By Balal M. Cusman

I write these words not as a politician but as an education specialist who beliefs that knowledge is the greatest gift a nation can give its people. My sorrow and outrage come not from political rivalry, but from the deep wound of seeing a sacred institution of learning, one that once stood as a beacon for all Somalis and Africans, reduced to rubble by those who should have been its guardians.

The Somali National University was not merely an institution of higher learning, it was a national shrine, a temple of knowledge and a beacon of what Somalia could achieve when a people invest in their future. Established in 1954 and expanded into a fully-fledged university in 1969, it quickly rose to become one of Africa’s most respected centers of learning. It offered not only free education but also free accommodation, free meals and grants to students who walked its halls. When young men and women graduated, they were not thrown into uncertainty, but guaranteed positions in public institutions, while the brightest minds were retained for postgraduate studies and prepared to teach the next generation.

Its legacy shaped countless professionals all over the world, engineers, doctors, lawyers and scholars, who carried Somalia’s name high. Yet, tragically, most of those same beneficiaries now stand by silently as bulldozers reduce it to rubble. Some are unfortunately complicit in its destruction, others watch like spectators, as though this national crime is none of their concern. Among them is the most shameful of all, the current President of Somalia, H.E. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, a man who himself admitted that without the free education given to him by the Somali Government, he would have remained in Jalalaqsi village uneducated. Those were his own words. Without Somali National University and the wider system of free education, he and countless other Somalis would not be who they are today. And yet, this very man, lifted out of obscurity by the sacrifices of a system built for all, has presided over the desecration and demolition of the very institution that gave him life.

This is not just an act of negligence or greed. To allow the Somali National University to be demolished, to watch its grounds seized by those hungry for land and profit, cannot be brushed aside as mere mismanagement. It stenches of betrayal. It reeks of a conspiracy against the Somali people, against their memory, against their future. The destruction of such a historic institution suggests a deliberate campaign to erase the few remains of Somalia’s collective pride in Mogadishu, to dismantle the foundations of public education and to replace them with private enterprises that serve only the wealthy few.The same generation that benefited from free education and guaranteed employment now deprives today’s youth of the same opportunities, forcing them into a market dominated by private universities where education is commodified and unequal. This is not ignorance; it is the beginning of a regression by design.

For those who argue that this concerns only one faculty – Faculty of Medicine, it must be emphasized that the domination of a single faculty within the Somali National University is equivalent to the demolition of all faculties, for it is undoubtedly the beginning, not the end.

We must ask ourselves therefore, who profits from this destruction? Who benefits from seeing one of Somalia’s premier public university torn apart, its grounds handed over to private speculators, its legacy erased from memory? When the state abandons public education, it condemns the poor to ignorance and reserves knowledge for those who can afford to buy it. Somalia once rose from near-total illiteracy to over more than half the population literate, thanks to state-driven education campaigns under the very government that founded and sustained Somali National University.

Are we now witnessing a reversal, a deliberate return to those dark days when ignorance was widespread and manipulation easy? Yes indeed, because the erosion of SNU is not an isolated tragedy, it is part of a larger betrayal, one that seeks to disempower the Somali people and strip them of the tools of self-determination.

The destruction of Somali National University should have sparked national outrage, yet silence prevails. Alumni, government officials, intellectuals, all those who once drank from its well, slept its accommodations for free, eat free meals in its canteens, now turn away as though nothing sacred is being lost. The sorrow is not just in the fall of a building but in the moral collapse of a generation that should have stood to defend it. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud embodies this disgrace more than anyone. He, who once enjoyed of being saved by free education, has now overseen the annihilation of its greatest monument. For what? For money? For land? Or perhaps, more worryingly, for a larger conspiracy to ensure that Somalia’s youth never again have access to the kind of transformative education that could lift them from poverty and dependence into freedom and power.

In conclusion, this is not only a betrayal of the past, but a theft of the future. If Somali National University dies, if public education is dismantled and replaced with private exploitation, then the Somali people are being deliberately dragged back into darkness. They are being stripped of the very weapon that once empowered them – knowledge. A people without knowledge is a people condemned to slavery, to exploitation, to endless cycles of poverty and division. What is happening today is nothing less than national sabotage, carried out not by enemies from abroad, but by those who once carried the nation’s hopes, those who should have been its protectors.

The destruction of Somali National University in the hands of its own beneficiaries will forever remain one of the most shameful acts of betrayal in Somali history. And history will not forgive.

Balal M Cusman
Email: bcusman@gmail.com
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Balal is the former State Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Somalia.; X: @BalalCusman; Skype: bcusman1