Colin Powell, Former US Secretary of State and the First Black Secretary of State, is dead.
In a statement, the family said he died of COVID-19 complications.
“We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American,” the statement read.
The statement added that he had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
Powell served as National Security Adviser to former President Ronald Reagan from 1987 to 1989 and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President George HW Bush, and former President Bill Clinton from 1989 to 1993.
He was also a top military officer who rose to become the first African-American secretary of state in 2001 under Republican George W Bush.
Meanwhile, a Nigerian former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, has mourned Powell’s death, saying his tenure marked a significant departure from the traditional relations between Africa and the United States.
Obasanjo, in a statement by his media aide, Kehinde Akinyemi, said, “With him, among others, I have always seen advantage in the closeness of the African-Americans with the mother Africa. It is mutually good and beneficial for the Africans at home and for our brothers and sisters in diaspora in the US, Caribbean or southern America.
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