While Sankara and Lumumba were killed before their 38th birthdays, here’s why dictators Idi Amin, Mobutu and Bokassa died old men

Idi Amin Dada

Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer who served as the President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He overthrew the elected government of Milton Obote and declared himself president of Uganda, launching a ruthless eight-year regime in which an estimated 300,000 civilians were massacred. His policies and military expenditures brought about the country’s economic decline lasting decades.

It had to take Ugandans exile and Tanzanians to seize the capital Kampala in 1979 before Amin’s terror reign came to an end. He then fled to Saudi Arabia living out the remainder of his life. Amin lived comfortably until his death from kidney failure in 2003 at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Riyadh aged 78.

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It should be remembered that Amin joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR), a regiment of the British colonial army, and quickly rose through the ranks getting deployed to Somalia in 1949 to fight the Shifta rebels while also fighting the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya.