Analysis

Gambia Vision 20-Never: Knowledge deficiency, erroneous policies and wrong priorities

By Mathew K Jallow, Associate Editor

Yahya Jammeh, Gambia's blind Professor

They descended on Kanilai village, in royal resplendence, like invaders of another planet, but Kanilai villagers, no longer stunned by the hype, and numbed to the endless cockiness of it all, only wish the nightmare would end. It was the week Yahya Jammeh had chosen to again draw attention to his boundless power, and stultify members of our traumatized government civil service. And the objectives of this week’s gathering of Jammeh and his senior regime officials is self assessment and renewed commitment to concretize a vision as aspirational and as remote as they come. A Vision 2020 that turns The Gambia into the “Dubai of Africa” is an impossible dream that Jammeh has been peddling since 1996, and ironically, we are now farther removed from this dream than we were back in 1994. For Jammeh, this was a week that gave him and his officials yet another excuse to indulge in another week of narcissism and moral intemperance. Jammeh’s getaways to Kanilai with members of his regime are more than what they really seem. For each senior civil service member present, there would be three or more military and security personnel and several dozen citizens coming from as far as Banjul and everywhere in between. This in addition, Jola villagers from the surrounding Cassamance area, hundreds of villagers from Kanilai and its neighborhood, and musicians and other entertainers, will collectively turn Kanilai village into a festival for the conceited, ignorant, clown, Yahya Jammeh. Among the civil service, Jammeh mostly has unwilling partners, who are motivated primarily by concern for their jobs. This “retreat,” as The Daily Observer described this week of debauchery in Kanilai, is another manifestation of a regime gone awry, and a civil service held captive to the arrogance of power. But, even the Dubai scheme, constitutes a change of direction for Jammeh and a regime that does not have depth, no compass, no bearing, and no damn idea where the hell it is heading to.

In 1994, long before Jammeh became enamored with Dubai, his dreams were to turn The Gambia into the new Singapore. He launched a think tank, most of whose members have never been known to think in a critical manner, much less have forward thinking mindset regarding governance and matters relating to national development. And as Jammeh and his servile entourage converged on Kanilai to entertain themselves, the intricacies of good governance will most likely be the least thing on their myopic brainpower. Turning The Gambia into a Dubai by 2020 will take more than just wistful thinking and delusional aspirations; but far more than that, there is nothing in our country that says that we are going to be the new Dubai in Africa in the next one hundred years. Beginning with Yahya Jammeh, who is supposed to be head of a government, but who is nothing more than a sad story of ignorant nothingness, the lack of knowledge, bad policies and wrong priorities are running The Gambia into the mud. Spur of the moment decisions on critical issues, lack of planning, administration decisions made on Ad Hoc basis, management that relies not on well thought-out and articulated policies, but driven by the direction the wind is blowing, an intimidated civil service, the autocratic decision-making process by Jammeh, the powerlessness of public servants, the endemic corruption that is bankrupting our country and impoverishing our people, are the tip of the iceberg as it relates to the administrative wilderness Gambia finds itself under an animal who calls himself a human being. The patronizing system of government instituted by Jammeh, is a perfect recipe for failure of government, and the examples Jammeh sets for civil servants are an assurance for economic decadence and social alienation for Gambians not seen to be beneficiaries of Jammeh and his regime’s largesse. All the government agencies in our country are dysfunctional messes, under management of largely ignorant, semi-educated nonentities most of whose Jolaness is the determinant qualification for the positions they hold.

But, Yahya Jammeh has done more than screw up the functional bureaucracy that worked to the relative satisfaction of Gambians, he has shown total disregard for the mechanisms of running a government that have proved successful in many parts of the world. One of the clearest manifestations of this is Yahya Jammeh’s incessant doling out of monies in full public view. The institutions developed over the millenniums designed to facilitate the effective and efficient administration of human activity, have no significance in the world of Jammeh. As an example, Jammeh does not seem to have much use for the banks often carrying with him thousands of dollars and storing vast amounts of currencies at the State House, amounts that ought to be in safe keeping in banks. Jammeh doles out monies belonging to the Gambians to show total contempt and disregard for Gambians and their needs. When Yahya Jammeh gave a Senegalese musician, Vivian Ndure, $30, 000, the people of Basse were being forced to buy water from public standpipes, and the National Assembly members of the Basse region, Neteh Baldeh and Seilou Jallow, nominated to receive a distinguished merit award, were getting ready to humiliate themselves in public once again by begging Jammeh for some change as they did last year. A week later when Efery Mbye thanked Jammeh for buying him a brand new car and adding ten thousand dalasis to sweeten the deal for him, the residents of Farafenni in the North Bank were also being compelled to pay for water from the public standpipes. And more recently, as Jammeh dragged his entire regime officials to Kanilai, to feed and entertain the massive crowds that were there, citizens of Ndowen in the McCarthy Island Division were forced to walk five miles into Senegal to buy water. Every trip Jammeh makes to Kanilai from Banjul costs Gambians thousands of dalasis the country cannot afford. But perhaps there was nothing as dumb and as stupid as Jammeh giving $700,000 to Taiwan last year when  just one building in Taipei cost more than ten years worth of Gambia’s Gross Domestic Product. As for Dubai, Jammeh might want to know that country recently inaugurated the world’s tallest building, will costs 30 years of Gambian GDP. In order to achieve 2020 Vision, we as a country must have the following in the next ten years:

• At least 85% literacy; we are at a paltry 15%
• A first class highway and a road system with street lights and trimmed trees
• An excellent sewage drainage system in every village, town and city
• Well lit villages, towns and cities with manicured side walks, dignified homes
• Be able to attract Wall Street investors to our shores
• A GDP that can sustain our development
• Palatial homes belonging to Gambians along the beach front and elsewhere
• A highly sophisticated and informed citizenry free to pursue their dreams
• Yachts belonging to Gambians docked NPE fish processing plant
• Gambian billionaires and millionaires with personal aircrafts in hangers

The list is long. Are there Gambians in their right minds who believe this is attainable? Like everything Jammeh says and dreams, Vision 2020 is just an illusion.

Want to contact Mathew? : editormj@thegambiaecho.com