Somalia's President Sacked His Chief Justice Before a Ruling Against Him

Who decides when a president's time is up? In Somalia, the answer arrived in the dark. On 4 November, President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud dismissed Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed. The next day, the Supreme Court ruled that both the presidency and parliament had lost their legal mandate. It also declared Ahmed's dismissal invalid. Read that again. The president knew a court was about to rule against him, and he removed the judge first.

Two days later, on 7 November, Mohamud attended the swearing-in of Ahmed's predecessor, Ibrahim Idle Suleiman. A chief justice was replaced in a ceremony that looked less like a constitutional transition and more like a coronation. Somali citizens watched their highest court being rearranged by the man it was meant to check.

UN experts did not mince words. Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, and Ben Saul, the Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, called it a "blatant interference with the independence of the judiciary." They reminded Mogadishu of a standard that should be tattooed on every ministry wall across our continent: judges may be suspended or removed only for incapacity or behaviour that makes them unfit for duty, and only after fair hearings and independent review. Not because a president is annoyed. Not because a ruling is inconvenient. Not because the palace wants a friendlier bench.

Now look west. The ECOWAS Community Court of Justice has ordered the Guinea-Bissau government to pay 30 million CFA francs, roughly $50,000, to five political figures whose fundamental rights the state violated. The list includes former Prime Minister Domingos Simões Pereira, PAIGC leader Octávio Lopes, Social Renewal Party leader Roberto Mbes'ba, PAIGC lawmaker Marciano Indi, and party lawyer and commentator Augusto Nansambe. The court found that they were detained arbitrarily. Nansambe was reportedly seized from his own home by armed men on 28 December 2025, and beaten.

So let us ask the question nobody in those offices wants to answer. Why does a regional court have to order a state to pay compensation to men its security forces abducted? A cheque is not justice. It is a receipt for abuse. And for every case that reaches Abuja or Banjul's regional court, how many detainees never get a lawyer, a hearing, or a judge willing to rule against the state?

Meanwhile, Sudan has joined the Mavi Balina-2026 naval exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean as an official observer. The anti-submarine drills are hosted by the Turkish navy from the Aksaz Naval Base in Muğla province and run until 20 November. Sudan is watching alongside Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Morocco, Mauritania, Indonesia and Mozambique, while forces from Turkey, the United States, Pakistan and NATO's Standing Maritime Group 2 conduct live manoeuvres. Turkish officials frame Sudan's attendance as a sign of diversified defence partnerships.

Here is what that framing leaves out. Sudan is a country where the army and the Rapid Support Forces have been killing civilians since April 2023, where millions have been driven from their homes, and where Turkish-made drones have been documented in the fighting. Ankara is happy to sell hardware and sit at the table of a Sudan that has no elected government and no functioning courts. Not one of these defence relationships, from Ankara, Beijing, Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh or Washington, comes with a demand that Khartoum hold elections, free its prisoners, or obey its judges. That is the new scramble for Africa. The players have changed. The silence about our rights has not.

The Security Council also made news this month. On 13 November the Council unanimously extended the mandate of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, MINUSCA, until 15 November 2027. France's ambassador, Jérôme Bonnafont, said the mission would consolidate its achievements, adjust troop levels, and support a pilot project for a garrison army, alongside disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration. The resolution names combating impunity as a core objective. Good. Impunity is the word that matters. The CAR has hosted UN peacekeepers since 2014. A decade later, the test is no longer whether blue helmets are present. It is whether those who commit atrocities face courts that cannot be bought, bullied or dismissed overnight.

Africa has seen this movie before, and we know the ending when institutions fail. Leaders who fear their own judges eventually fear their own people. But the continent also has proof that a better script exists. In Senegal in early 2024, President Macky Sall tried to postpone a presidential election. The Constitutional Council overturned the postponement, and Bassirou Diomaye Faye was elected. In Botswana, the governing party lost power in 2024 and handed it over peacefully. Those were not miracles. They were courts and voters doing their jobs. Mauritius has built prosperity on the same foundations: rule of law, property rights, and a press that can embarrass ministers. These are the building blocks, and we should stop treating them as luxuries for rich countries.

Then there is the story that actually works, and it comes from the most unglamorous corner of government. The Nigeria Customs Service has launched a pilot digital customs system with Benin and Cameroon. Under the scheme, a trader submits one customs declaration instead of repeating paperwork at every border post. The declaration processed in Nigeria automatically becomes the receiving country's manifest, so Cotonou or Yaoundé can apply its own controls without a trader filling out the same forms again. The platform also uses AI-powered translation between English and French, so officials in Lagos and in francophone capitals can process the same transaction in their own language. Comptroller-General Adewale Adeniyi described it as a way to cut delays for traders moving goods across the region.

Think about what that means for a market woman carrying goods from Lagos to Cotonou. Every repeated declaration is another queue, another official with a hand out, another delay that costs money and dignity. Single submission removes the opportunities for extortion that have long turned our borders into toll booths. This is what a free market looks like when the state gets out of the way of commerce: predictable rules, transparent processes, and less room for a bribe to be the price of entry. The pilot is a proof of concept. It should be scaled, its fees published, its data protected, and its disputes sent to independent appeal rather than back to the officials it is meant to restrain.

So what must happen? Somalia must reinstate Chief Justice Bashe Yusuf Ahmed and put the question of the mandates before a court that is not terrified of the palace. The Guinea-Bissau government must pay the ECOWAS award in full, release anyone still held arbitrarily, and open an investigation into the abduction of Augusto Nansambe. ECOWAS must treat compliance with its court as a membership obligation, with real consequences for states that ignore it. The African Union should stop issuing communiqués after coups and start suspending governments that cling to power past their constitutional expiry. The UN Security Council should attach public benchmarks to every MINUSCA renewal, measuring how many abusers have been prosecuted, not how many patrols have been run. And Sudan's presence at a NATO-backed naval drill should be met with a clear message from Africa's capitals: no defence partnership is worth more than the civilians it helps to kill.

Citizens have a role too, and it is not passive. Demand that your parliament pass judicial appointment rules that cannot be altered by a presidential decree. Demand that your government publish its customs fees and join the digital corridor. Demand that your lawyers, journalists and civil society groups document every abduction and every ignored court order. Traders, in particular, should understand that a border without corruption is a competitive advantage, and they should lobby for it.

So here is the question we must all answer. When a president fires a judge the night before a ruling, and a regional court has to order compensation for men taken from their homes, and a country at war sends observers to a NATO-linked drill, who is protecting the people? The answer should be us. Share this, challenge your representatives, and refuse to accept that our courts can be dismissed like cabinet ministers. Africa does not need more apologies from the powerful. It needs judges who cannot be fired for ruling against the state, and citizens who will not look away.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL