Somali Students
Complaints over corruption cases in the ministries of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia have been on the rise, as many people are concerned over fraud, particularly within the Ministry of Education.
Students from the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland, in particular, have decried corruption that they claim is present in the awarding of Turkish educational scholarships.
The Turkish government, which seems to have made the re-building of the Somali capital a national mission, has awarded hundreds of scholarships for Somali students to study in Turkish educational institutions.
After having passed local examinations administered by Turkish, TFG, and Somaliland officials in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, the 60 students have come to Mogadishu to receive the fruits of their studies.
Zamzam Du’alle is one of these students. She told Somalia Report by telephone that President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali had visited the Somaliland students in Mogadishu hotels and promised them the first available spots in Turkey, a commitment that has not been fulfilled.
“Many scholarship opportunities have opened up, while the president and prime minister have not come back under our roof,” she said.
An official in the Ministry of Education involved with higher studies told Somalia Report, on the condition of anonymity, that there is much corruption surrounding the awarding of scholarships.
He said many scholarship opportunities allocated to the local Somali students are acquired through bribes.
“The lists of scholarship recipients were not selected through evaluation tests, they were selected though other procedures, like the politically based 4.5 clan formula, as well as bribes,” he said. The 4.5 tribal formula is the same clan-based system used to apportion Somali members of parliament (for every placement allocated to each of Somalia’s four major clans, half a placement is allocated to all minority clans combined).
Some sources have suggested that the cost of obtaining a scholarship falls in the range of $8,000 to $10,000, an enormous sum in Somalia.
Mohamed Abdi, a Ministry of Education official involved with higher studies, claimed that there was no corruption surrounding the awarding of scholarships, either to Somaliland or other students.
He said a quite number of students from Somaliland had already reached their universities in Turkey, while the others are waiting for upcoming openings.
Some of the students from Somaliland had gathered in Mogadishu and vowed if they did not get any results from the TFG leaders, particularly the president and the prime minister, they may go back to their homes.
Officials in the Turkish embassy in Mogadishu expressed the belief that the corruption surrounding the awarding of scholarships will decline, now that the Turkish envoy to Somalia, Cemalettin Kani Torun, has expressed annoyance that the scholarships were being handed out based on the 4.5 clan formula.
This is not the first instance of complaints over corruption and misconduct in the TFG Ministry of Education.
Last year, Somali students living the Kenyan refugee camps complained of fraud in the Turkish higher studies application process.
