In 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, Joseph Owili Ongei bought a green Chevrolet LUV KB20 model, chasis number 9583320.
What he did not know, however, was that he had become the new owner of the car that claimed the life of Barack Obama Sr, the father of US President Barack Obama.
“It was one of the many cars put up for disposal by the Treasury,” he says, “And the only reason I got it was that it had been left behind by purchasers. All the others in the yard had been bought except the green pick-up.”
Owili, who then worked for Ministry of Planning as a technician, says he paid Sh175,000 to Jael Atieno Onyango. Owili, who had previous knowledge of Jael before buying the car, says the latter met Obama Snr in the early 1980s at the Treasury, where she, too, worked.
Ownership records showed the car last belonged to Dr Barack H Obama, who bought it from General Motors in 1981.
Obama had been working for the Ministry of Finance when he bought the car, in a scheme that apparently saw senior officials at the ministry identify cars and have them bought by the ministry, after which the individual employees would have their salaries deducted monthly to recover the cash.
Obama Snr died on November 24, 1982 before he could settle the loan. After the fatal accident, the car was towed to the Ministry of Finance’s junk yard.
History mentions Jael Atieno as the mother of George Hussein Onyango, one of President Barack Obama’s half-brothers. In the President Obama’s Dreams From My Father, his half-sister Auma tells him how she had given up on her father, but told him to be a good father to her new born half brother George, whose mother was ‘a young woman he was living with.’
The young woman referred to here is Jael. Since she was the last to have been living with Obama Snr, she was listed as the next of kin to the deceased and ended up inheriting rights to the car and many other properties he left behind.
