The essay says Mogadishu made NIRA ID compulsory for domestic flights without a registration office in Puntland; on Oct. 1, Garowe passengers were reportedly barred from a Freedom Airlines flight to Mogadishu and Nairobi despite holding federal passports.

It treats this as a repeat of the Sept. 1, 2025 e-visa: Puntland kept visa-on-arrival, some travelers paid twice, and airports became the enforcement point of a center-first rule.

Security screening is not rejected; the objection is sequence—law, access, and a compliance window before enforcement—and interim acceptance of passports and Puntland IDs until registration exists where people live.

Somalia’s federal government has found a convenient way to extend its reach: build a system in Mogadishu, declare it binding across the federation without the agreement of member states and let ordinary travelers absorb the consequences when political reality refuses to cooperate.

First came the federal e-visa. Now comes compulsory identification from the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA). The instruments differ; the instinct is the same. Centralize first, consult later.

On Oct. 1, passengers in Garowe were reportedly barred from boarding a Freedom Airlines flight to Mogadishu and Nairobi because they lacked NIRA identification. Some abandoned their journeys and returned home.

The problem is structural. Federal authorities have made a NIRA card mandatory for domestic air travel, yet NIRA operates no registration office under Puntland’s administration. Puntland residents are being ordered to produce a federal document they cannot obtain where they live.

A passport that works everywhere but home

Many affected travelers carry the Somali state’s most authoritative identity document: a federal passport, issued after the government’s own verification and bearing a photograph, biographical data and security features. If that passport satisfies immigration officers in Nairobi, Istanbul, Dubai or Toronto, it is hard to see why it fails between Garowe and Mogadishu.

NIRA may eventually complement the passport system. It cannot logically void it.........

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