Jawari Has Left a Patriotic Legacy for Somali Youths

[Deeq A.]

Mohamed Osman Jawari reminded Somali youths that the task of rebuilding the country and learning lessons from the “failed generation” lies with the Somali youngsters.

Mogadishu (Comment) — I met Mohamed Osman Jawari in August 1990 when, as the Minister of Labour and Sports, he came to the former Somali Institute of Development Administration and Management (SIDAM) campus in Shangaani to deliver a speech to Cohort 1 students of the SOMTAD (Somalia Management Training and Development Project) bound for New York State University at Albany to spend the last semester there and write up their dissertations among other projects. SIDAM was affiliated with the Labour Ministry and institutionally linked with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

SOMTAD was a successor project to the California State University Fresno-taught MBA in Mogadishu that began in 1983. In this respect, Somalia blazed the trail in globalising MBA education, thanks to generous investment by USAID. Jawari reminded us of the opportunity given to us to be educated in our homeland up to the postgraduate level free of charge. He was teaching us the value of public service and the obligation to serve the nation that invested so much in us.

Candid: A clip of the speech by Jawari to Somali youths several years ago.

When he passed away in Mogadishu last week, I stumbled upon a speech by Jawaari. “My generation was given an opportunity and inherited institutions from founding Somali leaders, but we have nothing to bequeath to you. I am sorry,” Jawaari told an audience of Somali youths in Mogadishu several years ago. His candour touched everyone, but it was not a note of despondency. He reminded Somali youths that the task of rebuilding the country and learning lessons from the “failed generation” lies with the Somali youngsters.

Jawari was appointed the Speaker of the Somali Parliament twice — in 2012 and in 2016, a remarkable record of service that speaks volumes about his role in state-building initiatives. As the former Somali Federal Finance Minister Abdullahi Sheikh Ali said in a tribute, Jawari “was a leader who was never tempted to join divisive and clannish politics.”

Civil war broke out in Mogadishu in December 1990, putting an end to our plan to return from the USA to Somalia. The failure of my generation, highlighted in Jawari’s speech to Somali youths, is a cathartic and transformative message on the human spirit’s ability to overcome what a Somali political scientist described as “civic disembowelment” in reference to the collapse of the Somali state in 1991 and subsequent internecine conflicts. Jawari was lucky enough to have lived through six decades of state-building in Somalia. He was multilingual and had a sound understanding of geopolitics. Somalia lost a devoted son and patriot. “Surely to Allah we belong and to Him we will all return” — Surah Al-Baqarah (2:156).

© Puntland Post, 2024

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