Sacked Somalia's FM rejects Farmajo's ambassadorial job offer

MOGADISHU, Somalia - Outgoing Somalia's Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmed Awad has rejected an ambassadorial job offer from Villa Somalia, just hours after he was sacked by Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble on Thursday, in a move that has raised suspicions and political anxiety in the country.

On Thursday, Awad, a minister in President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo's administration, was relieved of his duties in what is believed to be the confusion over the ongoing Ethiopian crisis in the Tigray region, which Somalia has a keen interest in according to observers.

In a tweet, Awad hailed the president for giving him an opportunity to serve as foreign minister in 2018 but refused to take an ambassadorial offer which he'd been given perhaps as a relief for being dismissed by the current administration, whose tenure expires in February.

He had been given an appointment as envoy to an unspecified country according to him. The former minister who also became Somali ambassador to Washington thanked members of the international community for standing with him throughout his time in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the federal government of Somalia.

"I am grateful for this opportunity that I was given in 2018 to serve the people of Somalia. I applaud the Heads of States for their cooperation along with the people of Somalia but I'll not take an ambassadorial job which I have been given," he noted in a tweet.

His dismissal was occasioned by his tweet denouncing a statement from his own department which had expressed Somalia's interests in pushing for dialogue in Ethiopia, where the Ethiopian National Defense Forces [ENDF] has been raiding TPLF bases after a small disagreement in the Tigray region.

"This is to clarify that there is no official statement from @MofaSomalia regarding the situation in Ethiopia. The statement-making rounds do not represent the views of the Federal Government of Somalia, and therefore is not valid," he had said in the tweet.

Awad becomes the first major casualty in the government of Mohamed Hussein Roble's government after the exit of Hassan Ali Khaire as Prime Minister in July. Throughout his time in office, Somalia signed a number of bilateral and multilateral cooperations with several countries across the world.

GAROWE ONLINE