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Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has renounced US citizenship, his office said Thursday, without specifying why the citizen of double nationality has chosen to give up his adopted pbadport.
Mohamed, widely known by his nickname Farmajo, began the process of renouncing his second citizenship shortly after his election in 2017, his office said, despite the Somali constitution allowing dual nationality.
"We are officially informing you that the president has given up his second citizenship of the United States today," his office said in a statement.
He said the task involved legal experts from the naturalization departments of the United States and Somalia. But this does not explain why Mohamed abandoned the pbadport.
Mohamed lived in the United States for many years and was a diplomat in Washington in the late 1980s before applying for asylum. Father of four, his family still lives in the United States.
He held various administrative positions in the United States before returning to his home country, Somalia, as prime minister in 2010, a position he would hold only for eight months.
He was then elected president in February 2017 and his administration has close ties with Washington in its fight against Al-Shabaab militants. The United States is training Somali special forces and launching regular drone strikes in the country, targeting the Islamist insurgency.
Many Somalis have dual nationality after fleeing years of conflict, drought and economic hardship that have affected the strategic country of the Horn of Africa since the fall of autocrat Siad Barre in 1991.
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