Share Your Experience with Us, Mr. President
By Mohamed Bakayr
14 July 2011President Abdullahi Hassan Lugbuur should be writing about the complexity of a region that he once headed up and led to turmoil instead of boring us with mundane things and delving into the analysis of issues that are hard to grasp.
Abdullahi Hassan Lugbuur is a former president of Somali region of Ethiopia. He ran for election held in August 2005 and won the presidential chair of the region, thus shouldering many responsibilities, some of which he had never fulfilled. Prior to his debut, Abdullahi Hassan had not been well known in the region’s politics or elsewhere in Ethiopia; he just came out of the blue and took the lead. He had ruled the Somali region of Ethiopia for a period of time, stretching from August 2005 to October 2008, about three years or so.
Insecurity and nepotism of all sorts peaked in the region over the course of president Abdullahi Hassan’s reign. Somali clans in the region ferociously fought against each other over solvable things, anti-peace groups wreaked havoc on almost all parts of the region to the extent that he was shot and badly wounded in the downtown core of Jigjiga City in broad daylight-- while celebrating Ginbot, a memoralbe ethiopian month which culminated in the ouster of the tyrannical regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991--and a multiracial employees working for a Chinese oil digging company attempting to explore for oil and gas in Jarar Valley of the region were cold-bloodedly massacred in Obelle town by ONLF. All these atrocities happened in Abdullah Hassan’s tenure and they deserve to be revisited.
I wrote two articles during the president’s reign, one of which was about the region’s election that had produced him; the other touched on some external and internal injustices that had been tormenting the region’s papulation. And the both articles can be accessed via my blog’s archive. The first article’s title is ‘After the Last Year’s August (2005) Elections and the Somali Region of Ethiopia’; the second article’s title is ‘In Search of Justice and Somali Region of Ethiopia’.
The former president currently writes articles on different topics and they have been published on some Somali websites, including KILIL 5 ONLINE and Xaajo.com. But his prose works have not yet captured his experience and expertise in the region; rather, he chronicles other episodes that had not even taken place on his home turf.
Why does he prefer remote stories to local ones?
Considering his experience and close proximity, the president can amply write about Ethiopia and his Somali region that he once became its top leader. Let him share with us ways in which a just and lasting peace and good governance can be established in the region and how food insecurity and water shortage can be eradicated in the region. Let him write about the hundred of innocent civilians who are continually murdered by either anti-peace groups or the region’s Liyu Police itself; let him present effective strategies that can be used and utilized to fight corruption and nepotism in the region.
The president has a good knowledge of the region and its papulation. We need him to enlighten us concerning the region’s affairs and its beleaguered population, not to lecture us on scattered, far fetching issues. That said, he is free for his own writing curve. And I am not saying his articles are dull, but what I am saying is, if he always chooses to write about the Horn of Africa, he ought to include his Somali region of Ethiopia in his writings.The region is faced with many tribulations and they ought to be exposed.
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