A WDM Editorial
There is a particular kind of sleep that overtakes a region when its capital grows fat while its periphery grows quiet. Nugaal is drifting into that sleep. Someone needs to ring the alarm before whole towns become little more than names on an old administrative map.
Look at the map, if anyone in the planning offices still bothers to.
Nugaal is not Garowe. Nugaal is Garowe, Eyl, Dangorayo, Sinujiif, Buurtiinle and the rangelands and coastline that give the region its economic, historical and strategic meaning. Yet ask many young Puntlanders today to name the towns of Nugaal, and the answer quickly collapses into one word: Garowe. Full stop. The rest increasingly resemble administrative footnotes.
Eyl: History Without Investment
Eyl deserves better, if only because history refuses to let it disappear quietly. This ancient port, once known as Illig, served as capital of the Dervish movement under Sayyid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan from 1905 until Taleh took over that role in 1909. It later became known internationally, less happily, as a hub of Somali piracy in the 2000s. Its location, fishing grounds, maritime heritage and surrounding livestock economy should make it one of Puntland’s more interesting coastal development centers.
Instead, Eyl is too often treated as a postcard. It is remembered when politicians need a photograph of Puntland’s heritage, mentioned when speeches require a little historical seasoning, and forgotten when budgets and investment priorities are drawn up.
A coastal town cannot live on nostalgia. Eyl needs roads, fisheries infrastructure, reliable electricity, communications, water systems, health services, schools and an economy capable of keeping its young people there. Otherwise, every speech praising Eyl’s history becomes an obituary delivered in installments.
Dangorayo and Sinujiif: From Towns to Coordinates
Dangorayo and Sinujiif are in an even more precarious position, because they do not carry Eyl’s historical name recognition. These settlements once anchored local economies and communities in Nugaal’s interior. Increasingly, they risk becoming waypoints: places people drive through on their way to somewhere with better services, electricity and jobs.
That is how towns disappear without physically disappearing. First the professionals leave. Then businesses follow. Young families relocate. Government offices thin out. Schools struggle. Investment stops. Eventually the settlement remains on the map while its economic purpose migrates elsewhere. A town reduced mainly to a road sign has become a coordinate. That should worry Nugaal.
And Then There Is Buurtiinle
Whenever questions arise about Nugaal’s development outside Garowe, Buurtiinle is often produced as evidence that the region still has another growing urban center. But Buurtiinle complicates the argument rather than rescuing it.
Administratively, Buurtiinle belongs to Nugaal. Economically and socially, however, its trade and family ties have long run at least as strongly toward Mudugh and Galkayo as toward Garowe — a pattern residents and traders in the area describe, though it deserves fuller documentation than a single editorial can offer. Trade, livestock movement and commercial activity do not necessarily obey administrative boundaries drawn on government maps.
The map says Nugaal. The marketplace often looks south. That distinction matters. Using Buurtiinle’s growth to demonstrate balanced development across Nugaal risks flattering the regional ledger without confronting the condition of the towns whose economic orientation is unmistakably tied to Nugaal itself. Set Buurtiinle aside for a moment and ask the harder question: what is happening to Eyl, Dangorayo and Sinujiif? The answer is considerably less comfortable.
A Region Becoming a City-State
Here is the arithmetic nobody should be afraid to run. A region consisting of one rapidly expanding capital surrounded by stagnating settlements is gradually ceasing to function as a region. It is becoming a city-state with rural appendages.
That should be especially uncomfortable in Puntland, of all places. Puntland has spent nearly three decades arguing, often correctly, that Somalia cannot be governed by concentrating political authority, public spending and economic opportunity in Mogadishu. It has defended federalism precisely because excessive centralization impoverishes the periphery while feeding the center.
How, then, can Puntland condemn Mogadishu for centralization while tolerating the same pattern inside its own regions? A government cannot spend Monday accusing Villa Somalia of swallowing the country and Tuesday congratulate itself while Garowe swallows Nugaal. Centralization does not become federalism merely because it happens in Garowe rather than Mogadishu. The contradiction is obvious.
The Garowe Magnet
Garowe’s growth is not the problem; its success should be welcomed. The problem begins when the capital grows instead of the region, rather than with it.
The mechanism is straightforward. Government institutions attract civil servants. Civil servants attract housing. Housing attracts shops, schools, restaurants, clinics and construction. International organizations and aid groups follow the government. Private capital follows purchasing power. Universities, hotels and service industries then reinforce the cycle. The capital becomes a magnet, and without deliberate regional policy, everything else becomes iron filings.
That is why development cannot simply be left to gravity. Every new government institution built in Garowe strengthens Garowe, while every neglected road to Eyl weakens Eyl. Every major service concentrated in the capital becomes another reason for families elsewhere to relocate there. Eventually officials point to Garowe’s expansion as evidence that Nugaal is developing. It is not. Garowe is developing. Those are not the same thing.
The Satire Is Becoming Too Easy
One can already imagine the tourism brochure: “Welcome to Nugaal region. Population centers: Garowe, and several historically reported settlements believed to exist beyond the city limits.” Or perhaps the next regional development conference can simplify matters by hanging one large map of Garowe on the wall and labeling it “Nugaal.”
Eyl’s representative gives a speech about fisheries. Dangorayo asks for another road. Sinujiif requests basic services. Everyone applauds. Then another government building goes up in Garowe. Conference adjourned. That joke stops being funny when it starts resembling policy.
Development Must Fan Out
There is nothing mysterious about what needs to happen. Investment must deliberately fan outward from Garowe.
The road to Eyl should be treated as an economic corridor connecting Puntland’s political center with the Indian Ocean, not as a charity project for an isolated district. Fisheries development belongs on the coast. Livestock infrastructure belongs near producing communities. Health and education spending should follow population, geography and need, not proximity to government offices.
Dangorayo and Sinujiif need economic purposes beyond serving passing traffic. Eyl needs serious maritime and fisheries development. District governments need real budgets and authority rather than functioning as administrative messengers waiting for instructions and money from Garowe. Private investors should be drawn beyond the capital through land policy, infrastructure, incentives and reliable public services. And regional planning must start measuring success by what happens outside Garowe, not by counting buildings inside it.
Puntland Cannot Preach What It Does Not Practice
This is larger than Nugaal. Puntland’s political argument within Somalia rests heavily on decentralization, federalism and the right of communities to govern themselves rather than wait for everything to descend from a distant capital. That argument loses moral force when Puntland reproduces centralization internally.
A government cannot demand fiscal decentralization from Mogadishu while starving its own districts. It cannot complain that Somalia has become a Mogadishu city-state while allowing Nugaal to become a Garowe city-state. It cannot preach federalism nationally and practice centralism locally. The principle either travels all the way down, or it is merely political vocabulary.
Wake Up, Nugaal
The warning is straightforward: fan out from Garowe, or watch Nugaal contract around it. Eyl is not a museum. Dangorayo is not a rest stop. Sinujiif is not a road sign. And Nugaal is not another name for Garowe.
These communities do not need another conference promising that their turn is coming. They need roads, investment, functioning local governments, economic opportunity and a deliberate policy that treats regional balance as an obligation rather than a slogan.
Garowe should keep growing — bigger, richer, better. But its success must radiate outward instead of pulling everything inward. Otherwise, officials may someday discover they built a capital spectacularly well while quietly losing the region around it. And by then, there may be nobody left in the forgotten towns to attend the conference explaining what went wrong.
Wake up, Nugaal. A region cannot survive forever as one booming city surrounded by memories.
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