Running to become president of a country always comes with challenges — but facing death threats from militants and fearing you may never see your four children again are not the usual hurdles.
Despite those enormous obstacles, Fadumo Dayib, 44, plans to leave the safety of Finland, where she arrived as a refugee 26 years ago, to run for president in Somalia. She will be one of dozens of candidates vying to rule the troubled Horn of Africa nation, whose government has been struggling against the al-Shabab extremist group, which is trying to impose a strict version of Islam.
“I’ll have to tell them they may never see me alive again,” Dayib tells The Associated Press. “That is going to be a tough, tough thing to do as a mother.”
After her own mother fled adversity in Somalia, Dayib was born in neighboring Kenya and arrived in Finland as an 18-year-old refugee. Educated in health care and nursing in this Nordic country and in public administration at Harvard University, she has set her goals high for conservative Somalia— aiming to eradicate the stranglehold on power held by the country’s four major clans.
“My aim is to tackle this structure. My aim is to destroy it,” she says. “It has no place in the 21st century.”
Any Somali citizen above age 40 can run for president as long as his or her parents are both ethnic Somalis and the candidate has had higher education and work experience. Candidates do not represent regions and run on their own platforms.