Breaking News: President Jammeh Orders Taf Holding Company to Pay $1.3 Millions or Else…
By EBRIMA G. SANKAREH, Editor –In-Chief
Mustapha Njie And Friend Yahya A. J. J. Jammeh
According to unimpeachable sources within the corridors of state power, President Yahya Jammeh has ordered Taf Holding’s Chief Executive, Mustapha Njie, to pay him $1.3 Millions (D30,000,000 Gambian Dalasis) or face severe consequences. Reveals our most competent State House operative Kissy Kissy Mansa, it all began in the prelude to the 2006 Africa Union Summit when the errant Head of State in his usual show of bravado had cladestinely instructed Njie to order consrtuction materials for an African Union Villa Project to impress the world. Njie was therefore, to benefit from a guaranteed duty waiver for all materials destined to what has now become a white elephant project. Instead of allowing all legally registered construction firms to compete openly, the entire scheme was done in the cover of darkness and Mustapha Njie, had exclusive monopoly of the Presidential Villa Project, reveals Kissy.
According to Kissy, in the months leading to the much-controversial Summit, that no doubt exposed Gambia’s atrocious human rights to an unrelenting crescendo, President Jammeh had frequented The Gambia Ports Athority than any other time during his tumultous tenure and in each visit, he was secretly gathering information about the exact nature of materials Taf Construction was bringing to The Gambia for the project. ‘Jammeh was closely taking an inventory of all materials Taf imported, reveals Kissy Kissy Mansa ‘but had always feigned ignorance as much things Jammeh does.’
According to Kissy, about two weeks ago, President Jammeh after doing his own math had ordered Mustapha Njie to compensate him 30,000,000 Gambian Dalasis as his share in the construction materials that Njie had allegedly ordered for himself and not the Villa Project considering the profit margin such materials may have accrued for Taf Construction or else, face severe consequences including detention behind the harrowing walls of Mile II Prisons. ‘When I asked you to order materials for the Presidential Villas duty free, I did not expect you to order materials to divert to your construction project and the free duty you enjoyed for all materials diverted has to be paid to me and I need 30,000000 million Dalasis before it is too late’ Kissy quoted a very angry and disappointed Yahya Jammeh as saying to his closest business buddy, a young, modest entrepreneur who rose from the ashes of Balfour Betty to become Gambia’s Donald Trump in a meteoric rise that defies logic.
In a related twist, our highy placed sources have also revealed that Taf Holding faces a huge debt collection exercise from the Nairobi headquartered Habitant financier, Sheter Afric, at a tune of $1.5Milion US dollars. In this debt collection nexus we are told, lies another business tycoon affectionately called Jegg Cham who it is also alleged, had profitted enormoursly from a generous lending scheme that saw her built an impressive shopping mall nestled in the swamps of BB Hotel. Reveal our most competent sources, Mustapha Njie had in fact, travelled to the UK last week and it is within his contemplation to only for now, leave his showroom open in The Gambia until at such a time he decides what to do with his business. But since Njie is a millionaire, this should not be a problem we suggested and our sources rebutted thus ‘Sumaraka Yalana sutura yaga’, (Wollof, for may we continue to enjoy God’s protection) a sarcasm implying the old adage, ‘all that glitters is not gold.’ For the past eight years, numerous theories have been abound each trying to explain how Mustapha Njie became a construction mongul from nowhere. Some say that his uncle, London trained surgeon and retired WHO Africa Regional Director Dr. Ebrahima Samba was behind his success while others still argue that Njie had made his day after a very entreprising beginning at Balfour Betty. Whatever holds water, one thing is certain, the allocation of resources especially, land, to poor Gambians has been Mustapha Njie’s biggest casualty. Land grabbing by one Gambian entrepreneur, in a construction spree that virtually denies majority of Gambians the right to land has been his business’s trademark and the evidence is everywhere for Gambians to see. Land that was used primarily for cultivation to feed hungry Gambians have all fallen prey to Njie’s robust construction scheme supported by no one but Yahya A.J.J Jammeh.
Paradoxically and by a concomittant twist of cruel irony, in a spate of a decade, Yahya Jammeh, who came to power through a coup staged by a cadre of glorified Boys Scouts promising to fix corruption and a complex scheme of land grabbing, is now mirred in the worse corruption scandals in Gambian history and no where is this more conspicuous than in land grabbing, which remains a tenacious hydara-headed problem. His Trinity of Transparency, Accountability and Probity has nosedived ever since the very clique he promised to fight went aboard his house cleansing wagon and turned it upside down and inside out. Today, what we have is worse than what Jawara bequeathed to Jammeh (or do I say what Jammeh seized from Jawara ?) and everyday, Gambians are running helter-skelter like the proverbial broken train running towards a broken bridge and only Allah to whom all Gambians surrender for most of their self-inflicted misery, knows precisely, the fate of that locomotive.