Ambassador Teshome Toga
Addis Abeba – Ambassador Teshome Toga, Commissioner of the National Rehabilitation Commission’s (NRC), has resigned from the position he held since January 2023 citing “personal reasons.”
According to a short statement by the Commission, Ambassador Teshome Toga resigned from his position as Commissioner effective 13 March “after his request to not continue as Commissioner was accepted by the government.”
He has subsequently been replaced by Temesgen Tilahun, former deputy commissioner of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), who also served as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s foreign policy advisor.
Furthermore, the Commission’s Deputy Commissioner of Logistics and Management, Dr Atinkut Mezgebe, is replaced by Tesfalem Yihedego effective 21 March. The Commission did not mention the reason behind the replacement of Dr Atinkut, a former Central Committee member of the TPLF who resigned from the party after he assumed his position at the commission.
The NRC was established by the Ethiopian government in November 2022 for a period of two years to assist with demobilization and reintegration of an estimated 370,000 ex-combatants across the country. But lack of funding to cover the initial estimated cost of more than 29.7 billion Br remain the commission’s biggest challenges.
Ambassador Teshome’s last public engagement was earlier this month when the European Union pledged 16 million Euro for the Commission’s works that seek to disarm, demobilize and reintegrate the ex-combatants in eight regions in Ethiopia.
A new board has been named to oversee the Commission’s works, according to the statement released yesterday. The board is led by the Minister of Justice, Dr. Gideon Timotheos, and is comprised of five senior officials as members with the new commissioner as the secretariat. AS
