Recently GRTS reported that the Spanish government gave several cars and other materials to The Gambia police in return for corporation between the two countries. The only corporation that the Spanish and other Western governments need from The Gambia is to recruit Gambian Immigration officers to identify so-called Gambians in Spanish and Western prisons incarcerated on bogus immigration charges.

This brings us to the case of the Spanish intelligent agent attached to the Spanish Embassy in The Gambia; this person is responsible for recruiting Gambian Immigration agents and taking them to Spain for the sole reason of making the Gambian agents turning on their own citizens, the same people that they were supposed to protect. The Spanish will fly this poorly paid Gambian officers, put them in a five star hotel and guide them on a rampage of revelation against their own citizens. The Gambian Immigration agents are compensated on commission based on the number of person they identify as Gambians, sometimes they falsely identify non-Gambians as Gambians just to earn more Commissions.

No wonder the Spanish Government have the audacity to jail, abuse and deport Gambian athletes on transit to Italy for a boxing tournament, they are tacitly controlling the security forces in Banjul with impunity. I have to give credit to Yahya Jammeh when he returned a chartered flight from Switzerland containing nine alleged Gambians back in 1997. Has Yahya Jammeh changed since 1997? The Swiss government paid about 250,000 Swiss francs to deport only nine individual whose only crime was lack of immigration documentation. It is economical for western countries to bribe the local immigration officers to do the job because it is less expensive for them. This was said to have caused uproar with the Swiss taxpayers.

The head of the Spanish intelligence agency attached to the Embassy in Banjul is lives a lavish lifestyle in The Gambia, getting drunk in the clubs and abusing Sierra Leoneans and Liberian females around the Senegambia area. The picture was taken when he had an accident along the Senegambia Road; he was driving the diplomatic car while drunk and speeding.  He did not face any consequences because of his connections with the officers.

The culture of these immoral acts from immigration officers started from Nai Ceesay the former head of the Immigration Department, some of the recent beneficiary of the Spanish trips are, Buba Sanyang (Ziel), Essa Tamba, Ebrima Jahateh, their sole responsibilities are to help the Spanish government deport their own Gambian citizens.

It is about time that African Governments defend the rights of their citizens both home and abroad. African leaders need to identify, defend and protect the interest of their citizens. African economic refugees contribute a great deal towards the survival of their families and countries irrespective of the means in which they migrate. Migration is natural and it has been here since the start of time, if people find it hard to make a decent living in their own countries they will always seek greener pastures. It is as simple as that. According to Foroyaa newspaper, the European Development Fund gave The Gambia D223.5 million in 2009 about $8.9 million, compare that with the $10 million that is remitted into Gambia by Gambians leaving abroad every month. Gambian families depend on these remittances, not the funds from the European Development Fund that are used to build roads that don’t last long.

Hundreds of millions of Dalasis are paid to Customs every month by Gambians abroad; a clear case of taxation without representation. African governments need to realize that it is not the interest of the European governments to have African citizens working in their countries and sending their hard earnings back home but it is the interest of African families and countries. Europeans are defending their interest by deporting Africans; African Governments need to defend their interest by resisting these escalating deportations of their citizens.

Any Gambian that denounces his citizenship abroad should be left alone; the Gambian government has no right to be sending immigration agents to identify people who renounced their citizenship for desperate circumstances leads to desperate measures. We are not hurting anyone at home or abroad, we are striving to feed our families and the same government turning on us.

Since we Africans did not choose to speak French, English or Portuguese, and these languages were imposed on to us by colonialists, we deserve the same privilege that Westerners have: to travel freely around the world without restriction, to be treated with dignity like the way we treat western tourists in our countries, and to freely resettle in any western country as westerners are able to do now in Africa without obnoxious immigration laws.

By S. George, a concerned Gambian