Opinion: Man who decided he was the state

By Khadar AfrahTuesday April 14, 2026

For years, Somalia’s opposition has made its presence felt from Mogadishu statements and Nairobi hotel corridors, while Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has worked from Villa Somalia to stretch his authority, centralize power, and treat the federal arrangement as something still under construction.

At some point, political opposition has to move beyond speeches and into strategy. In South West State, it did not.

Federal troops moved into Baidoa, forced President Abdiaziz Laftagareen from office within days, and wrapped up the operation before the international community had even finished voicing concern. The reason was not superior firepower. It was the lack of coordinated pressure anywhere else.

The opposition gave Mohamud exactly what a centralizing presidency needs most: one clear, isolated target. South West State went ahead with a snap re-election in direct defiance of Mogadishu, turning a constitutional dispute into a policing problem.

Mohamud no longer had to defend removing a regional leader. He simply had to enforce the law as written. The opposition supplied both the pretext and the victim.

The logic of this presidency deserves close attention.

Parliamentary amendments extended presidential terms and reinforced federal supremacy over the regions. At the same time, the Justice and Solidarity Party of President Hassan brought the presidents of Hirshabelle, Galmudug, and South West State into his political orbit, with him serving as chairman and presidential candidate. The result was a coalition that shielded the centre from pressure coming from several directions at once, giving him room to act firmly on the periphery while preserving the image of stability nationwide. This is not a leader working inside the system. It is a leader who has made the system work for his own continuation in office.

It is worth pausing on the Turkish deep-sea drilling ship.

The vessel arrived. It was announced. It was photographed. The ceremony was broadcast. And it created exactly the kind of attention a presidency facing a legitimacy problem would want in the final weeks of its mandate.

The ship has now served its purpose.

What the visit delivered was optics. A sitting president nearing the end of his term standing beside a NATO member state, projecting the image of a government with an international agenda and a future beyond May. It was choreography.

To be clear, no one in Somalia objects to the exploration of Somali resources. The opposition is not against drilling. Every political actor, in every region and across every faction, wants to see the country’s wealth developed for the benefit of its people. That has never been the issue.

The dispute is over whether a vessel and a ceremony can stand in for a political settlement. Somalia’s resources belong to all Somalis. If exploration begins in earnest and produces real revenue, the whole country should benefit. That shared interest is exactly why this moment warranted more than a photograph.

If Hassan Sheikh Mohamud truly has strategic vision, the opportunity has not yet closed. There is still time before 15 May to bring political actors together, secure a negotiated settlement, and organize credible elections. Somalia does not need another staged event. It needs a political order.

A drilling ship is not a legacy. A peaceful transfer of power is.

The response to this kind of power has to be different. Not better slogans. Not more trips abroad. A serious opposition framework rests on three pillars.

Political presence in the central states.

Hirshabelle and Galmudug remain the decisive terrain. Their alignment with Villa Somalia is not ideological; it is transactional, tied to survival and access to federal resources. Ali Gudlawe and Qoor-Qoor are not loyalists in any deep sense. They are pragmatic figures whose calculations can change when credible opposition leaders appear in Jowhar and Dhusamareb, meet elders, speak with regional lawmakers, and show that alternatives exist. The fault lines are already there. They simply have not been pressured.

Narrative coordination without a formal alliance.

Formal coalitions in Somali politics often buckle under pressure and move too slowly. What is needed is not a signed pact. It is discipline and timing. Statements from opposition figures in different regions, issued in sync, strengthen one another without requiring lengthy negotiations. Consistent constitutional language across every platform reinforces a single message: one man is dismantling an architecture that took 15 years to build.

The Nigeria case of 2006 shows why this works.

President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to amend Nigeria’s constitution so he could remain in office beyond the two-term limit. He had state power, money, and strong influence over the ruling party. What he lacked was the ability to absorb resistance from several directions at once.

Opposition governors across different states did not confront him at a single point. They resisted through the Senate, through party structures, and through regional networks, each applying pressure in its own sphere. Obasanjo was left managing a political environment in which no one intervention could solve the problem. The third-term bid collapsed.

The lesson for Somalia is straightforward. President Hassan can handle one isolated challenge. He cannot neatly absorb coordinated pressure from Baidoa, Jowhar, Kismayo, Garowe and Dhusamareb at the same time. The question is whether the opposition is prepared to act across all of them at once.

Then there is the narrative problem, which the opposition has repeatedly failed to confront.

Hassan’s handling of the situation in Jubaland is telling. Federal forces fought Jubaland’s fighters and lost. Madobe stayed in place. Yet Mohamud absorbed the setback without any obvious erosion of authority. He moved on, kept up pressure through other channels, and continued presenting his government as a functioning federal administration dealing with difficult but manageable regional actors.

Control does not always mean actual control. It means avoiding visible disorder in enough places at the same time. With Hirshabelle, South West and Galmudug on his side, Hassan could point to a federal majority. Two regions pushing back from the margins looked, in that frame, like isolated resistance rather than a systemic challenge. The opposition’s task was to break that image. Instead, it reinforced it.

The constitutional argument also matters for foreign audiences. A contest between political rivals is a domestic matter. A president dismantling a federal structure built with international support and funding is something else entirely. Opposition figures who return repeatedly to constitutional principle, rather than personal grievance, stand on ground Mohamud cannot easily claim for himself.

So the situation is this.

The opposition can keep meeting in Nairobi and issuing statements. Or it can move into the central states, build pressure across several regions, use parliament as a sustained arena of resistance, and force a government with limited resources to deal with multiple problems instead of one convenient target. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is not beyond reach. The unity of his central bloc is built on convenience, not loyalty. His international standing depends on appearance. His forces cannot be everywhere at once. But the most important fact remains this, and the opposition must not lose sight of it. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s presidential term ends on 15 May 2026.

Not next year. In weeks.

After 15 May, he remains in office without a mandate. Each day he stays beyond that date strengthens the opposition’s constitutional case. The very framework he says he is reforming becomes the thing that exposes him.

The opposition does not need to defeat him in one dramatic showdown. It needs to be present, organized, and anchored in constitutional principle across multiple regions when that date arrives.

Stop issuing statements. Start showing up. The clock is already ticking.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Hiiraan Online’s editorial stance.

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By Khadar Afrah