By Khadar Afrah
Tuesday April 14, 2026
The opposition of Somalia has spent years issuing statements from Mogadishu and Nairobi hotels while Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, back in Mogadishu, quietly extended his own term, concentrated executive authority in the presidency, and treated the federal system as a working draft.
At some point, the opposition had to stop talking and start thinking. In South West State, it never did.
The opposition handed Mohamud the one thing a centralising government needs most: a single, isolated target. South West State held a snap re-election in open defiance of Mogadishu. That converted a constitutional dispute into a law enforcement issue.
Mohamud did not need to justify removing a regional president. He only needed to apply the rules. The opposition provided both the target and the justification.
The mechanism of this presidency is worth understanding clearly.
Constitutional amendments pushed through parliament extended presidential terms and asserted federal primacy over the regions. The Justice and Solidarity Party of President Hassan brought the presidents of Hirshabelle, Galmudug, and South West State under his political umbrella, with himself as chairman and presidential candidate. The effect was a coalition that insulated the centre from multi-directional pressure, allowing him to act decisively at the periphery while projecting stability everywhere else. This is not a man working within a system. It is a man who has made the system serve his 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. It generated the kind of coverage that a presidency facing a legitimacy crisis finds extremely useful in the final weeks of its mandate.
The ship has now finished its performance.
What the visit produced, precisely, was optics. A sitting president with an expiring mandate standing alongside a NATO member state, projecting the image of a functioning government with an international agenda and a future beyond May. It was choreography.
To be clear: no one in Somalia opposes the exploration of Somali resources. The opposition is not against the drilling. Every political actor, across every region and every faction, wants to see the wealth of Somalia developed for the benefit of its people. That is not in dispute and it never has been.
What is in dispute is the use of a vessel and a ceremony as a substitute for a political settlement. The resources of Somalia belong to all Somalis. If real exploration begins and produces real revenue, the entire country stands to benefit. That shared interest is precisely why this moment deserved more than a photograph.
If Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has genuine strategic foresight, the window is still open. There is time before 15 May to bring the political actors together, reach a negotiated settlement, and organise credible elections. Somalia does not need another choreographed event. It needs a political order.
A drilling ship is not a legacy. A peaceful transition of power is.
The strategic response to this kind of power requires a different approach entirely. Not better rhetoric. Not more meetings abroad. The following three elements form the basis of an effective opposition framework.
Political presence in the central states.
Hirshabelle and Galmudug are the critical ground The alignment of both states with Villa Somalia is not ideological. It is transactional, rooted in political survival and access to federal resources. Ali Gudlawe and Qoor-Qoor are not committed partners of this project. They are pragmatic actors whose calculations can shift when credible opposition figures show up in Jowhar and Dhusamareb, consult elders, meet regional parliamentarians, and demonstrate that there are viable alternatives. The fracture lines already exist. They are simply not being pressed.
Narrative coordination without a formal alliance.
Formal coalitions in the politics of Somalia collapse under pressure and move too slowly. What is needed is not a signed agreement. It is timing and discipline. Statements from opposition figures across different regions, released in coordination, amplify each other without requiring prior negotiation. Consistent constitutional framing across all platforms reinforces a single argument: one man is dismantling an architecture that took fifteen years to construct.
The Nigeria case of 2006 illustrates why this approach works.
President Olusegun Obasanjo sought to amend the Nigerian constitution to extend his time in office beyond the two-term limit. He had institutional power, financial resources, and significant leverage over the ruling party. What he did not have was the ability to manage resistance from multiple directions simultaneously.
Opposition governors spread across different states did not confront him at a single point. They pushed back through the Senate, through party structures, and through regional networks, each applying pressure within their own sphere. Obasanjo was forced to manage a political environment in which no single intervention resolved the problem. The third-term bid collapsed.
The lesson for Somalia is direct. President Hassan can respond to one isolated challenge. He cannot respond cleanly to coordinated pressure from Baidoa, Jowhar, Kismayo, Garowe and Dhusamareb at the same time. The question is whether the opposition is willing to operate across all and more simultaneously.
Then there is the problem of narrative, which the opposition has consistently failed to address.
The management by Hassan of the situation in Jubaland is instructive. Federal forces clashed with fighters of Jubaland and lost. Madobe remained in place. Yet Mohamud absorbed the setback without any visible loss of authority. He moved on, maintained pressure through other channels, and continued to present his government as a functioning federal administration facing difficult but manageable regional actors.
Control does not require actual control. It requires the absence of visible disorder in enough places at the same time. With Hirshabelle, South West and Galmudug aligned, Hassan could always point to a federal majority. Two states pushing back from the periphery read, in that picture, as pushback rather than systemic failure. The job of the opposition was to break that picture. Instead, it confirmed it.
The constitutional framing also matters for international audiences. A competition between political figures is a domestic affair. A president dismantling the architecture of a federal system built with international support and funding is a different matter entirely. Opposition figures who return consistently to constitutional principle, rather than personal grievance, hold ground that Mohamud cannot occupy cleanly.
So here is where things stand.
The opposition can continue gathering in Nairobi and issuing statements. Or it can travel to the central states, activate political pressure across multiple regions, use parliament as a site of sustained resistance, and force a government with finite resources to manage several simultaneous problems rather than one convenient target. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is not untouchable. The alignment of his central bloc rests on convenience, not loyalty. His international legitimacy depends on appearance. His forces cannot be deployed in every direction at once. But here is the most important fact, and the opposition must not lose sight of it. The presidential term of Hassan Sheikh Mohamud ends on 15 May 2026.
Not in a year. In weeks.
After 15 May, he holds office without a mandate. Every day he remains beyond that date, he hands the opposition its strongest constitutional argument. The very framework he claims to be reforming becomes the thing that exposes him.
The opposition does not need to defeat him in a single confrontation. It needs to be organised, present, and constitutionally grounded across multiple regions when that date arrives.
Stop writing statements. Start showing up. The clock is already running.
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
