Saturday, July 12, 2025
  • REPORT A STORY
  • PRIVACY
  • CONTACT US
WITHIN NIGERIA - NEWS PICKS
  • HOME
  • FEATURES
  • NEWS PICKS
    • BREAKING
    • National
    • Local News
    • Politics
    • Diaspora
    • Business
    • Education
    • Sports
    • World News
      • Africa
      • U.S
      • Asia
      • Europe
    • XTRA
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • MORE
    • GIST
    • ARTICLES
    • VIDEOS
No Result
View All Result
WITHIN NIGERIA - NEWS PICKS
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • FEATURES
  • NEWS PICKS
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • MORE

Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is dead

Adejayan Gbenga Gsong by Adejayan Gbenga Gsong
March 29, 2021
in Africa
Reading Time: 2 mins read
0 0
A A
0
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Sarah Obama, the grandmother of former US President Barack Obama, has died aged 99 in western Kenya, her daughter told AFP Monday.

“It is true she has gone to be with the Lord, she passed on this morning,” said an emotional Marsat Onyango, her daughter.

Sarah Obama, popularly known as Mama Sarah, had been admitted to the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kisumu.

Family spokesman Sheikh Musa Ismail said she had been unwell for a week, but had tested negative for Covid-19.

READ ALSO

Africa in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: My Vision for an AI-Driven Educational Renaissance

France Hands Over Last Military Base in Ivory Coast

Djibouti’s Mahamoud Youssouf Elected AU Commission Chairman

Liberia: President Suspends Over 450 Officials for Failing to Declare Assets

Ismail said the former president had “sent his condolences.”

Once a simple country woman, Sarah Obama was for a long time best known for the hot porridge and doughnuts she served at a local school.

But she rose to world fame with the 2008 election of her step-grandson Barack as the first black US president.

Already a national celebrity after the former Illinois senator Barack Obama visited Kenya in 2006, Sarah’s modest homestead became a tourist attraction with Obama’s November 2008 election triumph.

Born in 1922 in a village on the shores of Lake Victoria, Sarah was the third wife of Hussein Onyango Obama, President Obama’s grandfather, a herbalist and a village elder who fought for the British in Burma, now called Myanmar.

Onyango Obama, who died in 1975, is said to be the first man to swap goatskin clothing for trousers in his village. He returned from the war in Burma with a gramophone and a picture of a white woman he claimed to have married.

Although not a blood relation, President Obama often refered to Sarah as his grandmother, calling her “granny”.

On his trip back to Kenya as US president, he met with her among other family members in Nairobi.

After leaving office, he travelled to her home in the village of Kogelo in 2018, joking he had been unable to do so in 2015 as his jet was too big to land in Kisumu.

Obama is linked to his Kenyan family via his father Barack senior, a pipe-smoking economist who Obama has admitted he “never truly” knew.

He met Barack Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, in Hawaii. But he walked out when Obama was just two and died in a car crash in Nairobi in 1982, aged 46.

Obama senior had worked in the government of Jomo Kenyatta, who led Kenya at independence from Britain until his death 14 years later in 1978.

The two men did not get on well, with Kenyatta — the father of Kenya’s current president Uhuru Kenyatta — sacking Obama senior, and blackballing him for further government jobs, an ostracisation that would help fuel alcoholism.

Kenyatta said Monday the country had “lost a strong, virtuous woman. A matriarch who held together the Obama family and was an icon of family values.”

He said she would be remembered for her philanthropic work, saying she had initiated several community development projects in her village.

Mama Sarah will be buried Tuesday at her home, in line with Islamic traditions, said Ismail.

POPULAR TODAY

  • All
  • National
  • Local News
  • Politics
  • World News
  • Sports
  • XTRA

Presidency: Shettima’s comment at Adoke’s book launch grossly misrepresented

July 11, 2025

Ex-minister: Tinubu’ll be ousted democratically, coup claim is blackmail

July 11, 2025

Gunmen ambush police in Nasarawa, flee with gunshot wounds

July 11, 2025

‘I’ll open the books’ — Gov Okpebholo to probe Obaseki’s eight-year administration

July 11, 2025

Discussion about this post

ADVERTISEMENT

LATEST

Bandits kill six in fresh Katsina attack

July 11, 2025

Lagos governor asks residents to maintain peace during LG polls, says vote strengthens democracy

July 11, 2025

Tinubu coercing PDP governors to join APC – Bode George

July 11, 2025
President Bola Tinubu and Vice president Kashim Shettima

Tinubu sends Shettima to São Tomé for 50th Independence bash

July 11, 2025

‘I’ll open the books’ — Gov Okpebholo to probe Obaseki’s eight-year administration

July 11, 2025

I fabricated villa rat invasion story to cover up Buhari’s sickness – Garba Shehu

July 11, 2025
Load More
NEWS PICKS — WITHIN NIGERIA

WITHIN NIGERIA MEDIA LTD.

NEWS, MULTI MEDIA

WITHIN NIGERIA is an online news media that focuses on authoritative reports, investigations and major headlines that springs from National issues, Politics, Metro, Entertainment; and Articles.

Follow us on social media:

CORPORATE LINKS

  • About
  • Contacts
  • Report a story
  • Advertisement
  • Content Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
 
  • Fact-Checking Policy
  • Ethics Policy
  • Corrections Policy
  • REPORT A STORY
  • PRIVACY
  • CONTACT US

© 2022 WITHIN NIGERIA MEDIA LTD. designed by WebAndName

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • FEATURES
  • NEWS PICKS
    • BREAKING
    • National
    • Local News
    • Politics
    • Diaspora
    • Business
    • Education
    • Sports
    • World News
      • Africa
      • U.S
      • Asia
      • Europe
    • XTRA
  • ENTERTAINMENT
  • MORE
    • GIST
    • ARTICLES
    • VIDEOS

© 2022 WITHIN NIGERIA MEDIA LTD. designed by WebAndName