Somalilandsun- The world is like a wild animal that you trained to work for you, so as long as you are vigilant and walk warily with care and thoughts it will give its aid and look away instantly, be heedless and forgetful”
We used to live harmony with the nature, water was clean, our seas were full of fish , our forests were occupant of different wild animals, flocks colorful birds were daily music to ear, nomadic society who had their traditional rule and regulations were scattered on their rich and fertile grassing land with full of industrious diversity livestock, time has changed for the worst our forests are gone , our marine resource are dwindling our agricultural land are getting smaller, flocks of wild animals who were in our jungleswere eradicated or enforced to abandoned, our livestock are getting slighter and less productive, water is getting scarce, no heavy rainfall, all become excessive misapplication to the nature by us exclusively or individually
We used to live peacefully among ourselves; people say we could not do it because we are poverty drained society, they reason poverty is mother of all crimes, but we can deny this weak rationalization, and could live peacefully even if we are all poor, we could walk the streets safely at any time, people helped each other as sprit of Somalilandisam , even in poverty we could all stand in peace and with dignity, promote our life standard, perform our duties in mutual manner and find significant way outs.
Today, what we see instead is exploitation many by us, we can ascribe all these as side effect of the urbanization, the slide of our moral life is not due to one or two administrations, it’s not even something that can be blamed for the leaders or politicians or any individuals, we are all responsible for the failure, the core of our problem is us as individuals or as society. We did not bother to correct the accumulation of many little wrong things through years, our reward or punishment system did not sustain the right value we needed as consequence, corrupted people were not punished and criminals were not taken against the action they ought in order to pay the price for their evil conducts.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum good people are not rewarded, those who remain honest in the government are sometimes been ridiculed as being stupid for not taken advantage of their positions to enrich themselves as well as their close relatives. This means that anyone who is appointed to the government position is believed to have given a license of theft. The little people who are real heroes, who are engaged this country run towards the right direction , those who look after our treasurable livestock, those who cultivate the land and produce the food we eat , the teacher who endure the hardship and educate and shape our children, engineers who build and construct the bridges with barely enough payments have not been glorified or given the value they deserves, but instead we honor westerners, those among us who are imbued with sense of western ideology, criminals and those whovictimizing and endangering our existence, we influence the ideas that are destructive to our wellbeing and avoid to absorb the reality on the ground, we are quick to find faults but slow to offer alternative , we live off form, not on form, abuses of nature by us as individuals and as nations continue.
These acts are not implies our real behavior but it’s something we were forced by temporary circumstance or our defenselessness, may be the cause of being ignorance but in reality, good thing comes from bad things, somalilanders are the most resilient and happiest in the world in moment of despair that would have floored lesser people, somalilanders can still stand, smile and sing and indeed these traits are not momentary escape fueled by meager sprit but are part of our free proudness sprit. When I visited a drought hit families in outskirt of our main towns who are in isolated internal displaced camps my heart sink at the sight of the community buried under, but my feeling rises as soon as I learnt the going effort to distribution of food stuff portion by wealthy or other distinguished mindful people indeed our people are very tough and happy punch.
Like any natural cycle of life of ups and downs of force and counter-force nature fight back, nature has unleashed its revenge,thrashing us with storms, floods, droughts and volcanic eruption, it’s now right time for somalilanders to fight back on moral battle-field to let the force of good triumph over evil, this is a moment for decisive and moral leadership to stand unity for our national salvation. We cannot keep sitting idly and watching for few abusive and corrupted people in decades, social sufferings must be alighted for tomorrow , we cannot spent lives just being indignity about injustice, it’s time to rise our moral life, time is now ripped for us to put our share to make downgraded muslin world restore its nobility and graciousness , it’s time to convince our community to rise their moral live to be different and not have conviction to follow through, it’s time to seize the cross winds that make us for greatness it’s time for every individuals to lead themselves and others.
Unlike Somalia, we feel shame to call our country for some foreigners to lead and administrate, but somalilanders should lead their respected country, in such manner we can channel energies and creativity in to the productive mechanism, help and respect each other and usher our poor nation in to the 21 century.
We do really need integrity, for we are people with faith , we should ambitiously resort to the Almighty Allah and start whatever we are planning to do by quest for his compassionate and mercifulness’, I think , the road of leadership begins in fortifying our moral resolve values and characters that can make us compete and survive in twenty firs century.
We must learn to live in system , we are not alone but part of the larger world and must do our share in this planet operate and produce peace, harmony and prosperity , if we don’t take our portion for handling this world perfectly maneuver, somebody else will effect down the line and take our quota , we must strive to keep on improving the system of governance , and remain ambitious to harvest better and higher standard for our social livelihood, as saying goes “when the tide is high all boats are high” but if we pull the system down , keep false accusation for one and othe,r we will not be able to stand with our feet and propel our nation to the where we should be, we must call accountability in our work and with others , show good result instead of wasting time for point fingers on the failure and blame the leaders why nothing has not happened.
As citizens we must all be vigilant to watch out the individuals who are cooperating with our enemies and disabling our journey to the way ahead. Remember you are professional, public servants and guardians of communal salvation.
We must have a discipline, it would be impossible to coordinate and interconnect with others unless we have a discipline of time and space, it would be difficult to sustain the core value of our integrity unless we flow in lines, we must do things as a team-work and consider that the somalilanders are to be brighter than any nation on this earth, in fact we would be able to get out of this nasty situation if we keep and strengthen our collaboration and do things in organized manner.
It surely abhors me and perhaps other thoughtful people, seeing that many Somaliland associations (triples) are getting disintegrated, falling apart and dividing in to the small factions, (raas hoose iyo jifiyo yar-yar) who are constantly condemning one clan to another,where many of those clans are being marginalized, disrespected and discriminated. In this nasty and offensive footpath will actuallylead us stray from the right way of competing with other world, (khayrkeen) we should all be aware our life standard and our social coherence.
In development country life is an individual concern but when it comes to the nation building its team play builds on collective strengthen. If we are going to challenging with the westerners or indeed other developed countries like Asian tigers (Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea) we must look and anticipate at various options for going forward and backward ( when it comes to backward we just learn from our past mistakes but not wail over our failure ) we need to be frugal and more practical , it’s not how much we earn that counts but how much we save , if we were a car we need not require a large rear mirrors and deafeningstereos just a large tank and working brake .
We must also be prepare to sacrifice, nothing comes easy, nothing comes cheap, we must be ready to make mistakes somewhere along the road to our struggle, we will stumble but this must should not deter us, progress comes only by accumulating mistakes, we must be prepare to compete, we have no choice all around us, we must keep going with no one looking behind, waiting someone who legging behind or pull us down. We must always be prudent and eloquent for we are sailing through rough weather against our competitors one day the world come at our knees the next day at our throat it takes all moves to survive. We must also learn to conserve andmaximize our resources to spot and exploit opportunities in trade, technology, industry and agricultural means; we must have a will to win like a runner we all reach deep down for the extra kick at the finish line.
We must come up with accomplishment and accurate action; leadership is not talking, writing or virtue of positions but hard working and good performance. Finally we must have conviction that right thing have to be done and followed through , big things comes from small beginning , revaluation stars from quite corner of the room ,
we must lit the candle to show the way, we must refrain from criticism comments floating through the social media , ill words and hostile action that undermine our unity , all in all its now time to do things better , time to shelter ALLAH’s mercy, compassion and seek his forgiveness , be hold on make stand , dare to be different , dare to lead, acknowledge the reality on the ground and have strong faith to ascertain that our salvation lays our unity.
The author Mohamed Ali Samatar Is a Somaliland civil servant attached to the Ministry of Water Development Headquarters in Hargeisa Tell: 0252-63-4438405, or, 065-4438405 Email: karin1826@live.com
