SYL president Haji Mohamed Hussein abandoned the party for an Egypt scholarship in 1950

Evidence

SYL president Haji Mohamed Hussein was offered a scholarship to study in Egypt in 1950. League leaders were concerned about the effect of his departure and asked him to stay until the prisoners in Baidoa were freed and refugees from that city were resettled. They offered to go to the Egyptians and ask them to postpone the offer for a few months. Haji Mohamed rejected this offer and left the country. Many in the party suspected that Haji might have been bribed by those who wished the SYL ill. The fear was that if Haji Mohamed left, there would be a power struggle within the party that would facilitate its demise. Fortunately for the SYL, the vice president, Mohamed Sheikh Osman, took over the party’s leadership until a new president, Haji Farah Ali Omer, was elected in 1952. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 1252