Said Abdullahi Deni was elected to lead Puntland State — a fragile, strategic territory balancing on the knife-edge between resilience and collapse. Instead, he has turned Puntland into his personal political launchpad for the coveted Villa Somalia seat, leaving his own state exposed to the very dangers he swore to protect it from.
As he redirects resources, attention, and state machinery toward his second presidential run in Mogadishu, Deni leaves Puntland to the mercy of ISIS cells in the mountains, Al-Shabab infiltration in rural districts, and an economy bleeding out from neglect and mismanagement. The man who vowed to defend Puntland’s unity has allowed SSC to be bartered away to Mogadishu power brokers and Somaliland’s secessionists, even striking quiet understandings with Abdirahman Ciro while Puntland’s eastern flank disintegrates. Sanaag and Haylaan came perilously close to falling under the banner of a so-called “North East State,” a separatist fantasy that grew in the cracks of Deni’s political absenteeism.
Deni is a master of policies that never see daylight. Announcements are made with fanfare, projects are launched on paper, then buried in the dust of unkept promises. He governs from behind closed doors, shutting out Puntland’s brightest thinkers, civil society voices, and diaspora expertise. In his mind, consultation is weakness, intellectual challenge is disrespect, and elders — the backbone of Puntland’s traditional legitimacy — are simply props to be discarded when inconvenient.
His leadership has taken on the character of a family business franchise — opaque, insular, and insulated from accountability. When he travels abroad, the “official delegation” is often his immediate family, while qualified state officials are left at home to watch the news like everyone else. The state’s resources are now tools for his personal vendetta against Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, as if political revenge were a developmental policy.
Meanwhile, Puntland’s infrastructure — especially in Mudugh — has deteriorated to a level that borders on abandonment. Roads crumble, port stagnates, and no functional system exists to regulate the quality of goods entering the market. From toxic foodstuffs to counterfeit medicines, the absence of quality control is a silent killer stalking Puntland’s population. The health sector has withered into a skeletal institution, underfunded, mismanaged, and incapable of meeting even basic standards.
Deni has yet to grasp the simple truth that governance is not a one-man show. A state leader must juggle multiple priorities — security, economy, diplomacy, social cohesion — all at once. His style is the opposite: monofocused, vindictive, and allergic to scrutiny. He presides over a Puntland increasingly fragmented, disillusioned, and exposed to existential threats.
If Puntland falls further into disarray, history will not remember Deni as the leader who tried and failed — it will remember him as the man who walked away from his post in broad daylight, leaving the gates open for every wolf at Puntland’s borders.
WDM 