The Risk of Appointing a Rogue Petroleum Minister in Somalia

[Deeq A.]

A Rogue Petroleum Minister: Abdirashid M. Ahmed sighed a production sharing agreement with Coastline LTD in violation of the 2021 Presidential Decree on the transition period.

The soon-to-be fired Somalia Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Abdirashid M. Ahmed told VOA Somali Service that he had signed a production sharing agreement with Coastline Exploration Ltd, the company that bought the interests of Soma Oil and Gas. Abdirashid said that President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed had verbally authorized him to sign the agreement.

Last year, President Mohamed issued a decree against signing any agreement with companies or foreign countries during the transition period. Both the Somalia Presidency and the Office the Prime Minister annulled the agreement publicized by Abdirashid in his Twitter account.

This is the second governance setback to have faced the Federal Government of Somalia with two months. In January 2022, Mohamed Hussein Roble, the Somalia Prime Minister, attempted to release to UAE money seized at the Mogadishu Airport in 2018, and vowed to renew relations between the two countries in disregard of the Somali Federal Parliament’s decision to ban activities of DP World, a UAE parastatal that signed illegal concession agreements to run Berbera Port and Bosaso Port. Roble will fire the Petroleum Minister, but who can hold him (Roble) liable for breaching the Presidential Decree when he promised to return the seized money to UAE government?

One week ago, the former Somalia Ambassador to South Sudan Abdirahman Dinari said that Somalia Ministers act on whim and out of personal interest at the expense of the national interest. The risk of appointing a rogue petroleum Minister highlights the unreliability of the Somali federal institutions.

In 2019 Puntland President Said Abdullahi Deni called for a consultative role for Federal Member States before the Lower House passes a bill. He was right to call for such a balancing approach, but forgot that the same institutional deficiencies bedevil Federal Member States. Rubber-stamp Federal Member State Parliaments cannot have a final say on what the rubber-stamp bicameral federal législature does.

Bad governance is a national security threat for Somalia. Without sound institutional development rogue ministers will keep damaging the little progress made since 2000, when the first transitional government was formed in Somalia.

Adan M. Dawad

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