Senior World Bank Official Visits The Gambia-Analysis
BY TIJAN NIMAGA, Bronx New York
Mrs. Joy Phumaphi a senior World Bank official recently visited the West African state of The Gambia and even before her arrival, her photos were plastered all over the papers and National TV. It was as if a pop star was about to descend on Banjul; or as if Bob Marley has reincarnated from his grave and reggae loving Gambian fans were to have a grand visitor. In the end, she had more air time than the proclaimed owner of Gambian Radio and TV, Dr., Retired Colonel, Commander in-Chief, Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Defense etc, etc, Alhaji Yahya A.J.J Jammeh, BA, BSc. MA, MSC. MD, PhD. According to our sources in Banjul, the Jammeh government is known to have corrupted several international officials sent to assess his government by lining their pockets with the same funds meant to alleviate the suffering of our poor people. There is the case of a madam who prior to her so-called international appointment, was dating Yahya Jammeh and ever since her elevation, she had occasionally visited Banjul and painted Jammeh’s disastrous regime as heaven on earth. We have the details and only because her husband is our good brother we opted for the high road but who knows what happens tomorrow? Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones is an old adage that still holds time and we hope our sister stops praising Yahya for God sake.
Predictably, given her high profile job and the hoopla with which the state media carried Joy Phumapi’s visit, the nation’s elites, radical economists and ordinary citizens continue to raise eyebrows over the organization’s funding since Yaya Jammeh seized power on July 22, 1994. The main objectives of Mrs. Phumapi’s visit were geared towards achieving better Basic Secondary Education and also to meet the World Bank’s deadline for the year 2020 when the global financial institution predicts it would help eradicate illiteracy world wide.
The funds that the World Bank claimed to have either approved or granted to The Gambian government were made public but only few of the projects have been officially completed for The Gambian people to see the real life objectives of all those fanciful projects. Mrs. Phumapi’s three-day visit was not enough for Gambians because she did not have time to meet, see or hear the voices of those marginalized Gambians who for fear of Jammeh’s rogue and brutal regime could not face any international organization to expose the dictator’s misuse of public funds and in this sense, the World Bank. Being an African, I thought a woman of Mrs. Phumapi’s caliber and experience could have seen for her self if the Bank’s funds to The Gambia over the past decade were used accordingly. Now that she woefully failed to achieve that goal, our people’s hopes are dashed one more time and probably for good. It was a complete disappointment when Mrs. Phumaphi praised Yaya Jammeh’s autocratic government and also credited it for the "tremendous progress" it had made in the educational sector in a country where recent high school graduates can barely write simply letters. One wonders what kind of progress the high profile visitor was alluding to?
Mrs. Joy Phumaphi who is the Bank’s Vice President for its Human Development Network visited The Gambia from August 20th to 22nd, 2008. The three-day visit was meant to consolidate the existing relationship between the World Bank and The Gambian Government. Mrs. Joy Phumapi is a Botswana national who had served her country’s government in various capacities before becoming Assistant Director General for Family & Community Health at the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva.
While her celebrity type-visit to The Gambia is very important in her organization’s relationship with Jammeh’s corrupt government, it is sad to say not important to every Gambian, as the World Bank might have thought.
Case in point: There was a time when the Duvaliers (Baby Dock and Papa Doc) the deposed Haitian President and his fugitive son, internationally known as the voodoo physicians wanted to buy The Gambia’s only telecommunication company-GAMTEL, a major financial entity to our country’s economy particularly, when juxtaposed against numerous other Para-statals in recent years. Then came the Lebanese and when the opposition and patriotic citizens went against the proposed idea of selling the nation’s only communication link to the outside world, The Gambia government true to its character, lied to Gambians that the World Bank pressurized it to carry out the deal. I did my own research by contacting the Bank’s main offices in Washington DC, as well as calling Dakar, Senegal. The telephone call to the Bank’s Regional Bureau in Senegal that fateful day, revealed all the naked lies that were fabricated as compelling fire works for Gamtel’s illegal sale. The World Bank’s top official Mr. Gilberto De Santos assigned to that Bureau for sub-Saharan Africa came to our rescue. The interview proved to every Gambian that the World Bank was not involved in the illegal sale of GAMTEL. Mr. De Santos even went further to clearly express his own feelings about the allegations against the bank. “If the World Bank does not contribute in helping The Gambia to improve its economic growth, it would not destroy it,” he told The Gambia Echo. He also made it clear that the World Bank did not put any pressure on The Gambian government to sell GAMTEL
How about the millions of dollars given to The Gambia government for road construction, which was also geared towards developing the nation’s infrastructures as well? Gambians remain curious as to what happened to all those funds since roads which the government brags about as rehabilitated or constructed are worse than they were when the dictator seized power in 1994 promising to fix corruption.
Unless we know why The Gambia is buried in debts and why both the private and local sectors face inflation in huge margins, we Gambians will not welcome any official who protects the dictator Yaya Jammeh from being disposed of his evil deeds. Therefore, a visit by any World Bank official would mean nothing to ordinary Gambians. Mrs. Phumaphi has been assigned to straighten one of the most difficult task in The Gambia. Every government sector in The Gambia today lacks or is suffering from the economic slump. Human development in The Gambia today is far from what the government is claiming to have achieved. The infrastructure is nothing better than it was during the colonial era. Roads are so bad that it takes days to travel from Banjul to Koina a route that once took only 8 hours to cover.
Mrs. Phumaphi should have been in the rural areas to see for herself if classrooms without teachers are an achievement. She should have also understood that she is praising an institution, which for the past fourteen years is unable to meet the demands of its workforce. Today teachers barely get D2000 monthly salary. Or should we recall the wonderful years of the Department of Education Youth Sports & Culture before the coup that promised gold and brought us a brutal murderer and a gang of armed robbers masquerading as saviors. In the pre-coup days, the relationship between the Central Government and the Education Department was very impressive. There were fewer funds, fewer teachers but an impressive cadre of high school graduates. Even the Junior Secondary Schools of those days produced better students than the ill-educated bunch that roam the streets and can barely read a novel. The emphasis then was quality but in this regime quantity has over taken everything and the result across the spectrum has been DISASTER! Whatever Mrs. Phumapi refers to, as “tremendous progress” is empty buildings with few teachers in them or some without teachers at all.
Finally, Gambians are very concerned about the millions of funds granted to their government by the World Bank. THE WORLD BANK KNOWS AND GAMBIANS WANT TO KNOW TOO.
Ebrima G. Sankareh contributed to this story.