By Abdisaid M. Ali
Calls for a unitary state in Somalia are often sold as moral restoration, a way to recover order and dignity after years of fragmentation. The instinct is understandable. The danger is that unity becomes a shortcut, a claim of control in place of the slow work of building a governable state.
Unity is built, not declared. In post-collapse societies, governing power becomes credible through consent, negotiated coordination, and institutions that restrain rulers. When unity is treated as proclamation rather than construction, decree replaces law and coercion fills the gaps.
Somalia’s constitutional debate is further distorted by a political culture that too often rewards performance over competence. Loud certainty passes for seriousness. Complex problems are flattened into slogans. Politics becomes theatre. Governing becomes secondary.
Unitary absolutism rests on a mistake. It treats concentrated governing power as strength. Strength is capability: courts that decide, budgets that follow rules, security forces under civilian control, administrations that retain memory. Centralization inside weak institutions enlarges discretion, and discretion becomes personal rule.
Somalia’s crisis is not too many constraints. It is too little discipline in how governing power is exercised. A unitary structure imposed on this reality risks reproducing the old failure at larger scale, with fewer buffers and higher stakes.
The center is never neutral. It reflects social hierarchies, economic networks, and clan balances. Without enforceable limits, access to the center becomes decisive. Appointments, contracts, and security influence cluster around the ruling network. Nationalism then masks exclusion, and exclusion is recast as loyalty. In Mogadishu, clan favoritism rarely presents itself in explicit terms. It works through informal hierarchies that shape who is heard, promoted, and protected. Grievance is dismissed as disloyalty. Chauvinism rises upward and hides behind national language.
A related distortion appears when religious rhetoric is pulled into political competition. Constitutional disagreement is recast as moral deviance. Legal argument is replaced by condemnation. When that happens, the state abandons neutrality and narrows the space for lawful opposition.
Recognition is also confused with legitimacy. External standing cannot substitute for internal fairness. States that demand obedience without justice eventually rely on coercion to cover a trust deficit. Dissent becomes suspect. Constitutional contestation becomes a loyalty test.
Somalia now faces a clear constitutional test. The question is not whether unity is desirable, but whether governing power can be disciplined before it is concentrated. This will determine whether the constitution stands above incumbents or bends to them.
Purpose must come before structure. The Somali state should exist to secure justice, protect equal rights, organize collective life in the public interest, and defend sovereignty and territorial integrity. Governing power is legitimate only to the extent it serves these duties.
Yet governing power has often been treated as personal property. Appointments become patronage. Security becomes leverage. Revenue becomes discretion. Constitutional meaning becomes executive preference. This is an institutional inheritance from the military era as much as it is a contemporary failure.
The calendar sharpens the stakes. The federal government’s term of office (including its president) ends on mid-May this year. The state does not pause when a mandate ends. Somalia continues through its institutions and obligations. What must narrow is executive discretion. A lapsed mandate cannot justify new political decisions or irreversible commitments.
In that interim period, the presidency is caretaker at most. Routine administration and security continuity can continue. Existing obligations can be honored. But constitutional change, major security restructuring, binding long term agreements, and irreversible fiscal decisions fall outside caretaker authority. These limits protect succession from improvisation.
This restraint matters especially in foreign commitments. Somalia’s treaties and strategic agreements are not the property of an administration. They are obligations of the republic, and they should be negotiated, authorized, and implemented through clear constitutional procedures so they survive leadership change. Where agreements are treated as personal diplomatic trophies, signed and marketed as if one officeholder can bind the state by will alone, they become vulnerable at home and discounted abroad. The pattern is visible in the way major external deals are often discussed in Somalia, as if they attach to a leader rather than to the state, even when they involve long horizons and sovereign assets such as ports, maritime security, hydrocarbons, and fisheries.
African experience shows why restraint matters. In Ghana and Senegal, mandate expiry narrowed discretion and pushed power back into institutions. Where leaders blur this line, legitimacy crises widen and security loyalties fray.
Somalia’s federal design offers tools to preserve continuity if used with discipline. During a short transition, Federal Member States can sustain administration, services, and security cooperation within their remit, preventing a vacuum while avoiding escalation. A temporary intergovernmental coordination forum can support continuity and election organization, limited in scope and time, and focused on routine cooperation rather than new bargaining.
International partners should be equally disciplined. Continued recognition, financing, or political cover for a lapsed or disputed executive will be read as backing one side of Somalia’s settlement, not supporting Somalia. In a cooperative federal order, that shifts the balance, weakens constitutional compliance, and pushes actors toward disengagement and parallel governance. Partners should treat the executive as caretaker in language and practice, engage the federal reality through structured consultation, and align assistance with restraint and credible election preparation.
Unity must be protected where fragmentation is fatal: sovereignty. Foreign affairs, national defense, monetary authority, public debt, and strategic assets belong to the republic as a whole. Governance can be decentralized through consent based coordination where it improves justice and order, provided the legitimate use of force remains unified under constitutional civilian control. Unity also requires space for peaceful disagreement. Dissent is popular sovereignty in practice.
Federalism is a tool, not a creed. A unitary arrangement is not automatically illegitimate. It becomes dangerous when it concentrates governing power without capacity and restraint.
Somalia’s leaders and stakeholders now carry a clear responsibility. This moment will show whether governing power is finally bound by law or again bent to advantage. History will not judge rhetoric about unity. It will judge whether you built rules that outlast personalities, protected institutions from capture, and made succession safe.
Abdisaid M. Ali
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Abdisaid is the chairperson of Lomé Peace and Security Forum, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and Former National Security Advisor, Somalia. X account @4rukun.
