Professor Abdiwahaab Sheikh Abdisamad has once again proven that there are professors, and then there are performers masquerading as professors. When Puntland’s gallant forces were sweating blood in the rugged caves of the Cal Miskaad Mountains to flush out ISIS militants, the professor sat comfortably on TV panels dismissing the battle as nothing more than “Deni’s propaganda.”
This is not just ignorance—it is a crime against truth. To belittle the frontline soldiers who face suicide bombers and landmines, who bury comrades in the unforgiving mountains, is to spit on their graves. Puntland is not inventing ISIS; the bullets, the casualties, and the martyrs are real. But in the professor’s world, reality is negotiable—especially when it comes wrapped in clan prejudice and political cynicism.
And then comes the shadow of his own story. In 2022, when he was kidnapped in Nairobi under mysterious circumstances, the professor emerged from captivity in silence. Not a word about who kidnapped him, why, or under whose payroll the thugs operated. A man who cannot expose his own kidnappers is suddenly brave enough to expose Puntland’s anti-terror campaign as “propaganda.” How convenient. How hollow. How suspicious.
One wonders: Who bankrolls the professor’s tongue? For whose agenda is he sharpening his chalk of clan arithmetic? Because this is no longer academic critique—this is political mercenarism dressed in a professor’s gown. He lectures not from books, but from a script written elsewhere.
Somalis know this breed too well: the “television professors” who serve as court jesters for Mogadishu’s villa politics, who throw mud at those fighting real battles while they perform empty intellectual acrobatics for the cameras. Puntland bleeds, soldiers die, mothers mourn—but the professor prefers cheap soundbites over solidarity.
If truth had a conscience, Professor Abdiwahaab would be standing with those fighting ISIS, not mocking them. If integrity had a place in his dictionary, he would expose his kidnappers before lecturing Puntland about terrorism. Instead, he chooses the coward’s path: silence when his life is threatened, noise when brave men defend their land.
The Somali public deserves to ask: Is this man a professor of knowledge—or a professor of sabotage?
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 