as they struggled to communicate which developed into a warm bond. She attended his first inauguration as president in 2009.
Later, Obama spoke about his grandmother again in his September 2014 speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
For decades, Sarah Obama has helped orphans, raising some in her home. The Mama Sara Obama Foundation helped provide food and education to children who lost their parents providing school supplies, uniforms, basic medical needs, and school fees.
In a 2014 interview with AP, she said that even as an adult, letters would arrive but she couldn't read them. She said she didn't want her children to be illiterate, so she saw that all her family's children went to school.
She recalled pedaling the president's father six miles (nine kilometers) to school on the back of her bicycle every day from the family's home village of Kogelo to the bigger town of Ngiya to make sure he got the education that she never had.
I love education, Sarah Obama said, because children learn they can be self-sufficient, especially girls who too often had no opportunity to go to school.
If a woman gets an education she will not only educate her family but educate the entire village, she said.
In recognition of her work to support education, she was honored by the United Nations in 2014, receiving the inaugural Women's Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award. (AP)
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Osman Hadi murder: Prime accused denies role, claims he was in Dubai
Dubai: The murder case of Bangladeshi student leader Sharif Osman Hadi has taken a new turn after the prime accused, Faisal Karim Masud, publicly denied any involvement in the killing, asserting that he was in Dubai at the time, contradicting earlier claims by Bangladesh police that he had fled to India.
In a video message that has gone viral on social media, the authenticity of which has not been independently verified, Masud rejected the allegations against him and described the case as a fabricated conspiracy. He claimed that a radical political group was responsible for the attack on Hadi and said he had been falsely implicated.
“I am Faisal Karim Masud. I want to state clearly that I am not involved in the murder of Hadi in any way. This case is completely false and based on a fabricated conspiracy,” Masud said in the video. He added that he was forced to leave Bangladesh and travel to Dubai due to the allegations, despite holding a valid five-year multiple-entry visa for the UAE.
Masud acknowledged that he had visited Hadi’s office shortly before the shooting but maintained that their relationship was purely professional. Describing himself as a businessman who owns an IT firm and a former employee of the Ministry of Finance, Masud said he had approached Hadi regarding a job opportunity. According to him, Hadi sought an advance payment of 500,000 taka for arranging the job and also requested donations for various programmes, which he said he provided.
The accused further alleged that his family members were being harassed and falsely implicated in the case. “They have no involvement whatsoever. This kind of inhumane treatment of my family is unjust and unacceptable, and I strongly protest against it,” he said.
Masud also accused Jamaat-linked elements of orchestrating Hadi’s killing, claiming the student leader was targeted by “Jamaati elements” and that he and his younger brother were deliberately framed. A photograph purportedly showing Masud’s UAE visa has also circulated widely online.
Earlier, Bangladesh police had stated that Masud and another accused, Alamgir Sheikh, fled the country after the killing and entered India through the Meghalaya border. Media reports in Bangladesh claimed the two crossed over via the Haluaghat border in Mymensingh district and were currently in India. India, however, has firmly denied any connection between the accused and its territory, calling the allegations a false narrative being pushed by extremist elements.
Sharif Osman Hadi, a key figure in Bangladesh’s student uprising last year, was shot in the head by masked gunmen in Dhaka on December 12 and succumbed to his injuries six days later at a hospital in Singapore. He had emerged as a prominent leader during the student-led protests that culminated in the end of Sheikh Hasina’s rule.
