Former Big Brother Naija housemate Khafi Kareem was all tears on Wednesday, July 29 as her brother Alexander Kareem was buried.
Alexander, 20, was shot dead on his way home on June 8 after a visit to a convenience store in Shepherd’s Bush, West London. Police said it is a case of mistaken identity and no arrest has been made so far.
Khafi said in a heartfelt eulogy for her brother: “To anybody who’s seen this (in the news) and is thinking this is just another black boy who’s been shot by violence, I want to tell you that is not the case.
“Alex’s life mattered, he had a future ahead of him, he’s not just another black boy.
“He had a family, he had friends, this is real.”
Emotional scenes unfolded at Alex’s funeral as about 30 people gathered at the Church of the Holy Ghost and St Stephen in Shepherd’s Bush to say a final farewell to the young boy nicknamed “Alexander the Great”.
Alex, a computer whizz who enjoyed coding and playing the video game Fortnite, was to start university in September to study Computer Science before the tragic incident.
In heart-wrenching scenes, his mother Victoria Oloniluyi clutched his coffin, hugging it before it was lowered to the ground.
The youngest of four siblings, his family said they “would have taken the bullet for him”.
Khafi said their mother named him after Alexander the Great, “because, even though he was the youngest, my mum always knew this is where greatness was going to come from in our family.”
“And most importantly he was innocent, he had nothing to do with the horrid, horrible lifestyle that took him away, he had nothing to do with that,” she added.
It was not immediately clear if Khafi’s fiancĂ© Gedoni Ekpata was at the funeral.
Alex is survived by his mother, sister Khafi, and brothers Henry, 29, and Kabir Kareem, 26.
