Erasing Oromia: How a Fringe Party Exposed the Complacency and Paralysis of Oppressed Nations and Nationalities of the Ethiopian Empire

Excerpt

A fringe party’s audacious proposal to erase Oromia and other regions of the oppressed nations and nationalities has exposed a deeper crisis: the entrenched complacency and political paralysis of the majority. This is not merely the aggression of a fringe party attempting to erase Oromia and other regions; it is the predictable outcome of a majority conditioned to tolerate the intolerable. Ethiopia’s tragedy persists because boldness from the few meets silence from the many.

#Article 39, #Birhanu Nega, #ENDC, #EZEMA Party, #Fringe Party, #Geographic Federalism, #Identity Erasure, #Multinational Federalism, #PP Regime, #Regional Partitioning, #RespectMultinationalFederalism, #Tyranny of Geography, #ultra-unionist fantasies

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The Crisis Sustained by Silence

Ethiopia’s crisis is not, at its core, only the work of the aggressors who dominate and recycle imperial ambitions. Far more destabilizing is the vast majority who have been conditioned to endure, normalize, and quietly accommodate those aggressors. A nation does not succumb to tyranny because a few wish to rule without consent. It collapses because the many have been conditioned, over generations, to tolerate the intolerable.

A Psychological Inheritance, Not Just a Political Problem

Ethiopia’s tragedy is not only institutional. It is psychological. The majority is fractured, numbed by trauma, and trained to swallow injustice as destiny. Oppression survives not through the strength of the oppressor, but through the paralysis of the oppressed. This is the architecture of Ethiopia’s impasse: A minority steeped in imperial reflexes, and a majority politically sedated into silence.

When Irrelevant Fringe Groups Gain National Influence

Nothing exposes this dynamic more clearly than the recent audacity of EZEMA. Electorally irrelevant, socially marginal, and politically hollow, it would be a footnote in any functioning democracy. Yet paradoxically, by the complacency of the oppressed majority, it is somewhat made to wield disproportionate influence. Why? Because a passive majority has allowed a state structure where minoritarian fantasies override demographic reality.

A Fringe Party’s Map of Erasure

Emboldened by this permissive environment, EZEMA introduced a proposal that attempts to dissolve Oromia and other regions of the oppressed nations and nationalities entirely. This is no social media prank. It is a formal submission document to the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission (ENDC)—another imperial contrivance dressed as reform [1]. The audacity is staggering: A tiny clique without mandate presuming to delete a nation of tens of millions from the map. This hubris is possible only where boldness faces no consequence.

The Mastermind Behind the Map: Birhanu Nega’s Unionist Obsession

What makes this audacity even more alarming is the figure orchestrating it: Birhanu Nega, the de facto one-man engine behind EZEMA’s ultra-unionist agenda. Once surrounded by followers, he now stands largely alone as most abandoned the party, drained by its lack of vision and his own dwindling credibility. Despite failing to win a parliamentary seat, Birhanu Nega ascended to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s cabinet — not through mandate, but through usefulness. He became the regime’s convenient intellectual prop, an instrument deployed to sanitize centralist ambitions under the guise of civic nationalism. By his own admission, Birhanu Nega returned to Ethiopia’s political arena in later years with a singular mission: to obstruct Oromo self-determination [2]. He has repeated this origin story often — tracing it to his time in prison, where he shared cells with OLF freedom fighters while he himself was imprisoned as a CUD member with his political ideology anchored in the ultra-unionist EPRP. That encounter did not open his mind; it hardened it. His political project since has been shaped around a fixation: stopping Oromia from ever claiming its rightful agency. Placed at the helm of the Ministry of Education for over four years, Birhanu Nega presided over what may be the most catastrophic academic failure in modern Ethiopia. Under his leadership, national school-leaving pass rates collapsed to an almost unbelievable 97.5% failure rate — a statistic fit for the Guinness Book of Records if failure had its own category. The collapse impacted every nation and nationality, but none more severely than the Oromo youth, whose future he rendered disposable through incompetence masked as reform. That he remains in office despite such a staggering national trauma is itself a revelation. It is proof — stark, unfiltered, undeniable — of the complacency and paralysis of the oppressed majority. It shows how deeply the psychological conditioning runs: even catastrophic misgovernance by a fringe ideologue triggers no unified societal response. If a man who failed an entire generation can stay in power, then the problem is not merely the man. It is the society that was taught to endure him.

Audacity Thrives Where Complacency Reigns

Returning to EZEMA’s audacious proposal for a new regional partitioning — one that erases nations and nationalities at a whim — the real danger is not the map itself. The map is merely a symptom. The deeper danger is that a society so profoundly insulted has not thundered back in unified rejection. That silence is Ethiopia’s true crisis. A determined minority redraws borders because the majority has been conditioned not to resist. Empire survives not through the aggressor’s strength, but through the victim’s stillness.

A Drag Force Backwards

Instead of pursuing innovation, technology, and development, Ethiopia is dragged backward by elites trapped in imperial nostalgia. These elites draft maps as if people were pawns. They cling to fantasies of cultural homogenization of the dark ages in the age of self-determination in the 21st century. Oppressed nations and nationalities cannot leap toward the future while their rulers remain chained to a century-old obsession with dominance and erasure. Ethiopia’s turmoil is not accidental, nor is it the product of fate. It is the inevitable outcome of an empire that has spent more than a century sabotaging its own potential. What should have been an era of shared progress has instead become, in the words of a recent article [3], “The Century of Prosperity the Empire Denied Itself”. A nation blessed with vast human capital, abundant resources, strategic geography, and cultural dynamism has squandered every historical opportunity — not because it lacked capacity, but because its ruling elites clung to domination over development. For generations, political imagination in Ethiopia has been trapped in a destructive loop: preserve hegemony first, govern later; dominate first, develop someday. That “someday” never arrives. And yet, the alternative is not utopian or romantic. It is practical. It is achievable. It has been achieved elsewhere by nations that embraced pluralism instead of denial.

• If genuine freedom prevailed…
• If the right to self-determination were respected rather than feared…
• If social stability replaced the perpetual insecurity manufactured by empire nostalgia…
• If development programmes were built on trust, equity, and recognition…

Imagine where the peoples of this cast subcontinent could be. Imagine a region where no group wastes energy suppressing another; where identity is not a crime; where diversity is a resource, not a threat; where governance is not a battlefield but an investment in shared prosperity. Everyone could, quite literally, live better — healthier, wealthier, happier — not as adversaries struggling to dominate, but as citizens contributing to a flourishing commonwealth and/or neighbours. This is not daydreaming. It is rather an indictment of the immeasurable human and material resources squandered in pursuit of a ghost — the ghost of imperial supremacy that should have been buried in the last century. The world has moved on. Africa has moved on. Modern political thought has moved on. Only Ethiopia’s imperial elite has remained suspended in a fantasy where borders, identities, and hierarchies must be redrawn endlessly to prevent equality from taking hold. The tragedy is not that Ethiopia lacks the means to prosper. The tragedy is that it is dragged backwards by those who fear a future where every nation and nationality stands as an equal partner in the multinational federation. And until that fear is defeated, the country will continue to deny itself the prosperity that has always been within reach. EZEMA’s political posturing — along with that of every group still clutching the imperial reflex — offers no viable path forward for Ethiopia. These actors are not visionaries; they are the last agents of a backward force holding peoples hostage to a discredited past. Their influence is the gravitational pull that drags Ethiopia away from the prosperity it could already have achieved, be that as a multinational federation, confederation, or even through peaceful divorce [4]. And in truth, EZEMA and political entities like them, have no place in the modern age of self-determination — an age that, if embraced, would unlock the freedom, stability, and development the nations, nationalities and peoples of this empire have been denied for generations.

The Awakening Ethiopia Desperately Needs

If Ethiopia is to escape its quagmire, the majority must awaken from its historical stupor. Complacency is no longer neutral. It is complicity. The future only begins the moment the oppressed refuse to remain still.

The Federation at Stake: A Future That Cannot Be Left to Audacity or Silence

At its core, this audacious proposal is not merely an attempt to erase Oromia — though Oromia, as always, remains the central fixation of every unionist project. It is something far more profound and destabilizing: the erasure of Ethiopia’s multinational federation in its fragile infancy. Imperfect as it is, still contested and unfinished, the federation remains the minimalist antidote to the empire’s chronic illness — the only structural arrangement that ever acknowledged the diversity as a political reality rather than a problem to be subdued. To undermine this foundation is to drag the empire back into the darkest recesses of imperial nostalgia. It is not an administrative adjustment; it is a political reversal of historic proportions. And this is where the distinction between active wrongdoing and passive enabling becomes decisive. To avoid misunderstanding, the caution is necessary: the critique here is not of the oppressed masses, who survive under a police and militia state, but of the political actors who claim to represent them and yet abdicate their duty at moments of historic consequence. The aggressive, oppressive elites are behaving exactly as their ideological lineage has trained them to behave.

• Their audacity is predictable.
• Their hostility to self-determination is inherited.
• Their obsession with control is generational.

But the true burden of responsibility now falls on those elites who claim to represent the oppressed majority — the political actors who possess numbers, legitimacy, and the moral weight of a wounded population, yet carry themselves with astonishing passivity. Their silence, their strategic paralysis, their willingness to coexist with forces seeking to dismantle the federation reveals something deeper than political miscalculation. It reveals a deliberate complacency, a willful surrender of duty at a moment when history demands courage. History will judge them not for what they endured, but for what they enabled. No actor embodies this failure more starkly than the Prosperity Party — the enabler-in-chief of an insignificant fringe group and the principal architect behind the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission, a body with neither mandate nor legitimacy for the nation-redefining mission it has assumed. Far from being a party of reform, the Prosperity Party came to power opportunistically on the backs of more than 5,000 Oromo martyrs who fell during the 2014–2018 Oromo Protest. Instead of honoring that sacrifice with democratic transformation, it has become the primary enabler of ultra-unionist fantasies — a role that would be considered a colossal insult in any serious political tradition. Instead of safeguarding the multinational federation, it has offered its institutions, its media machinery, and its legitimacy to those determined to dismantle it. And now, as if to confirm the depth of its decay, the same party has launched full-scale propaganda training on how to engineer victory in the forthcoming election — not through trust, not through performance, but through manipulation, coercion, and electoral theft. Another five years of this political project will not merely stall Ethiopia; it will deform it beyond recognition. At this rate, the fringe clique’s mapping proposal — once laughable, then alarming — may yet become reality:

• Not because it is rational.
• Not because it is popular.
• Not because the fringe deserves power.

But because the multinational federation stands undefended, held hostage by the audacity of a few and the tragic stillness of the many. This is the crossroads: A future erased by imperial fantasy, or a federation strengthened by awakened resolve. Only the oppressed majority or the constitutional contract can decide which path Ethiopia takes.

The Tyranny of Geography

Referring to Part One of the proposal document [5], it establishes EZEMA's ideological foundation, while Part Two document [6] operationalizes it through the partitioning nations and nationalities as if they do not exist. The proposed map of eight new regions — demarcated largely along major rivers — attempts to use physical geography as a substitute for political legitimacy. According to the document’s own attributions, we are asked to believe that the political fate of nations can be redrawn through the technical credentials of a “water engineer” (Engidashet Bunare) and a “hydrologist” (Shiferaw Lulu). It is a spectacularly cynical maneuver: an academic veneer masking an act of identity erasure. This is not innovation; it is cunning — an effort to naturalize a political project by hiding it behind topography and technical jargon. As a recent OROMIA TODAY editorial observed [7], this amounts to a “tyranny of geography” — a regression to imperial structuring in everything but name. The map may look new, but the vision behind it is ancient.

Historical Parallels: When Fading Elites Reach for Maps

EZEMA’s backward ideology does not exist in a vacuum. It mirrors a long global pattern in which declining ruling groups attempt to resurrect dying empires by redesigning borders and identities from above. Colonial Africa (1884–1914) European powers carved Africa into arbitrary units at the Berlin Conference, using “geographical logic” — rivers, mountains, latitudes — to mask political domination [8,9]. This is the same sleight of hand EZEMA’s map attempts: use natural features as a neutral façade for deeply ideological goals. The Austro-Hungarian Empire Facing mounting demands from Slavs, Hungarians, and Czechs, imperial elites responded not with accommodation, but with new administrative partitions designed to dilute ethnic majorities [10] — a tactic identical to EZEMA’s attempt to dissolve Oromia into non-communities with fabricated names. Francoist Spain (1939–1975) Francisco Franco suppressed Catalan, Basque, and Galician identities under a forced “Spanish unity,” insisting that diversity was a threat to national stability [11,12]. EZEMA’s disdain for ethnicity, its fixation on “one identity,” and its hostility to Article 39 echo the Franco doctrine almost line-for-line. The Yugoslav Monarchy (1918–1941) Before socialist Yugoslavia, the royal government tried to enforce a single “Yugoslav identity” while erasing the agency of Croats, Slovenes, and Bosniaks [13]. Like EZEMA, they believed multi-nationality was a problem to be fixed, not a reality to be embraced. Their imposed maps eventually collapsed, dragging the empire into deeper conflict. Sudan (1956–2011) Khartoum’s attempts to deny the South’s identity, erasing linguistic and cultural autonomy, and imposing central rule “for national unity,” ultimately broke the country [14,15]. EZEMA’s project is cast in the same mold — a fragile elite clinging to unity through negation rather than negotiation. Across all these cases, the pattern is clear:

When old elites lose legitimacy, they reach for maps. When they fear the rise of oppressed nations, they reach for erasure. And when they cannot lead, they redraw.

EZEMA’s project is not modernization. It is not reform. It is the global, time-tested script of a fading imperial class trying to rescue a collapsing order by cartographic force.

What Unites EZEMA, ENDC, and the PP Regime?

A single thread binds EZEMA, its ultra-unionist Amhara comrades-in-arms, the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission, and the Prosperity Party regime.

They are united in a coordinated project to dismantle the hard-earned freedoms and identities of Ethiopia’s oppressed nations and nationalities.

None of these entities possess a democratic mandate for such sweeping transformations — a project aimed at reviving a tottering empire while undermining the very freedoms that nations, nationalities, and peoples have been painstakingly working to secure in recent decades. Yet they operate with confidence — because they believe the majority has been conditioned into silence. But silence is no longer an option.

A Call for Awakening and Action

The stakes are no longer abstract. This is a full-front assault on identity, autonomy, and the very foundation of multinational federalism. The question is no longer whether EZEMA’s proposal is absurd. It is whether the people will continue to tolerate the absurdity. It is time to wake up. It is time to reject these entities. It is time for action — not endurance.

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Appendix: A Glance at the EZEMA Proposal Documents

The two-part EZEMA blueprint appears to have circulated quietly for some time before surfacing publicly. Part One (72 pages in Amharic), dated October 2023 and titled “EZEMA’s National Dialogue Document” [5] lays out the ideological foundations from their standpoint. Part Two (137 pages in Amharic), dated September 2022 and titled “Proposed New Ethiopian Administrative Regions for Strong Unified Nation Building” [6] moves from theory to execution — spelling out, in granular detail, a project of identity erasure and territorial reconfiguration. A closer look reveals that these documents amount to nothing less than a grand proposal for recolonization.

A Manifesto of a Dominant-Minority Mindset

Without delving into every page, the thrust of the EZEMA narrative is unmistakable. It is a political manifesto crafted to protect the historically dominant minority while disregarding the injustices endured by the oppressed majority. There is neither acknowledgment of past wrongs nor an attempt at equitable accommodation. Instead, the document reads like a 21st-century revival of an empire-era worldview, complete with prescriptions on land ownership and demographic control — ironic, considering that Ethiopia’s multinational federation already guarantees minority rights without erasing the identity of the majority. The document blames “the recent 3 decades” for Ethiopia’s problems, a phrase repeated so consistently that it becomes a refrain. Yet this selective amnesia — ignoring more than a century of systemic injustice — gives the narrative an unmistakable ideological flavor. By the time one reaches page 8, the tone resembles that of a racialized, exclusionary manifesto reminiscent of the darker chapters of European history.

Partition Justified Through Astonishing Logic

By page 14, item 1 attempts to justify a new regional partitioning with reasoning so astonishingly superficial that it lays bare the ideological motive rather than any genuine administrative logic. The recurring theme — almost an obsession — is ethnicity, a word mentioned over 200 times in the 72-page document. EZEMA’s engagement with ethnicity is not to understand, respect, or accommodate, but to denigrate it, framing identity as a threat rather than a foundational reality of the empire. This is reinforced by the other high-frequency word in the document — “citizen” or “citizenship” — a term embedded in EZEMA’s very name and invoked almost as often as “ethnicity.” It is carefully deployed as a sugary coating to mask a deeper project of identity erasure, revealing exactly where EZEMA is coming from. Religion is also invoked, though without demonstrating any clear role it plays in the present crisis. It feels inserted not for analysis, but for rhetorical clutter.

Article 39 in the Crosshairs

By page 64, the objective becomes unmistakable: Article 39 of the Federal Constitution — the very provision that guarantees nations and nationalities the right to self-determination up to independence — is slated for abolition. And in section 5.4.2 on page 69, the word “erasure” appears in plain sight, the most honest and the most chilling term in the entire document. It signals a direct assault on the very foundation of the multinational federation. This is not reform. This is demolition.

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ABBREVIATIONS

• CUD - Coalition for Unity and Democracy
• ENDC - Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission
• EPRP - Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Party
• EZEMA - Amharic initialism of the "Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice" party.
• OLF - Oromo Liberation Front
• PP - Prosperity Party

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References

1. OT Editorial, To the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission: You Are Wasting Your Time and Everyone Else’s, 31 January 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
2. Birhanu Nega, "Nestanset Gohe Sekede", translated as "The Dawn of Freedom", reference to OLF from page 198, written in Ethiopia’s Qaalittii prison circa 2006 and published later.
3. Olii Boran,  When Power Fears Light: The Parable of an Empire Half-Blind, 6 November 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
4. Yadessa Guma, Peaceful Divorce, Shared Future: How voluntary sovereignty + economic interdependence could turn Ethiopia’s zero-sum politics into shared prosperity, 4 November 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
5. የኢዜማ ሀገራዊ ምክክር ሰነድ ("EZEMA's National Dialogue Document"), October 2023, EZEMA.
6. ጠንካራና_የተዋሐች_ኢትዮጵያን_ለመገንባት_የሚያስችል_አዲስ_የአከባቢ ("Proposed New Ethiopian Administrative Regions for Strong Unified Nation Building"), September 2022, attributed to Engidashet Bunare and Shiferaw Lulu.
7. OT Editorial, Sleepwalking into the Tyranny of Geography, 13 June 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
8. Berlin Conference & Arbitrary Colonial Borders in Africa, Britannica – “Berlin Conference”.
9. Africa: Colonial Boundaries, University of Texas.
10. Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ethnic Suppression, Britannica – “Austria-Hungary: Nationalist Movements”.
11. Francoist Spain and Suppression of Regional Identities, British Library – “Francoist Spain and Cultural Repression”.
12. “Franco’s Dictatorship”, History.com.
13. Yugoslav Monarchy & Forced “Yugoslav Identity” Before WWII, Britannica – “Yugoslavia: Interwar Period”.
14. “Sudan: Identity, Conflict, and National Crisis”, United States Institute of Peace.
15. “Sudan’s History and Secession of South Sudan”, BBC World News.

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