How Hon. Suku Singhateh Swindles Farmers of 8.4 Million Dalasis

-Documentary Evidence, Echo Exclusive 

                                                    

     By Mathew K. Jallow & Ebrima G. Sankareh

  

 

Hon. Suku Singhateh& President Jammeh

Unimpeachable sources in Banjul have disclosed to this paper the criminal and shadowy activities of one of the most powerful APRC National Assembly Members, Hon. Abdoulie Suku Singhateh. Mr. Singhateh, the new Baba Jobe wannabe, is according to independent reports, in the process of consolidating power very similar to the levels and excesses of Baba Jobe, of recent memory. But, the malfeasance of the corruptible political hog, has this time round, assumed an unparalleled dimension of seriousness due largely to who his direct victims are; the poor farmers of Upper Saloum District. According to our most competent and most reliable State House operative Kissy Kissy Mansa, back in April 2005, due to the failure and inability of the Jammeh regime to purchase the nation’s groundnut produce over the past dozen years, Action Aid, a British charitable organization, with the intervention of former National Assembly Member, Hon. Hamat Bah, agreed to help Upper Saloum farmers bring their harvest to market. The farmers, therefore, legally registered an organization called Group Juboo (Wollof for United Group), in order to legally facilitate the implementation of contracts the group would enter into with Action Aid. With Action Aid providing a healthy line of credit to the tune of D8.4 million for the purchase of their groundnuts, the farmers now needed a Third Party for the resale of the nuts. So entered Hon. Suku Abdoulie Singhateh, the National Assembly Member for Lower Badibou Constituency, in this moving picture. Suku Singhateh, who at the time was serving as the National Assembly Member’s Desk Officer for the North Bank Region, caught the attention of the farmers and he was approached with the idea and promptly accepted the new responsibility. After all the contracts were entered into and other formalities completed, Hon. Singhateh, thereafter, soon proceeded to purchase all the groundnuts from the farmers on credit basis. A separate agreement entered into between Hon. Singateh and the Group Juboo ON April 29^th, 2005, stipulated a three monthly payment installment, with the entire cost of the nuts to be paid within the year. What happened thereafter was the beginning of a nightmare no farmer could have remotely contemplated. Interalia, Hon. Singhateh in this legal document witnessed by one Mr. Buba Khan, and one Mr. Alhagie M. F. Gibba agreed in paragraph 11 that “The purchaser (i.e. Hon. Suku Singhateh) hereby authorises the seller (i.e. Group Juboo) to sell off his property in the event in which he defaults in payment for the said consignment of groundnuts.” Below is the legal document bearing Suku Abdoulie Singhateh’s signature in pertinent part: *** 

                                     

Having secured all the groundnuts harvest from the farmers, and the D8.4 million from Action Aid, Hon. Singateh turned the tables on the two interested parties and began

to play a game of hide and seek. However, following unrelenting pressure from the Upper Saloum farmers, Suku Singateh finally issued a total of four Trust Bank Ltd. checks made out to the farmers group as payment for their nuts. To the chagrin of the Group Juboo farmers, none of the checks issued to them by Hon. Suku Singhateh had payable cash in the bank. All four checks were duly returned without any cash payments to the farmers. Below are two of the checks, the first, issued on July11th, 2005 for D2, 800,000 (Two Million, Eight Hundred Thousand Dalasis) and the second issued 10th August 2005 for D1, 000,000, (One Million Dalasis).

It is baffling how a crime of such magnitude could have gone unnoticed and unreported for so long. In fact, reveals Kissy, when the farmers threatened legal action against the powerful Suku, Action Aid had advised that a press conference be convened first to see if that could send a message to the unrelenting swindler. So on November 25, 2005, the entire Gambian press corps was invited to Fass village in the Upper Saloum District to hear directly from the disgruntled party, Group Juboo. Following what eyewitnesses described as a moving and sombre press conference where member after member lamented in great detail how the most trusted representative lured them into a dubious contact only to swindle their monies, the team of flabbergasted reporters returned to Banjul to report their chilling findings. With the exception of Foroyaa and the now gagged Independent Newspaper our sources reveal, no other medium gave a damn what the farmers’ plight were. It is alleged that Hon. Abdoulie Suku Singhateh bribed media houses that buried the story 2500 Gambian Dalasis each. A senior Manager at Gambian Radio & Television Services (GRTS) allegedly destroyed both the video and audio recording of the entire press conference once Suku came with a bag of notes to the ill-fated studious. Meanwhile, it is alleged that Hon. Singhateh threatened to jail or beat any reporter who dare report on the Fass Press Conference, characterized as a withering indictment of the corrupt parliamentarian. In the end, however, the synoptic coverage by Foroyaa and the Independent had minimal impact, as it did not lead to any substantial action taken against Suku Singhateh either through the actions of the courts or some form of sanction by National Assembly. Now that the wider media is in the picture we will continue to intermittently bring this issue every opportunity we have. We will never again allow this story to die by the actions of political cronyism. Due to its seriousness, we will rate it as we do the following:

                                  

                               - The murder of 55 Ghanaians

                               - The killing of nearly 80 Gambians

                               - Jammeh's open and defiant tribalism

                                - The mass graves around the country

                                - Jammeh's titanic corruption

                                   

Like this list of egregious crimes, Suku's will go down as one of the most serious crimes a politician could commit. Like the stories listed above, we will revisit this story from time to time until there is a resolution to this problem.All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this article or any other article or image, or portions thereof, in any form or context without the expressed permission of The Gambia Echo Newspaper.