A Dar es Salaam-based businessman says he will vie for presidency in Somalia in September this year.
Mr Mohamed A. Nur, who is the CEO of City Garden Group of Companies, told The Citizen yesterday that he would present his name to the country’s parliament, which would elect the head of state.
“In Somalia there is no functioning political party system. The names of independent presidential candidates are presented to the lower and upper parliaments which elects the president,” he said.
The 45-year-old Nur came with his family to Tanzania in the mid-1980s, shortly before the Horn of Africa country plunged into lawlessness followed by two decades of civil war and without any effective administration until 2012 when a formal central government was established.
He said it was not strange for him to vie for presidency in his home country, saying a significant number of the current leaders were in diaspora before they took up political posts back home.
Mr Nur added lately he had been to Mogadishu several times to lay ground for his campaign for the highest office in his troubled country. He was born there in 1971.
He remarked that although Somalia has been saddled with what he described as “terrible” leadership and terrorism, he was optimistic about his country’s future. For many years, Somalia topped the list of failed states in the world due to instability and violence.
“Due to multiple crises, Somalis had to ensured decades of wasted years of poor leadership. To make it worse, nearly 60 per cent of Somalis will not live to see their 40th birthday due to poverty,” said Mr Nur, who is currently the chairperson of the 25,000- member Somali community in Tanzania.
He stated that his campaign tag will be to bring back to sanity to the country which has also been rocked by high level corruption besides lawlessness due to terrorist attacks blamed on Al Shabaab militants.
Other priority areas will be to bring security and democracy and rebuild the nation from many years of chaos.
In economy, the focus will be on tapping the existing potentials which include support from the countrymen and women in diaspora, livestock and fisheries in a country which has the longest coastline than any other in Africa. The country also has huge offshore oil and gas reserves.
Somalia is one of the few countries in the world with its large number of citizens in diaspora, mainly within eastern Africa; Ethiopia,Kenya, Djibouti, Tanzania and lately Uganda.
But the majority are to be found in the Middle East from North Africa to the Gulf states while hundreds of thousands others have migrated to Europe, North America, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere.
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