The Oromia Administration: Silence, Not Governance
Excerpt
The Oromia Administration is conspicuously absent as Oromia faces multi-front aggression, mass dispossession, and deepening corruption. From Somali regional incursions in the east—politically encouraged by president Mustafe Mohammed Omer—to Amhara Fano violence in the west and north east, and forced evictions in central Oromia, silence has become policy. This editorial argues the Oromia Administration is not merely failing, but enabling a proxy-war strategy in which Oromia must be weakened for the Ethiopian empire to endure.
When Silence Replaces Governance
It is becoming difficult—if not impossible—to argue that the Oromia Administration meaningfully exists.
Across Oromia’s east, west, north, and center, Oromo communities are facing simultaneous assaults: territorial incursions, militia violence, state-sanctioned dispossession interwined with corruption, and institutional abandonment.
Yet the bodies mandated to protect Oromia—the Oromia Administration and Caffee Oromia—remain conspicuously absent. Silence, not governance, has become the defining posture of the Oromia Administration.
This is no longer a crisis of capacity. It is a crisis of deliberate political design.
A Region Under Multi-Front Assault
In East Hararghee, Oromo communities in and around the district of Cinaakssan face sustained attacks originating from the Somali region [1]. In East Wallaga, districts such as Kiiramuu endure repeated incursions by Amhara Fano militias [2,3].
In central Oromia, an estimated 15,000 Oromos from Aabbuu Seeraa district are being uprooted from their ancestral lands in the name of an airport mega project, with inadequate compensation, uncertain resettlement, and no credible protection from the institutions that claim to represent them [4,5,6,7]. This figure does not account for the several thousand being evicted in recent years under the Adama-Mojo Gadaa City (aka Gadaa Supercity) mega project, whose dispossession has relatively been quietly normalized.
Those who protest with the Aabbuu Seeraa eviction are jailed—not because crimes were committed, but because they exposed the negligence of the Oromia Administration and the federal state toward the Aabbuu Seeraa evictees. The punishment is not for wrongdoing; it is for refusing to be quietly erased [8].
Where Is the Oromia Administration?
Where is the Oromia state president, Shimelis Abdissa? Where is Caffee Oromia in a time of desperate need, when Oromo communities east to west and center are in urgent need of protection from lawlessness, dispossession, and predation?
The Oromo people are not asking for miracles. They are asking for the minimum definition of an administration: presence, voice, and action. An Oromia Administration that cannot defend Oromia’s people, land, and constitutional standing is an Oromia Administration only in name [9,10].
The East: A State-Sponsored Front, Not a “Border Issue”
What is happening in the east defies description, not only for its brutality but for its political clarity. While the violence in the northwest is often attributed to Amhara Fano paramilitary expansionism, the eastern aggression is starkly different because it is sponsored and encouraged by Somali regional president Mustafe Mohammed Omer. That distinction matters. When a regional president enables or legitimizes cross-border attacks, this is not a spontaneous clash; it is political aggression, normalized through impunity [11].
Forgive the crude example, but it clarifies the magnitude of what is being normalized: it is as if the governor of Arizona were sponsoring and encouraging an attack on California to seize vast lands, while both the governor of California and the federal president looked the other way.
In any functioning federation, such a scenario would trigger immediate federal intervention. Yet in Ethiopia, the attacks continue—first sporadically, then more intensely, and now with an alarming sense of permanence.
And the most damning point is this: the eastern aggression can be stopped by a single phone call. One call from Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to Mustafe Mohammed Omer could halt the belligerence. Even one call from Oromia’s president, Shimelis Abdissa, could establish that Oromia’s territorial integrity is not negotiable. But the call never comes. The silence persists. The attacks expand. This is why Oromo observers increasingly conclude that what looks like disorder is, in fact, permission.
Moyale and the Normalization of Annexation
This pattern did not begin yesterday. We attempted to expose the negligence of the Oromia Administration and Caffee Oromia from the time the Somali regional government took part of the Moyale town by regional parliamentary vote last July [9,10,11]—an act totally unimaginable in a modern federal democracy. Since then, skirmishes have advanced deeper into Oromia’s territories of Hararghee, Baalee, and Borana-Gujii.
Why the Oromia Administration and the federal executive remain quiet about the belligerence of Mustafe Mohammed Omer is simply mind-blowing.
Federalism cannot survive when a regional parliament can vote itself into another region’s territory and face no meaningful consequence. That is not federalism; it is a theater of law where the script changes depending on who benefits.
The West and North: The Other Proxy Front
The violence in the northwest and west is slightly different in form, but not in consequence. Amhara Fano incursions around districts such as Kiiramuu in East Wallaga—and the increasingly worrying pressure on north and east Tuulamaa—are part of an expansionist project that is being tested, normalized, and widened. These armed violations can be challenged and subdued if there is will by the Oromia Administration and the federal state. The coercive capacity exists; what is missing is political intent.
Meanwhile, the “silent war” of west Oromia continues with needless loss of life, displacement, and the least reported suffering—precisely because official silence deprives Oromo communities of visibility, urgency, and national alarm [3].
A Legal–Federalism Collapse by Design
Under Ethiopia’s constitutional and federal logic, no regional state has the authority to annex another region’s territory, sponsor cross-border violence, or convert citizens into internal refugees through intimidation and forced displacement. When such violations occur, the federal government is obligated to intervene to preserve constitutional order.
The Oromia Administration, for its part, carries a parallel duty: to defend Oromia’s territorial integrity, uphold the rights of its citizens, and activate the legal and political mechanisms of self-administration.
When one region wages aggression and the federal center refuses to stop it, that is not restraint; it is dereliction. When the Oromia Administration refuses to speak and act while Oromia is violated from multiple directions, that is not incapacity; it is abdication. Federalism becomes meaningless when borders are redrawn by force and silence.
Development as the Third Proxy Weapon
The crisis is not only military. It is also bureaucratic—disguised as development. The Adama–Mojo Gadaa City mega project, and the Aabbuu Seeraa airport mega project—now dubbed Master Plan #2, in contrast to the Master Plan around Finfinnee that triggered the Oromo Protest of 2014–2018—are inflicting severe damage on indigenous Oromos. These projects do not merely relocate people; they uproot identity, livelihood, and continuity [4].
They are also creating a field day for financial corruption by those politically connected. In the Gadaa City project, credible evidence is surfacing that even low-level political officials (commonly referred to as “cabinets”) are swindling compensation funds owed to evictees—often in the millions.
The same will happen, if not already happening, with the Aabbuu Seeraa evictees, where thousands of families have been displaced and a vast majority remain without shelter.
Development without consent becomes dispossession. Compensation without transparency becomes theft. And an Oromia Administration that refuses to confront this turns “mega projects” into a mega pipeline of impoverishment and corruption.
The Proxy-War Strategy Made Plain
At this stage, the pattern is too coherent to dismiss as coincidence: regional state sponsored and coordinated attacks from the east, militia violence from the west and north, and dispossession from the center—while the Oromia Administration and federal executive sustain a posture of strategic quietness.
That is why many Oromo observers describe what is happening as a proxy-war strategy: a multi-pronged weakening of Oromia, achieved not only through direct violence but through tolerated violence, normalized annexation, and “development” that functions as displacement.
Oromia is made to bleed left, right, and center—not because the state cannot stop it, but because stopping it would disrupt a political equilibrium built on Oromo containment—the sustenance of the Ethiopian empire.
Put plainly: for Ethiopia to exist as currently structured, Oromia must be weak—politically muted, territorially pressured, economically dispossessed, and administratively hollowed out.
A strong Oromia that insists on rights, boundaries, and accountable governance becomes inconvenient to a center that thrives on selective enforcement and managed instability.
So We Ask the Questions
If this theory is wrong, let the Oromia Administration and the federal executive answer plainly: why the complacency? Why the silence?
- If this theory is wrong, will please Shimelis Abdissa and Abiy Ahmed tell us why they are complacent?
- Why the refusal to use available political and security tools to protect citizens and boundaries?
- When a telephone call can save the wider Oromia population in East Hararghee, Baalee, and Borana-Gujii people from president Mustafe's intransigence what do we have to make of the silence?
- When the Amhara Fano rebels can be challenged and subdued at the moment's call, what are we to make of the suffering if Oromos in Wallaga with dispossession of their lands for years now and the needless lives lost with the least reported "silent war" of west Oromia?
- The sporadic attacks of Amhara Fano from north and east Tuulamaa of Oromia is an increasingly worrying development which is part of the overall expansionist strategy of the Amhara Fano movement. Why are the federal and regional bodies all silent about it?
- The Gadaa City mega project and the Aabbuu Seeraa airport mega project, of central Tuulamaa, are proving detrimental to the Tuulamaa Oromos than what the developments promise. Why are president Shimelis Abdissa and Caffee Oromia acting silent about the collosal indigenous dispossession interwined with corruption now in full motion?
- What do the Caffee Oromia representatives say about the injustices unfolding before their eyes [12]—including the thousands evicted from their ancestral lands, millions displaced by inter-regional wars, and the ongoing brutalities inflicted on Oromos across east, north, and west Oromia?
Until these questions are answered, the conclusion remains unavoidable: the Oromia Administration exists in name only, and Oromia’s weakening is not an accident—it is policy.
References
- An Individual's Plea to Oromia Administration on the Dire Situation in and Around Cinaakssan, East Hararghee, Facebook Reels, Facebook.
- OMN, Rakkoo Godinaalee Wallaggaa Iyya Birmannaa Dhabe, 22 January 2026, OMN TODAY.
- Yadessa Guma, The Forgotten War in Wallaga: Why Atrocities in Western Oromia Remain Uncounted, 3 January 2026, OROMIA TODAY.
- GLONA, Save the Tuulamaas and Their Ancestral Lands, 9 January 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- OT Editorial, Waayee Aabbuu Seeraa Fi Misooma Ilaalchisee, Ergaa Faarseebulaa Fi, 12 January 2026, OROMIA TODAY.
- OT Editorial, The Oromo People Demand a Prerequisite for the Abbuu Seeraa Airport Project, 27 April 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- OT Editorial, Development Draped in Dispossession: The Tragedy Behind the Abuu Seeraa Airport Deal, 23 April 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- Facebook Reels of Aabbuu Seeraa Eviction Complainants (Dajane Gutama Facebook Page), Facebook.
- OT Editorial, The Sinister Dirty Game of the PP Regime with Moyale, 5 August 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- Editorial Team, To Shimelis Abdissa and Caffee Oromia: Your Silence on Moyale Is Betrayal, 7 August 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- OT Editorial, A Time Bomb Buried in Oromia and Somali Region, 27 August 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
- OT Editorial, An Open Letter to the Caffee Oromia: Fulfill Your Sacred Mandate, 15 May 2025, OROMIA TODAY.
