For seven years, the people of South West State endured a heavy-handed, stagnant administration. The political opposition in Baidoa, alongside the diaspora, fought tirelessly for accountability, a democratic transition, and an end to an era of governance that failed to secure the region’s massive potential.
When that administration finally fell this week, the celebration in the streets of Baidoa was the natural, understandable exhale of a public desperate for change. The departure of the old guard was a historical necessity.
But we must look past the immediate relief and confront the structural reality of how this change was executed. The people of South West State were robbed of their democratic victory. Villa Somalia did not liberate Baidoa; they hijacked it. By deploying the national army to force a political outcome, the Federal Government executed an Administrative Coup (Inqilaab Maamul), stealing the transition from the rightful local opposition to install their own proxy.
The Hijacked Revolution
The smoking gun of this hijacked transition arrived yesterday. Rather than allowing local stakeholders and traditional elders to forge a consensus-based interim administration, the Federal Government bypassed the region entirely. The Prime Minister issued a decree appointing the Second Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic, Jibril Abdirashid Haji Abdi, to directly govern South West State.
You cannot call a military takeover a “popular local uprising” when the immediate result is direct occupation and rule by a federal cabinet minister.
Mogadishu recognised that the outgoing regional administration was weak and used that vulnerability as an excuse to militarily occupy a Federal Member State. They are not in Baidoa to hand power to the legitimate opposition; they are there to handpick a compliant caretaker who will rubber-stamp the 2026 electoral map for the centre. The local politicians who bled for seven years have simply traded a regional strongman for a federal occupier.
The Dangerous Precedent of the Gun
Replacing a flawed regional leader via a federal military invasion is how civil wars start, not how Republics are built.
Somalia is a Federal Republic. The provisional constitution dictates a clear distribution of power designed to prevent the trauma of the 1980s, where a centralised Mogadishu used the national army to subjugate the peripheries. By weaponising federal forces to dismantle a regional government, Villa Somalia has established a terrifying precedent: the centre will tolerate federalism only until it is militarily convenient to crush it.
If the national army can be used to settle a political dispute in Baidoa today, the Jurisdictional Firewall is broken. Puntland and Jubaland are watching carefully, knowing the same playbook is being prepared for Garowe and Kismayo.
The Security Vacuum
The timing of this internal assault is a strategic catastrophe. Somalia is currently navigating the highly sensitive AUSSOM transition. The international community is funding our national forces to secure the country against non-state actors.
Instead, those forces were redirected into a city sheltering 500,000 internally displaced persons to manage a manufactured political crisis. While federal troops occupy checkpoints in Baidoa to protect a federally appointed governor, the actual counter-terrorism frontlines are left exposed. Villa Somalia has prioritised domestic election-rigging over national survival.
Reclaiming the Mandate
To the political opposition in South West State: your fight was just, but your victory was stolen by the centre. Do not legitimise this military occupation by accepting token advisory roles in a proxy caretaker government.
We cannot rely on a central government that acts like a conquering empire, nor can we rely on an old guard who surrenders their mandates the moment their personal survival is threatened. The Somali people deserve a working state governed by institutions, not by the violent whims of whoever controls the capital’s armouries.
The fight for Baidoa’s physical ground may be over, but the fight to return the political destiny of South West State to its own people has just begun.
By; Nuradin Aden Dirie, Presidential Candidate
