Mogadishu wants the Keys

Puntland, Federalism and the Struggle Over the Keys

Araweelo News Network | Associated Online Agencies

Author: Abdillahi Jama Ali – Qurus
Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Reading time: 7 minutes

The Analogy.
Building a house is relatively simple compared with building a state. Yet even the simplest house requires a site, ownership, measurements, a design, a blueprint, materials, builders and an inspector. Before the first brick is laid, somebody has to answer:
What are we building? And before anything else:
Who owns it?
If the house belongs to the people, then the people are not merely occupants. They are the owners.
They have a right to know what is being built, where it is being built and who is designing it.
The architect designs. The builder constructs. The inspector checks.The occupant moves in. These are different responsibilities.
A politician may become president, minister or member of parliament. He may occupy the most powerful room in the building.
But an occupant is not an architect.
And an occupant certainly does not become the owner simply because he has acquired the keys to one of the rooms.

The case of Puntland
This distinction becomes particularly important when we look at Puntland. Puntland did not simply wait for Mogadishu to build a house for it. In 1998, Puntland established its own autonomous administration, building institutions of governance, security and public administration in circumstances in which there was no effective central government exercising authority across Somalia.
In other words, Puntland built its house before the federal house at the centre had been properly constructed.
It cleared its site. It laid its foundations. It put up its walls.It installed its doors. It developed institutions.
It created a political and administrative order of its own.
Then came the federal project.
The argument was that Somalia could be reconstructed as a federal state, with a central government and federal member states sharing constitutional powers.
Fine. But federalism does not mean that the centre builds every room and hands them out to the states.
Nor does it mean that, once a state has built and administered its own institutions, the centre automatically acquires the right to take control of them.
Federalism is supposed to define the relationship between the rooms.
It is supposed to tell us where the walls are, where the doors are, and which occupant has authority over which part of the house.
This is where the present dispute becomes so revealing.
Puntland has its own political institutions, security structures and administrative system.
It has developed a political identity and a governing order over decades.
Now imagine someone arriving from the central room and saying:
“Your doors are inconvenient. I will remove them.”
Then:
“Your walls are not arranged correctly. I will move them.”
And finally:
“I don’t like the colour of your house. I will repaint it.”
Would that be federalism? Or would it be centralization?
That is the question.
The centre may argue that there must be one national constitutional order. Of course there must.
But a national house does not require every room to be identical.
Federalism exists precisely because different parts of the country retain defined areas of authority within a common constitutional structure.
The door of Puntland’s room is therefore not a rejection of Somalia. It is a protection against arbitrary intrusion.
The wall is not necessarily a wall against the nation.
It can be a constitutional boundary within the nation.
And the key is not a symbol of separation. It is a symbol of jurisdiction.
The danger begins when the occupant of the central room starts believing that because his room is larger, he has acquired the keys to everybody else’s rooms.
That is not federalism.
That is the logic of central government becoming central authority—and eventually central ownership.
The Somali people are the owners of the house.
The Constitution is supposed to be the blueprint.
The federal government is an occupant.
Puntland is an occupant of its own constitutional space.
Neither occupant owns the whole building.
And neither should be allowed to redesign the building unilaterally. This brings us back to the question we started with:
Who designed the Somali house?
Were the owners properly consulted?
Were ordinary Somalis systematically surveyed about the kind of federal system they wanted?
Who decided how much authority should belong to Mogadishu and how much should belong to the states?
Who approved the doors?
Who approved the walls?
And who has the authority to remove them?
These questions cannot be settled simply because one politician happens to occupy the presidential room today. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud will eventually leave that room. Another politician will occupy it. Then another.
But Puntland will remain. The federal states will remain.
And the Somali people—the owners—will remain.
That is why the issue should not be reduced to Hassan Sheikh personally.
The real issue is whether the occupant of the centre has begun behaving like the architect—and whether the centre is gradually treating federalism as a house whose rooms it can redesign at will.
Puntland’s message, in essence, is simple:
We built this room. We have lived in it. We have maintained it. We have our institutions. You cannot demand the keys. You cannot simply remove our doors and tell us that you are improving the house.
There is no one key-holder theory in federalism.
A functioning federation is not a house in which the centre owns the master key to every room.
It is a house in which every door has a constitutional lock—and even the occupant of the central room must respect it.
The question before Somalia is therefore not simply:
Who occupies the presidential palace?
It is much bigger:
Who owns the house—and who gave the occupant permission to change the locks?

Who Owns the House?
When the Occupant Starts Redesigning the Home
Building a house is not easy.
But building a state is infinitely more complicated.
Even the simplest house requires a site, ownership, measurements, a design, a blueprint, materials, builders and someone to inspect the work. Before the first brick is laid, somebody has to answer a very simple question:
What are we building?
There is also another question that cannot be ignored:
Who owns the house?
If the house belongs to the public, then the public is not merely an eventual occupant. It is the owner.
The owner should be consulted before the architect draws the final lines.
The architect designs.
The builder constructs.
The inspector checks.
And the occupant moves in when the house is ready.
These are different jobs.
A politician may be powerful. He may be elected president. He may control the government, command resources and occupy the highest office in the land.
But he is still an occupant.
Being a politician does not make him an architect.
That distinction matters enormously in state-building.
An architect thinks about the whole structure. He worries about foundations, walls, doors, load-bearing structures and how one part of the building affects another.
An occupant naturally thinks differently.
He wants his room.
He wants the key.
He wants the furniture arranged to his liking.
And if he is allowed to redesign the house every time he changes his mind, sooner or later the structure itself is endangered.
This is where Somalia’s federal experiment deserves a harder look.
Who designed the Somali house?
Who drew the blueprint?
Who decided where the walls should stand?
Who determined which rooms belong to the centre and which belong to the states?
Who decided where the doors should be placed?
And most importantly:
Were the owners properly consulted?
Not merely politicians.
Not merely government officials.
Not merely conferences of political elites.
Were ordinary Somalis systematically asked what kind of state they wanted?
Was there extensive national research and public opinion surveying before the basic architecture of federalism was settled?
Did the people choose the blueprint?
These are not academic questions.
They are questions of ownership.
Because if the people own the house, they have a right to know who designed it—and a right to object when someone begins changing the structure without their consent.
Now look at the federal system from another angle.
The Somali house has several rooms.
The federal government occupies one of them.
The federal member states occupy others.
They are supposed to coexist under a constitutional arrangement that defines their respective rights and responsibilities.
But what happens when the occupant in the centre begins behaving as though he owns the entire building?
What happens when the centre wants the keys to every room?
What happens when it decides that the doors separating the rooms are inconvenient?
A house without doors may look more open.
But it is also more vulnerable.
If the people of Garowe have a door protecting their room, that door is not an insult to Mogadishu.
It is a boundary.
It is protection.
It is part of the arrangement that allows different occupants to live under the same roof without one entering the other’s room whenever it wishes.
The Federal Government cannot reasonably claim that because all the rooms are under one roof, therefore it possesses the keys to every door.
Federalism is precisely about defining where the doors are.
And when the centre attempts to remove those doors, the issue is no longer simply administration.
It becomes a question of power.
Who has the right to enter?
Who has the right to alter the room?
Who has the right to take what is inside?
And who has the right to say:
“This is our room. You cannot enter simply because you are occupying the central one.”
This is why the Somali political argument cannot be reduced to personalities.
Hassan Sheikh Mohamud will come and go.
So will every other president.
Governments come and go.
Ministers come and go.
Parliaments come and go.
But the house remains.
The real issue is whether the house is governed by a blueprint or by the wishes of whoever happens to occupy the largest room.
A constitution is supposed to be stronger than the occupant.
A federal government is supposed to operate within the constitutional structure—not continually redraw it around itself.
The centre is not the owner.
The states are not the owners either.
The Somali people are the owners.
And the political class is not the architect simply because it has occupied the building.
That is the distinction Somalia needs to recover.
Before we argue about who should occupy the house, we should ask whether the house was properly designed.
Before we fight over who holds the keys, we should ask who owns the building.
Before the occupant starts removing doors, we should ask who gave him permission to change the structure.
Because there is a simple principle that applies to every house—and perhaps even more strongly to every state:
**The occupant may live in the house.
He does not own it.
And he certainly does not have the right to rebuild it while the owners are still inside.

By Abdillahi Jama Ali – Qurus .A former teacher, trainer, radio journalist, manager, Member of Parliament and Minister, He is now a writer, contributor  and political analyst, drawing on more than 50 years of professional, public-service and political experience. Abdullahi Jama Ali is also a contributor to Araweelo News Network / Associated Online Agencies, where he has published numerous articles and political analyses. His work focuses particularly on current affairs, governance, policy developments, and geopolitical dynamics in the Horn of Africa, offering readers well-crafted perspectives shaped by decades of professional, public-service, and political experience