The Fearless Obbo Taye Danda'a Arado Intervews What They Reveal About Power, Punishment, and Truth in Ethiopia and Oromia Region
Excerpt
The Obbo Taye Danda’a Arado interviews offer a rare, unfiltered look into the inner workings of Ethiopia’s federal regime and the Oromia regional administration. From personal persecution to state-sanctioned cruelty, Obbo Taye’s revelations expose chilling truths about power, war, and control. This series examines five key themes drawn from his testimony—beginning with his harrowing prison experience. His voice is not just brave; it is a call to collective reckoning.
Overview
The four-part interview of Obbo Taye Danda’a, hosted by Horn Conversation Channel on YouTube, delivers some of the most explosive revelations to date about the Prosperity Party (PP) regime and the inner mechanics of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s rule. The content is nothing short of extraordinary—piercing through the political fog with a clarity only a true insider can offer.
The interviews offer not only insight into federal operations but expose, in painful detail, the brutal workings of the Oromia regional administration, with which Obbo Taye Danda’a was intimately involved. What makes these revelations so compelling is that they are not speculative—they are drawn from firsthand experience, shared by someone who served within the system and has now chosen to speak out.
Without a doubt, these interviews belong in the annals of Ethiopian history. Short of that, they warrant compilation into a serious political and historical text—a required reference for scholars, students, and human rights observers alike. This is not just a multimedia exposé. It is a civic archive in the making.
We have identified five key themes emerging from the interviews at this stage, though more may be distilled with further analysis. However, deciding how to order them was not easy. Any sequence risks being interpreted as a ranking of importance, which was not our intent. In the end, we chose to begin with his personal experience, both to honor the courage of Obbo Taye Danda’a and to remind readers that this is not abstract politics—these are lived traumas, ongoing risks, and moral reckonings.
It’s hard to stay composed when confronted with truth told with such raw humanity and moral clarity. What Obbo Taye Danda’a has endured—and the measured, principled way he shares it—deserves far more than applause. It demands moral outrage, civic action, and historical reckoning. Giving his testimony a voice, through this article series alongside the interviews themselves, is part of that reckoning. His story must echo far and wide.
The interviews were recorded shortly before his most recent arrest on June 2, 2025, when Ethiopian security forces raided his home in Finfinnee and detained him once again. The timing is chilling. Will these truths, now in the public domain, be used against him in detention? We can only hope not. And yet, knowing his record of fearless truth-telling, we believe he would want us—and others—to persist in speaking out. We take solace in believing he would want us to press on, to amplify the truth.
The Five Themes
Over the coming days, we will serialize the following five core themes, drawn from the interviews and structured to both inform and provoke deeper reflection. These are not just points of political interest—they are windows into how power is abused, how truth is suppressed, and how people resist.
1. His Personal Prison Experience — A Gasp-Inducing Comparison of Two Regimes
Obbo Taye Danda’a has been a prisoner of conscience at least three times under the former EPRDF regime. But it is his rare moral clarity—grounded in personal experience—that gives weight to his comparative analysis.
While serving as a minister under the current PP regime, he was once again imprisoned for nearly a year, following a pointed public critique of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s anti-peace stance, framed through vivid and graphic language. Unsurprisingly, the charges against him were unrelated to his criticism—there is no penal code criminalizing speech against the prime minister.
Instead, a proxy accusation was used as a political pretext. He was arrested on 12 December 2023 and held until 2 December 2024, nearly a full year behind bars.
Less than two weeks ago, on June 2, 2025, security forces raided his home again. This followed renewed and reactivated charges, including allegations of weapons possession and terrorism, reinstated by a higher court that reversed an earlier dismissal. The four interviews, broadcast on the Horn Conversation YouTube channel, were recorded prior to this latest arrest.
2. Chilling Criminal Directives in Oromia
The interviews expose shocking internal orders issued to manage the conflict in Oromia—directives that appear to deliberately target civilians, suggesting premeditated state criminality.
3. The Manufactured Pretext for the Tigray War
The PP regime publicly justified the Tigray war of 2020-2022 as a response to an ENDF attack by Tigrayan forces. However, Obbo Taye Danda’a presents a radically different account. According to him, Prime Minister Abiy personally admitted orchestrating the conflict to his inner circle.
If true, this would mark a premeditated act of war, not defense. In a functional democracy, such a revelation would shake the nation and bring serious legal consequences.
4. Why the OLA–Regime Negotiations Failed
The collapse of peace talks between the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), and the federal regime with regional administration was no mystery—but Obbo Taye Danda’a provides first-hand details about how the regime with regional ally sabotaged the process from within. The interviews illuminate tactics of duplicity, propaganda, and performative diplomacy.
5. Abiy’s Strategy for Power Consolidation
Finally, Obbo Taye Danda’a offers a powerful critique of the four-pronged strategy used by Abiy Ahmed to maintain power. While war and fear are central tools, the interviews also reveal less visible methods that reinforce authoritarian control, suppress dissent, and fracture public trust.
This article serves as a primer for what’s to come. Each of the five points will be explored in depth in the days ahead—with direct citations, contextual analysis, and references to specific segments from the interviews. To enrich the series, we have invited a diverse group of contributors—each selected for their expertise in the respective themes—to author the upcoming pieces.
Stay with us as we unpack what may prove to be one of the most important whistleblower testimonies of Ethiopia’s modern political era.
References
- Part 1 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 1ffaa, 10 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
- Part 2 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 2ffaa, 11 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
- Part 3 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 3ffaa, 12 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
- Part 4 Interview, Turtii Addaa Taayyee Danda’aa Waliin: Kutaa 4ffaa fi isa Xumuraa, 13 Jun 2025, Horn Conversation Channel, YouTube.
- Obbo Taye Danda’a’s BBC Afan Oromo Interview – English Translation Transcript, 10 December 2023, OROMIA TODAY.
- Part 1 of 2 BBC Afan Oromo Interview, 7 December 2023, BBC Afan Oromo.
- Part 2 of 2 BBC Afan Oromo Interview, 8 December 2023, BBC Afan Oromo.
