Loyalty Over Learning; The Rot at the Heart of Somalia’s System

When a state rewards applause and punishes argument, it is not governing — it is auditioning courtiers.

Generic Dictator that Rules/Ruled Somalia — The picture is generic not real

Two Somalis tell the story of a nation at a crossroads. The first is a young woman who drives a bajaaj through the streets of Mogadishu to feed her family. According to accounts circulating widely on social media, Sadia Bajaaj a university graduate, an entrepreneur, a mother and an activist who once dreamed of leading her country has been held in jail for more than seventy days, accused of slandering the leadership after she demanded fairness, transparency, and accountability. Her supporters say she remains detained without evidence or due process.

The second is a young man who, by his own reported account, never finished high school and once declared that education is not even necessary. He is welcomed into meetings with senior officials, reportedly paid for the praise he piles on the leadership, and is now lined up to represent Somalia at tourism and international forums a stage he is set to occupy without, his critics charge, the command of English, Arabic, or the substance to defend a single national interest.

Reverse the rewards and you have understood the system. Praise the powerful and the doors of the state swing open. Question them and the doors of a cell close behind you. It is, at bottom, a brutally simple message: flatter and you flourish; criticize and you are crushed.

This is not new under the sun. In Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that the difference between rich and poor nations is not climate, culture, or geography but institutions. Extractive institutions funnel power and reward to a narrow elite and punish anyone who threatens their grip. Inclusive institutions open the contest to talent, protect the right to dissent, and let a bajaaj driver rise as far as her ability can carry her. Societies that jail their thinkers and crown their flatterers are choosing the extractive road the road, the authors show, that ends in stagnation and collapse.

Compare that with the path Lee Kuan Yew describes in From Third World to First. Singapore in the 1960s was poorer than Somalia, with no industries, no farmland, and no friends to spare. What it built was a religion of merit; officials chosen for competence, corruption hunted without mercy, and a person’s worth measured by what they could do, not by whom they praised. Within a generation a swamp of poverty became one of the wealthiest nations on earth. The lesson is unsentimental nations rise when they reward the able and fall when they reward the loyal.

What Somalia is practicing instead is an old and discredited art the logic of the court, not the republic. It is the same instinct that led Castro’s Cuba, the dynasty in North Korea, and a handful of Gulf kingdoms to confuse obedience with virtue. In such systems the loudest cheerleader outranks the best engineer, and the result is always the same; talent flees and the applause grows hollow.

None of this is destiny. Somalia can choose the other road; a leaner state with fewer hands on the public purse, rewards earned on merit rather than flattery, and punishments reserved for genuine crimes rather than inconvenient opinions. Reform here is not a slogan; it is the price of survival.

But changing faces of similar politicians is not changing the system. Swap one official for another while the culture of court and cell survives, and the road ahead only grows longer. As one Somali voice put it plainly online, corruption, nepotism, and injustice destroy good governance and whoever defends them stands against the people. The real test for Somalia’s leaders is not how loudly they are praised, but whether they have the courage to reward the woman driving the bajaaj instead of jailing her.