GAROWE, SOMALIA – Puntland’s vice president and acting president, Ilyas Osman Lugatoor, said on Friday 2 October that Puntland will not secede from Somalia, and accused the federal leadership of spreading the story that it would in order to cover its own failures. His statement answered Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, who said in a podcast interview released on Saturday 26 September that President Said Abdullahi Deni had decided to take Puntland out of Somalia. Three days after Ilyas Osman Lugatoor spoke, a Puntland minister said Puntland’s people have the right to decide for themselves if Somalis cannot agree on a common state. He added that the government that had broken away from the agreed order was the one in Mogadishu.
Ilyas Osman Lugatoor Answers the Prime Minister
“Puntland has always been a foundation of Somali statehood and will not secede from Somalia, but using Puntland to cover up failures is shameful,” Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor said, according to the Somali text of his statement. He said Puntland’s success was a success for all Somalis, accused the federal leadership of destroying the country’s institutions and wasting its resources, and said leaders who had failed to stabilise the country were now blaming Puntland for the collapse.
“It is not the people,” Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre said, drawing a line between Puntland’s people and its president, “but my friend Said Abdullahi has decided to take Puntland out of Somalia,” adding that he knew the people of Puntland and that they believe in a united Somalia. He accused the Puntland administration of rejecting federal institutions in disputes over the national identity card, school standards and national symbols, and in the same interview praised Puntland’s security forces for their counterterrorism record. On 16 September the prime minister had told an economic briefing that his government had not politicised and would not politicise its financial support to the member states. Puntland has accused Mogadishu of using that money as leverage. Federal Interior Minister Ali Yusuf Ali had already rejected the legitimacy of the letter that started the exchange.
That letter, signed by President Said Abdullahi Deni and dated 13 September, was addressed to the United Nations and was reported on 23 and 24 September. In it Puntland told the United Nations that some of its citizens had begun demanding separation after thirty years of political disagreement inside Somalia, and warned that a settlement acceptable to all sides was the only thing that would keep the question closed. Ilyas Osman Lugatoor’s reply of 2 October repeated the commitment the letter implied, that Puntland remains inside Somalia, and placed responsibility for the demand the letter described on the federal leadership the prime minister speaks for.
What Puntland Asked the Security Council For
President Said Abdullahi Deni asked the Council to tighten the arms restrictions on Somalia, restore the mandate of the sanctions Panel of Experts, extend the UN mission UNTMIS beyond its closure on 31 October, and deal directly with the federal member states. The letter set out federal actions since 2023 that Puntland says include backing armed groups inside the territory it claims, and asked for scrutiny of the airstrikes on the Nugaal coast.
Under resolution 2809 of 23 December 2025, UNTMIS must cease operations on 31 October, while the Panel of Experts runs to 31 December with a review due by 30 November, and the maritime arms interdiction also lapses on 30 November. Somalia holds a seat on the Council until 31 December 2026 and sits at the table for every one of those decisions. The opposition Somali Future Council, to which President Said Abdullahi Deni belongs, wrote to the Council separately on 11 and 24 September asking for UN-backed mediation and an independent investigation of the Doolow strike.
In the days after the letter was reported, the interior minister called it illegitimate, a Puntland-born former foreign minister, Mohamed Abdirizak, told President Said Abdullahi Deni that Puntland was not his to cut loose, and the prime minister turned the dispute into a question about one man’s intentions. None of the three addressed the arms embargo, the Panel of Experts or the future of UNTMIS, the three items on which the Council has decisions to take before the end of the year.
On 18 April, launching Puntland’s tree-planting week in Garowe, Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor said Somalia was in a situation more dangerous than in 1991, because the federal parliament’s mandate had expired and the president’s term was ending with no agreed path to an election. On 24 September, the day the second opposition letter to the Council was made public, he said politics had failed Somalis and that Puntland would strengthen its cooperation with Somaliland.
A Vice President From Bo’ame
Ilyas Osman Lugatoor was born in Bo’ame, in the Sool region, in 1967, and belongs to the Dhulbahante. He served as Puntland’s minister of aviation and airports from February 2019, chaired the council of the Kaah political association from April 2020, and was elected vice president on 8 January 2024, when the Puntland parliament returned President Said Abdullahi Deni for a second term. In January 2024, weeks after taking office, he said that SSC-Khatumo affairs within Puntland were his responsibility.
As aviation minister he opposed a federal aviation law submitted to the national parliament in February 2020, one of the early disputes over which powers belong to Mogadishu and which to the member states. Mogadishu now backs the Las Anod administration it calls North East State, which claims borders running through Sool and into Sanaag. On Saturday 26 September, the same day the prime minister’s interview was released, the federal government paid more than 2,500 of that administration’s soldiers their first federal salaries, some of them recruited in Sanaag.
Puntland has counted Sanaag and Sool as its own since its founding in 1998, and Somaliland holds Erigavo and claims both regions as well. The payroll is Mogadishu’s second federally paid force inside territory Puntland claims, after President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s decrees of 22 June 2026 created a Bosaso-based 17th unit of the national army under Lieutenant Colonel Abdullahi Osman Abdullahi, known as Diyano.
The Puntland official answering the charge of secession is a Dhulbahante from Sool, a region that falls inside the borders North East State claims and where the federal government now pays a force of its own. Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor’s statement did not mention North East State or the payroll, and Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre’s interview made no reference to the payments made the same day. Puntland’s complaint about federally backed armed groups inside the territory it claims was already in the 13 September letter, thirteen days before the first salaries were paid.
The Constitution Puntland Says Mogadishu Left
On Monday 5 October Puntland’s minister of youth and sports, Mahmoud Aydiid Dirir, said that “the people of Puntland have the right to decide for themselves if agreement on Somali statehood is not reached or the turmoil drags on.” He said the federal government had abandoned the constitutional agreements on which Somalia’s third republic was founded. He also said explicitly that Puntland was not calling for secession, and said the party that had broken away from that order was the government sitting in Mogadishu. He added that Puntland would not indefinitely carry the responsibility for Somali state-building while the political disputes persisted.
On Saturday 30 March 2024 the federal parliament approved amendments to the first four chapters of the 2012 provisional constitution, and the next day Puntland announced that it was withdrawing from the federal system and would govern itself until the changes were put to a nationwide referendum. A further round of constitutional revisions passed in March 2026, and President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud’s four-year term ended in May 2026 with no national election held. On Sunday 4 October, the day before the minister spoke, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud signed a communique at New Alamein with Egypt, Eritrea and Sudan reaffirming Somalia’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and rejecting any recognition of Somaliland. Accordingly, the case Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor’s government makes is that it has stayed where the 2012 settlement left it, and that the federal institutions have moved.
Between Friday 2 and Monday 5 October, Vice President Ilyas Osman Lugatoor committed Puntland to remaining inside Somalia and one of his ministers warned what its people may decide if the constitutional order is not restored. Prime Minister Hamza Abdi Barre, whose interview had named President Said Abdullahi Deni as the man taking Puntland out, travelled on Monday to Balanbale in Galmudug to complete a reconciliation agreement between two clans. Puntland’s requests to the Security Council on the arms embargo, the Panel of Experts and UNTMIS remain unanswered by the government that will vote on them, and UNTMIS is due to close in twenty-six days.
