Filling gaps left by market failure through selective, large-scale development interventions is among the fundamental reasons for the existence of the modern state. When conceived and implemented responsibly, such interventions advance public welfare, economic opportunity, and social cohesion. However, when projects are instrumentalized to embezzle public resources, dispossess communities, and fracture the social fabric of the people they purport to serve, both the projects themselves—and the
state that undertakes them—become liabilities.
Abbuu Seeraa Airport Project, initiated in the Bishoftu area, exemplifies this destructive model.
A continuation of the historical displacement of Oromo communities from Finfinne andits surrounding areas, to date, more than 3,000 households across seven kebeles have been forcibly displaced by the airport project. None of these households have been provided with compensation suf icient to reestablish livelihoods elsewhere, nor with replacement farmland to continue farming. Every displaced family has been stripped of land, income, and economic security.
Of the total displaced population, only approximately 1,200 households—around 40 percent—have been provided with replacement housing, leaving the majority without shelter altogether and effectively abandoned to fend for themselves.
Even among those who received housing, conditions are dire. Testimonies consistently describe substandard and uninished structures, lacking basic services, household equipment, and essential infrastructure. These dwellings fall far short of what could reasonably be considered habitable homes capable of restoring dignity or sustaining life. Compounding this injustice, recipients have not been issued legal ownership deeds, leaving them vulnerable to coercion, eviction, and exploitation.
Despite these realities, internal sources indicate that approximately 30 billion birr was allocated for the construction of these housing units—equivalent to roughly 25 million birr per unit. Given the visibly poor quality and incomplete state of the residences, it is evident that a substantial majority of these funds have been misappropriated. This is not incidental or accidental corruption. It reflects a systemic pattern in which development projects are deliberately conceived and executed to enable large-scale embezzlement and the transfer of public wealth to political cadres, loyalists, and cronies of Abiy Ahmed.
Embezzlement is not an unfortunate byproduct of these projects; rather, the projects themselves are structured to make such theft possible under the guise of development.
The situation facing displaced farmers is even more alarming. All displaced households—without exception—have been denied compensation or replacement land to establish alternative livelihoods. Even those who received shelter remain without any means of income. A farmer deprived of land, tools, and resources cannot survive in a concrete structure alone. Regime-af iliated cadre networks are openly betting on desperation: pressuring families to sell their allocated houses and vacate the area. Reports already indicate that intermediaries are approaching households with offers to buy the homes at distress prices. The absence of ownership deeds is being deliberately used to intimidate and coerce residents into selling. If this trajectory continues, the foreseeable outcome is clear: all displaced households will ultimately be left without shelter, compensation, or livelihood.
Beyond dispossession and corruption, the Abbuu Seeraa Airport Project carries a more insidious political purpose.
Abiy Ahmed has repeatedly demonstrated an understanding that a united Oromo political front poses an existential challenge to his rule. This project is a part of a strategy to fragment Oromia, undermine its territorial contiguity, and weaken collective political resistance.
This intent has already been operationalized through various mechanisms, most recently, informal and increasingly formal administrative restructuring, which divides Oromia into western, southern, and eastern clusters, each placed under enhanced federal supervision. This is not just an assault on constitutional federalism—which has long been hollowed out—but an additional effort to dissolve Oromia’s geographic, political, and social coherence. What is being dismantled is not only farmland or livelihoods, but the foundations of self-rule, autonomy, and constitutional order.
Abbuu Seeraa Airport Project is thus a project of dispossession, corruption, and political engineering—designed to enrich a narrow elite while disempowering and fragmenting the Oromo people. We call on all concerned parties—local communities, civic, and international actors—to recognize this project for what it truly represents and withdraw all political, technical, and financial support from it.
OLF-OLA High Command
January 22, 2026
