He later attended the American University in Cairo, obtaining the degree of Master of Arts in journalism.
Their arrest followed a story in which the paper quoted reports in The Indian Ocean newsletter, that Uganda had become compensated with gold by the Kinshasa government of Laurent Kabila, for its support, along with Rwanda, in helping to oust the regime of long-term Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
[4] In May 1999, during the Second Congo War, Onyango-Obbo and other editors of The Monitor – Wafula Ogutu and David Ouma Balikowa – were arrested and charged with "sedition" and "publication of false news", following the publication of a photograph of a naked woman being sexually abused by men in military uniform.
[5] In October 2002, again Onyango-Obbo and three other colleagues were arrested and charged with publication of a story that "aided the enemies of Uganda", after a report that alleged that a military helicopter might have been shot down in northern Uganda by the obnoxious rebels of the Lord's Resistance Army.
In his view, his continued presence had become counter-productive, because of the hostility of the government towards him and the extent to which he had become a controversial figure, and was overshadowing the newspaper's long-term prospects and undermining the ability of other journalists at the paper to emerge.