Renowned Ghanaian poet and statesman Kofi Awoonor was among the many folks confirmed lifeless in an assault by Somali Islamist militants on a Nairobi shopping center, Ghana’s president said.Sunday.
John Dramani Mahama said.in an announcement: “I am shocked to hear the death of Prof. Kofi Awoonor in Nairobi mall terrorist attack. Such a sad twist of fate…”
Awoonor, 78, was killed whereas buying together with his son within the Westgate mall, Ghana’s Deputy Information Minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu said.
His son was injured and has been discharged from the hospital, Ofosu said. Awoonor had been because of seem on the Storymoja Hay literary pageant in Nairobi on Saturday.
Awoonor was Ghana’s consultant to the United Nations underneath the presidency of Jerry Rawlings from 1990 to 1994, and was additionally president of the Council of State, an advisory physique to the president. He stepped down from that function earlier this yr.
He was a famend author, most notably for his poetry impressed by the oral custom of the Ewe folks, to which he belonged.
Much of his finest work was revealed in Ghana’s fast post-independence interval, a part of which he spent in exile after the primary president Kwame Nkrumah, whom Awoonor was near, was overthrown in a coup.
His books included “Rediscovery and Other Poems,” revealed in 1964.
Awoonor returned to Ghana in 1975 and was later arrested and tried over his suspected involvement in a coup, in accordance with a biography from the United States-based Poetry Foundation.
He was launched after 10 months, and the inspiration said.his imprisonment influenced his e-book “The House by the Sea”.
During his time within the United States within the early 1970s, Awoonor was chairman of the Department of Comparative Literature on the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
He was additionally Ghana’s ambassador to Brazil and Cuba within the 1980s, the inspiration said.
Kenyan troops had been locked in a fierce firefight with Somali militants contained in the upmarket Nairobi shopping center Sunday in a ultimate push to finish the siege.
Somalia’s Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab rebels said the carnage on the half Israeli-owned advanced was in retaliation for Kenya’s navy intervention in Somalia, the place African Union troops are battling the Islamists.
The Westgate mall is widespread with rich Kenyans and expatriates, and was full of round 1,000 buyers when the gunmen marched in at noon Saturday, tossed grenades and sprayed computerized gunfire on terrified folks.