By: Dalmar Gure
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Engineer Abdi Tahlil Abdirahman, an accountant in the former government of Somalia and apart of the Somali intellectual class criticized the TFG for its rampant corruption at press conference at Grand Royal hotel in Nairobi. The conference was called to discuss how to properly manage Somali’s finances and foreign aid resources.
While speaking to Hiiraan Online journalists he said that the fraud and dishonesty threatens Somalia’s already fragile institutions. Engineer Abdi Abdirahman singled out tribal affiliation as being the main reason behind corruption in the Somali government. He explains that ministers give heed to tribal issues when making decisions or dispersing resources while overlooking the needs of Somalia.
“If that corruption continues” he warned “Somalia will be handed over to its neighbours, Ethiopia and Kenya, who have been involved in Somalia recently for their own national interests”.
“For more than 20 years Somalia has been in chaos with most of its population inside the country being IDP’s; those who have left have become refugees in far off lands. Meanwhile Somalia’s waters have become an international dumping ground for toxic waste and its natural resources being pillaged by foreigners.”
The problem, he describes, is the lack of accountability on the part of the ministers and their departments. A solution he has proposed suggests that all of Somalia’s financial resources including the foreign aid that it receives should be directly deposited into the Somali Central Bank. Mr. Abdirahman argues that it would make the individual departments accountable for the resources they receive and the banks action transparent to the citizens.
Transparency International, a NGO that monitors and publicizes corporate and political corruption has named Somali the “world’s most corrupt country” in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index. A dubious honour Somalia has held since 2007