Former Mombasa Senator Hassan Omar has had a great career in politics and human activism.
Omar was lucky to be mentored by great minds at a tender age. His uncles, the late Abdallah Mohamed Bin Suleiman and the late Professor Ali Alamin Mazrui, were instrumental in his development of interest in politics.
Suleiman helped Omar love politics and current affairs while the legendary Mazrui guided him into activism. Mazrui’s social justice and human rights influence is what made Omar who he is today politically.
Ali Alamin Mazrui was born on 24 February 1933 in Mombasa and died on 12 October 2014. He had several publications on Islamic and African studies that have outlived him. He also loved writing about the North-South relations.
Mazrui attended primary school in Mombasa. He also did not perform well in the Cambridge School Certificate to be admitted at Makerere University. He however got a government scholarship to study a Bachelor of Arts in Great Britain at Manchester University in 1960.
He went on to get Master of Arts in New York at Columbia University in 1961. Mazrui got his PHD in 1966 at Oxford University (Nuffield College).
Professor Ali Alamin Mazrui used Kwame Nkuruma’s pan-Africanism ideas to front his famous Africa’s Tripkle Heritage that includes Africanity, Islam and Christianity. He came back to start his academic career at a university that once denied him admission, Makerere University in Uganda.
While at Makerere, his reputation grew especially in political science. This prompted several leaders to request him to be their advisor.
Zanzibar Revolution leader, John Okello, and former Ugandan President Idi Amin Dada were some of the high profile leaders who approached him. However, he refused to publicly take political sides.
Politics forced him out of East Africa and went to the USA to continue his academic journey. He however continued lecturing at the University of Jos, Nigeria.
In 2005, he was ranked by USA’s Foreign Policy and UK’s Prospect Magazine as the 73rd topmost intellectual person in the world.