GAROWE, SOMALIA – President Said Abdullahi Deni of Puntland has called on President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to resign and hand the country to an interim council that would take it to elections, and has dismissed the talks Villa Somalia has called in Mogadishu for 14 to 18 November as a waste of time. He spoke in an interview with Puntland’s government media reported on Saturday 31 October, the day the UN political mission in Somalia closed, and he gave his answer two days after the Future Council, the opposition coalition he belongs to and one of the four groups invited to Mogadishu, said it had not yet decided on its own reply.
What President Deni Said on 31 October
“I would advise Hassan Sheikh, out of mercy for the people, the country and himself, to resign,” President Deni said, adding that the country needed “a council that takes it to elections” and that would carry on the work on security in the meantime. In the same interview he said he could see no election that President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud was able to organise, citing Puntland’s objections to the electoral commission and to the constitutional framework the commission works under, and he described the forthcoming meetings in Mogadishu as a waste of time from which nothing could be expected.
He accused the federal government of interfering in the member states, naming Gedo, Kismayo and Hirshabelle, and warned that federal and state forces could come to blows, pointing to reports of divisions inside the national army. Furthermore, he said that the withdrawal of peacekeepers from strategically important areas was adding to the danger, in a week when Uganda announced that its troops had begun to leave Somalia and African Union forces prepared to vacate four bases in Lower Shabelle. The Future Council had written to the governments of those troop contributors in July. None of his claims about the army has been independently confirmed.
President Deni called on Somalis to unite and meet in a genuine consultation on the country’s situation, and he said the decisions should not be left only to the people who now hold public office. “Puntland is part of Somalia and has invested a great deal of time and financial resources in the Somali state,” he said, adding that Puntland would spare no effort for its own interest and for that of the nation.
Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor made the same commitment in October, when he said Puntland would not secede, and Garowe’s leaders present their refusal of Mogadishu’s institutions as a dispute about how Somalia is governed, to be settled by an agreed constitution and by elections the member states have accepted in advance. On that reading, the interim council is a means of returning to the consensus that Puntland says the federal government abandoned, and the Future Council is where Puntland has chosen to argue for it.
Five Days in Mogadishu and the Future Council’s Reply
On Sunday 25 October President Deni opened the 59th session of Puntland’s House of Representatives in Garowe and told the chamber that “the election announced by Hassan Sheikh is unacceptable“. He called on opposition leaders across the country to meet as soon as possible on a common response, and he said his administration had dismantled militias the federal government had set up inside Puntland. The next morning, before the president left for talks with Yoweri Museveni at Entebbe, Villa Somalia sent its invitations to the Future Council, to the Nabad iyo Nolol party of former President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo, to the National Unity Council of former Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke and to a civil society umbrella, asking all four to Mogadishu for five days of talks on federal elections.
The Future Council’s secretary, the federal lawmaker Abdullahi Abukar Haji, known as Carab, replied the same day that “before one can invite anyone, one must have a law that authorizes the invitation”, and repeated the opposition’s view that the president’s term had ended. On Thursday 29 October he said that the council had not reached a decision on the invitation and that its members would discuss the options internally before announcing a collective position. A day earlier the council’s secretary-general, Mohamed Aden Jimcaale, known as Koofi, said it had seen the invitation only in the media and warned that the new forum could obstruct the internationally mediated talks with the government that were expected to resume in November.
In the same interview Carab answered a separate charge. “Sanbaloolshe is not a member of the Future Council, and we are not creating an armed faction. We intend to seek power peacefully,” he said, referring to the former intelligence chief Abdullahi Sanbalolshe, who has said he will not rule out an arrangement with al-Shabaab as he plans a new administration in Hiiraan. Meanwhile, the electoral commission has set parliamentary elections for 15 April 2027 and the presidential vote for 15 May, a timetable the Future Council, Puntland and Jubaland all reject because it was announced without a political agreement. Two days after Carab promised a collective decision, President Deni settled Puntland’s answer to the Mogadishu talks on his own, while the coalition was still deliberating over the reply it would give as a body.
A Rival From 2022 and a Long Quarrel With Mogadishu
President Deni has led Puntland since the state parliament elected him in January 2019, and it re-elected him in January 2024. In 2022 he stood for the federal presidency in the contest that returned President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to Villa Somalia, so the man now urging the president to step aside is also one of the candidates he defeated. Puntland withdrew its recognition of the federal institutions on 31 March 2024, after parliament rewrote the first four chapters of the provisional constitution without its consent, and it has managed its own security and its external contacts since then.
President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s four-year term ran out on 15 May under the provisional constitution, by the opposition’s count, and in May Puntland’s cabinet said it regarded him “strictly as a former head of state” and called for an emergency national summit. The federal government holds that the amendments lengthened the presidential term to five years. Similarly, President Deni declined an invitation to the National Consultative Council in Mogadishu in April 2025 until the federal government returned to the agreements it had signed, and that forum was later turned into a vehicle for the president’s re-election bid.
On Sunday 13 September President Deni wrote to the UN Security Council asking it to tighten the arms restrictions on Somalia, deal directly with the member states and extend the UN mission that was due to close in October. The mission closed on the same Saturday that his interview was broadcast, and the Security Council left Somalia without a UN political office. Garowe’s remaining route to an agreed process runs through the Future Council and through talks it would attend on its own terms, and the interim council President Deni proposes would give the member states and the opposition a share in deciding how the 2027 vote is run, which the commission’s timetable leaves entirely to Villa Somalia.
The Interim Council and the Party That Refused It
On 27 July the Future Council published an open letter to the heads of state and defence chiefs of the six countries that supply AUSSOM, proposing an inclusive transitional council to manage constitutional and electoral affairs and arguing that the president’s mandate had expired on 15 May and parliament’s on 14 April. Nabad iyo Nolol answered the letter four days later, on 31 July. Former Foreign Minister Mohamed Abdirizak Mohamud, a senior figure in Farmaajo’s party, said that “returning to the transitional system would be a political setback“, and that the party had always opposed a return to interim arrangements.
Mohamed Abdirizak had also answered President Deni in September, when the Puntland leader’s letter to the Security Council said that some Puntlanders wanted independence. Two of the four groups Villa Somalia has invited to Mogadishu therefore disagree on the remedy itself. One of the Future Council’s two sitting state presidents wants the president replaced by a council before any vote, while Farmaajo’s party wants the vote and has said the transitional road leads backwards. The National Unity Council, led by Sharmarke and Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden, and the civil society umbrella have published nothing on the interim council since President Deni spoke.
In announcing the talks, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said the door to dialogue remained open to politicians who disagreed with the government, and he defended the one-person, one-vote model that his government says has already been used in South West State, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and Mogadishu. Villa Somalia had published no reply to President Deni’s interview by Sunday 1 November. Consequently, the Future Council goes into its internal discussion with one of its two sitting state presidents already on record against attending, with Nabad iyo Nolol on record against the alternative he proposes, and with thirteen days left before the talks are due to open in a capital where Puntland has recognised no federal institution since March 2024.
