“A government of laws and not of men.” —John Adams in the Massachusetts Constitution (1780).

The recently released Corruption Perception Index (CPI), which is published annually by Transparency International raises very serous issues and at the same time gives a negative connotation of the way things are run by Somali Officials and terrorists alike with respect to leadership and management of Somali affairs (especially public affairs). For example, corruption, bribery, fraud, scam and racketeering, indiscipline, greed and disorderliness are the few examples of the typical Somali governmental public affairs.  The question remains, what examples are given to the young Somali leadership in development, when every young Somalis’ dream becomes ‘I want to be a prime minister or Minister of Post and Information—so that I can help my people and build castle/villa in Nairobi, as others done’?  This should be a grief concern to honest- and forward thinkers of Somalia.
Having mentioned that, I would like to map out and look at a major negative milestone that contributed to or caused Somalia’s #1 list of most corrupt nation in the face of the earth as well as the lacklustre performance as far as development of ICT infrastructure and information-based economy are concerned.
It all started around right before the ICANN meeting earlier 2010 when TFG officials including presidential aid or Chief of Staff and Ministry of Post officials and foreign company, located in Japan motivated Somali officials with bribery money to publicly market Somalia’s sovereign internet Country Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD), dot so.), administered in-country, but operated and managed out-of-the country from one central location in Japan.
At this point, Somalia’s government including the Ministry of Post has no web presence – as it was precisely reported in Hufington post “Finding Somalia’s government on the web can be confusing. There is no .so domain. www.somali-gov.info claims to be the ‘Official Federal Government Website for Somalia’” but doesn’t even use the designed .so instead used .net or .info while they are secretly contracting out their righful symbol for their country ().
But the mother of all scams was perpetrated against Somali public by no other person than a Somali government official working in a highly regarded public establishment – Somali Presidential Office and Somali Ministry of Post and Telecommunications. Available records from the main Somali .so registry and other subcontractors around the worlds show that an individual from the Somali Ministry of Post and Telecommunications and contract operator as Chief of Staff and current Minister of Post and Telecommunications (all from same region and inter-related), collected on behalf of Somalia, the hosting, administration and management rights of her sovereign Country Top Level Domain Name (ccTLD), dot SO for the common good of all Somalis and the nation of Somalia.
Nevertheless, the notoriously known Somali governmental bribery suddenly appears in the scheme; the individual dishonestly and unpatriotically, diverted and routed the top-level domain hosting and administration to another organisation in Tokyo, Japan, where it will remain in by contract in the next 5-10 years.

The existence of the Somali Parliament, the Somali Supreme Court, the United Nations Anti-corruption agencies, and other national oversight mechanisms do not help in investigating in getting the bottom of this issue. Even after educating the Somali public about Internet and telecommunications issues cannot rescue Somalia’s Country dot. So ccTLD from overseas private guardianship.  Apparently, Somalia’s dot.So ccTLD cannot easily saved none other the active intervention of Somali Parliament and the President Sharif’s intervention to set example to dismiss corrupt government officials.  But to the contrary the current Somali government provided these corrupt personalities with a profitable and higher governmental status govern top Somali telecommunications and Internet technology projects and promoted them to top-level ministerial positions to do more harm.

Its ironic to see the same agency suppose to regulate this industry to get into business of pirating and giving custody of Somalia’s ccTLD to a foreign agency in Japan, while Somalia is unable to exercise its sovereign right over the use of its ccTLD. For the meantime, from the Presidency down to all users of the internet (both including Somaliland and Puntaland (and all other public users) have to use the worldwide ccTLD with the following acronyms: Dot .info, .Com, .Net, .Org etc, accessing the addressing system through commercial outfits such as Yahoo.com, Gmail.com and Hotmail.com.  While the Somalia’s sovereign ccTLD is unrestrictedly marketed for worldwide use for non in-country users and other illegitimate businesses.

For the meantime, Somalis of all facets of government, research academics and universities need to investigate about these issues, and present their studies to the public. The Somali parliament and other regional stakeholders have to deliberate, decide and pass legislation on how Internet resources are managed for the country and its people.  We as nation with past conflicts and distrust need to have a plan on how to properly utilize surplus revenue generated from the domain registrations to develop ICTs in rural and low-income areas of Somalia.  Unless this happens few intellectuals will continue to benefit these Internet resources and pocket the revenues to their own advantage taking advantage of the ignorance of the public about these delegate and new issues of Internet technologies for their own dominations and to continue their existence.

Sakawdin Mohamed, MS, MPA-candidate
Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

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