Malik Obama: My way or the highway

Sometime in 2010 the Nation published a story that Malik Obama, the step-brother of US President Barack Obama, had married a girl more than 30 years his junior.

Already a polygamist with two wives, he decided to take the girl as his third wife. The story itself was juicy and the media wanted to cover it. A former Nation photojournalist, Jacob Owiti, had taken the pictures for the story.

Attracted by the riveting story, Mr Owiti, who now works in Kisumu Governor Jack Ranguma’s office, forgot how vindictive and unyielding Malik could be.

And it did not take long before Mr Owiti and another Nation journalist met Malik for yet another interview after his brother was re-elected in 2012.

When they arrived at a restaurant in Kogelo which Malik runs, he informed them that the interview would not take place if Mr Owiti was present. The journalists tried to plead their case but that fell on deaf ears.

Finally, not wanting to cover the 68-kilometre distance from Kisumu to Nyang’oma Kogelo and go back without the story they had come for, Mr Owiti left the venue.

“He threw me out of his hotel because, according to him, we had misrepresented the situation when we reported and took pictures of how he allegedly plucked an underage girl from a nearby school,” Mr Owiti recalls.

It was an example of how Malik deals with people and situations he does not like.

And although he likes being in the media spotlight, he does not take it kindly when a journalist who has interviewed him also seeks the views of Mama Sarah Obama, the President’s step-grandmother — even though his homestead and hers are a stone’s throw away.

GOVERNMENT ATTENTION

He has often complained that Mama Sarah has been getting all the media and government attention at his expense since the election of President Obama in 2008. Mama Sarah is a co-wife of the grandmother of Malik and the President.

In fact, after returning from President Obama’s inauguration in the US, this journalist went to Kogelo to interview him. After talking to him, the journalist then went to speak to Mama Sarah who related her experience during the inauguration. The story that was eventually published in the Nation appeared to quote the old woman more than Malik. 

 “You wasted my time and gave just a quote,” he told this writer the following day, promising never to grant him another interview. 

In all, Malik is a complicated man who wants things to go only his way. That personality has also made many neighbours cautious whenever they want to visit his home in Kogelo.

Last week, Malik renewed debate about his love-hate relationship with the US President after he was invited by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for the final presidential debate.

He did not stop there. Malik went ahead to give interviews criticising President Obama, including one with Sean Hannity of Fox News, before writing a series of social media posts emphasising his support for the Republican candidate against Democratic Party opponent Hillary Clinton.

In his book Dreams from My Father, President Obama records that Malik was his best man at his wedding with Michelle on October 3, 1992. Indeed, Malik told Fox News that his relationship with his step-brother used to be good “but … since he became President, he has changed.

I can’t reach him. (I am) just disappointed. I would have thought that it would have been different. Before running for office, he was everybody’s friend.”

He told the conservative talk show host, Hannity, that the White House has turned his step-brother away from him.

“It has changed him. I think he has been sucked into that matrix and mesmerised by the power. I think so…. He was a humble guy and he would listen and one would see the soft side of him. Now he’s just too formal and stiff even when we are alone. There is no time we can talk as brother to brother.

He is busy… he has got all this line of people who want to see him. It would be nice if I could go and have dinner with him. We talk… maybe 15 or 20 minutes,” he said in the interview.

When his brother was in Kenya for the Global Entrepreneurship Summit last year, many thought he would snub Malik — who had previously criticised the President. But Malik was allowed to attend some of the events and even sat next to the United States President.

Additional reporting by Nelcon Odhiambo