The United Nations Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia Ambassador Augustine Mahiga will be sacked by the UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, after the collapse of public confidence in his policy to Somalia.

Ban Ki-moon had learnt a quick lesson from the diplomatic failure and the growing public anger against his envoy, as he had made no progress on his work for the past 12 months in United Nations Political Office for Somalia (UNPOS).

UN sources say that the secretary-general will also to dismiss half of the senior officials from UN agencies including UNPOS, OCHA, UNDP, WHO, and UNICEF after the widespread political and financial corruption allegations. 

Mahiga will probably be replaced by the Professor Ibrahim Gambari, the Nigerian veteran diplomat, who is currently the Special Adviser on the International Compact with Iraq and other issues for the Secretary-General of the United Nations as the sources indicate.

Former Nigerian Ambassador/Permanent Representative to the United Nations Gambari is a Muslim, who can fully understand the Muslim communities as he is now in Sudan, as Joint Special Representative of the African Union - United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur (UNAMID).

Angry protesters burn Mahiga’s poster during protest demonstrations in Mogadishu, Nairobi, J’burg, Cairo, Sydney, London, Rome, Stockhlom, MN and Toronto on Friday and on Sunday loudly shouting  ““The Somali people are against the so-called envoy. We call the secretary general of United Nations to fire him. We completely don’t recognize him”

The reason why people of Somalia are frustrated and angry with - is that Mahiga’s apparent intervention in Somalia policy as he signed illegitimate “Kampala Accord” which says “Within 30-days of the signing of the agreement, the Prime Minister (Mohamed Abdullaahi Farmajo), will resign from his position; and the president will appoint a new Prime Minister” which is utterly unacceptable. 

This is a clear intervention – diplomatic mistake from UN envoy and it is humiliation and disgrace of Somali sovereignty which is an independent nation in the horn of African continent.

But suffering Somali people in Mogadishu and the entire nation have answered this - saying “Farmajo is our Prime Minister, not the UN Prime Minister which Mahiga can dismiss, he is our healing hero and we are with him”

Various political analysts believe that Mahiga and Ethiopia are the greatest obstacle to attaining and sustaining peace in Somalia. 

No doubt that the man “Mahiga”  who sits in the wooden office in the UN Compound at Nairobi-Kenya doesn’t want peace in Somalia, because his country of Tanzania and Somalia had no real diplomatic relations as it was deteriorated in 1972 and since that time the diplomacy between these African countries remains the same.  Please see this link http://www.sunatimes.com/view.php?id=949

By Warfa Garad Jama
Political Analyst 
Mogadishu-Somalia.
Email: [email protected]