The Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education in Somalia has reportedly been plagued by widespread corruption, and projects that were of great interest to our country and the Somali people have collapsed after it was discovered that they were being mismanaged.
The Minister of Education, Farah Sheikh Abdukaadiur, has reportedly been plagued by rampant corruption within the Ministry, and it is very difficult to hold the Minister accountable for his corruption scandals as he is very close to the President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud.
For instance, the World Bank funded project which would have cost millions of dollars has collapsed, while other project which has not yet been implemented is likely to collapse and to be diverted to another country.
The Somalia Education for Human Capital Development Project, funded by the World Bank, has collapsed after the project head, Mohamed Abdukadir Nur, has resigned, reportedly due to interference from Minister Farah.
The minister wanted the funds allocated to the project, which was very large, to be diverted to his own account, claiming that the project should be implemented by himself, but when it was discovered that the motive was corruption, the project was completely suspended.
The Education Project of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) also seems to be on the verge of failure and to be diverted to another country, as the time allocated for the implementation of the project has expired, due to conflicts and corruption within the ministry.
The corruption and mismanagement of Minister Farah Abdukadir towards the projects intended for the Ministry resulted in millions of dollars of the funds for both projects being diverted to other countries with better governance. The Minister has already removed the Finance Director from his post after refusing to pay a large amount of money illegally into the Minister’s account. Subsequently, the Minister has appointed a young man with whom he wants to divert a large sums of money into his account. However, the young man is now likely to leave the job, due to his confusion of what is going on the Ministry and the unprecedented corruption scandals. Furthermore, the young man is not registered as a civil servant, which caused internal conflict between the Minister and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry.
The Ministry of Education of Somalia, which is headed by a powerful Minister from the Damuljadid group, is experiencing huge corruption scandals , and it is difficult for Prime Minister Hamse Barre, who is afraid of Farah’s power in Villa Somalia, to intervene in the work of the Ministry and the corruption that marred it.
Many teachers are reported to be given jobs and registered to the Ministry of Education every year, but through investigations we have found that only a small number of these teachers are recruited through the proper recruitment process while the non-existent teachers’ money is deposited into the Minister’s account.
The Ministry of Education is the only Ministry that has four Director Generals and one Permanent Secretary, all of whom do not have proper cooperation and there is conflict between them, which the Minister saw as a great opportunity to do whatever he wants.
NB: We are conducting a thorough investigation and will expose the four directors of the ministry, the jobs they have done and their roles of the corruption scandals that have paralyzed the Ministry of Education.Â
