Somali President Replaces Mogadishu Mayor

The Somali president on Friday replaced the governor of Mogadishu and picked Abdirizak Mohamed Nur to take the gubernatorial responsibility

Waxa qoray Abdirahman Aynte | Washington, DC Jimco, 06 November 2009

The Somali president on Friday replaced the governor of Mogadishu, the bullet-rattled capital of Somalia, in a move widely seen as an attempt to shore up the deteriorating security situation of the capital and to further stem the influence of warlords.

“Our hope is to infuse a much-needed fresh blood to the administration of the capital,” said President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed in a ceremony held at his presidential palace.

Taking the reins of the capital is Abdirizak Mohamed Nur, a new face to the intricate political landscape of Somalia, and to some, a surprise pick for what is considered to be one of the most important jobs in the country.

“My first priority is to eradicate poverty,” Nur told the VOA from his new office. “Poverty is central to the chronic insecurity of this city.”

Bureaucratically, the mayor of Mogadishu is also the governor of Banadir, a region that theoretically includes the suburbs and the exurbs that encircle the capital.

Practically, however, the mayor---and by extension the government---controls fewer than half of the capital’s 16 municipalities. That fact is not lost to one of the city’s former mayors, Adde Hassan Gabow.

“Although change is generally good,” he lamented, “I don’t believe that this particular change is going to make a difference.”

Some analysts saw this change as a pretext to a widely expected cabinet reshuffle on the embattled Somali government.

Widely seen as an incubator of violence, Mogadishu is sprawling city and home to nearly two million people. With the exception of a brief control by Islamic courts in 2006, no single authority has controlled the entire city since the collapse of the central government in 1991

The new interim mayor said it will take his team at least a year-and-half to organize elections that will lead to a permanent administration.

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