President Jammeh solicits D25M from GPA

--Threats of devastating consequences linger

By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-In-Chief

After shamelessly destroying The Gambia’s once vibrant telecommunications giant, Gamtel, and the Social Security & Housing Finance Corporation among numerous others, Gambia’s autocratic leader, Yahya Jammeh, who came to power promising to fix corruption, has now extended his greed to The Gambia Ports Authority (GPA). According to our most competent sources, President Jammeh has ordered the GPA to immediately remit to him, the sum of twenty-five million Gambian Dalasis (US$1million) for the construction of a pavilion at the July 22 Square, an antiquated  historical misnomer lying decrepit, 15 meters from State House. It was at this symbolic public arena known to many Gambians as MacCarthy Square, that the British colonialists handed over the instruments of independence to the country’s fist president, Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara. It was renamed for the July 22 coup that brought Jammeh and his gang of khaki boys to the pinnacle of political power.

This latest development comes barely a month after the errant leader seized operation of the GPA assuming the authority of Overseer General of the ill-fated sea port; the main commercial artery of the poverty-ridden mini West African state.

Reveals our competent sources, the President has given GPA an ultimatum that unless they immediately remit to him the 25 million Dalasis solicited, devastating consequences will follow including up to, being consigned to Mile II Prisons; Africa’s hell on earth where, women prisoners are gang-raped and men routinely castrated. “There will be zero tolerance for attempts to sabotage my development agenda and I need this money right now” the kleptocratic Gambian leader was quoted as threatening senior officers of the GPA.

According to unimpeachable sources, the GPA is increasingly being drained because of worthless presidential functions that it is forced to pay for. In particular, only last month, the GPA had to host numerous presidential dinners in excess of D300, 000.00 each. Our unimpeachable sources were quick to say, that these expenses pale in comparison to the flights that the Gambian leader charters after his obsolete jet developed mechanical problems. Recently, the GPA was forced to pay for Jammeh’s charted flight for a trip to Abuja, Nigeria, in the sum of $250,000.00US our unassailable sources reveal.

Lamentably, our sources who begged strictest confidentiality, reveal that the GPA is not performing to expectations because of Jammeh’s continuous interference and now that he has assumed the role of CEO, many investors as well as Gambian businessmen have diverted their attention elsewhere, lest they run afoul of the all-too-powerful megalomaniac.

Paradoxically, yet crucially, only last week, here in the United States, President Jammeh and presidential madam, now disgraced Tourism Minister, Nancy Njie, went on a publicity blitz with a full page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal’s “Money& Investing” column, deceptively telling American investors to invest in Africa’s smiling coast where, there is a stable government, democracy and rule of law. The advertisement published in the Saturday-Sunday, January 30-31 edition of the Journal bearing the president’s ugly photo also quotes US Ambassador,  Barry Wells, encouraging Americans to invest in Gambia. According to a highly placed source in the President’s office, Nancy Njie until her firing Friday, February 05, 2010, controlled Jammeh like a docile school boy and as The Gambia braces for the 35^th African Travel Association’s Congress, this spring, Jammeh and Nancy were in full motion. According to our most competent sources, this latest publicity program, a sequel to a disastrous CNN Ad only a few years ago, costs $1million US dollars.

For now though, it remains to be seen how far this highly deceptive advertisement will benefit Jammeh’s dictatorial regime. Granted, the Wall Street Journal is a powerful commercial tool, but we know The Gambia better than the journalists at the Journal. Above all, the numerous Gambians that Yahya Jammeh has killed over the years and the country’s overall human rights situation more than anything else, determine an investor-friendly state. We therefore, tell the entire universe that Jammeh and Nancy Njie’s advertisement is grossly deceptive because in that country, businessmen are routinely abused, manipulated, corrupted, intimidated and then, their assets seized or frozen. Sometimes, foreign investors in The Gambia have been falsely accused of partaking in terror schemes just to extort them and their businesses. Deportation of foreign investors is the new normal in Jammeh and Nancy Njie’s Gambia. This pattern, juxtaposed against a pathologically corrupt judiciary that has long been swept of its independence as the arbiter of justice and compromise, leaves the American potential investor between the deep blue sea and the devil for which, we think, it is grossly irresponsible for Ambassador Wells to have contributed to this sham of an Ad. Today, Jammeh controls the only sea port that brings investors’ goods into the country and shrewdly micro-manages every facet of the Gambian economy from Banjul, the capital, to Koina, the last spot on the beleaguered nation’s interior. The firing of Nancy Njie as Tourism Minister only five days after the expensive Ad, provides a powerful punctuation punch and a tacit aproval to our withering allegations against the Jammeh government as facts, premised on foresight and love for one’s country. No ambivalence, Mr. President!  Is it not ironic that the same madam who advertised on the Journal has now been axed even before she enjoys the dividends, potentially, of this shameful advertisement? So where is the stability? You ponder!

Crucially still, a pathologically corrupt judiciary, a megalomaniac leader against a backdrop of a kleptocratic civil service where technocrats like Alieu Ngum, a career civil servant and former Secretary General, continue to zealously play with Jammeh’s mediocrity in governance, provides a fertile ground for chaos and ultimately, political violence. For, who in his right mind, will agree with Jammeh operating three duplicitous ministries of: Finance and Economic Affairs, Trade and now economic planning & industry. Here, we have three government ministries, shameful byproducts of Alieu Ngum’s manipulative genius, performing basically the same functions-in a word, REDUNDANCY!! If truth be told, citizens like Alieu Ngum should come back to their senses and be guided by patriotism and not cronyism and family in matters of governance. Some of us who are aufait with some of these deceptive characters masquerading as noble functionaries, damn well know, how they contributed in the destruction of the Jawara government and quickly embraced Jammeh once Jawara fled. That Yusupha Kah, even though a good man, is not competent to run a boutique let alone a Ministry, is a fait accompli. The new Trade Minister, Baboucarr H.M. Jallow was once Principal Loans Officer to Bammy Jagne when Jagne was Permanent Secretary. So what Alieu Ngum’s useless and corrupt Planning Commission has done is to reincarnate the same moribund system decades ago that helped bring about the July 22, 1994 coup and make no mistake about it, another one is in the offing because the political fireworks are at play. In sum, Alieu Ngum, Baboucarr Jallow, Yusupha Kah and Bammy Jagne are in tandem; working towards plunging our nation into further economic paralysis and with Yahya Jammeh as president, they have succeeded because he too, has been immersed and there is no turning around. In fact, as we went to press, sources very close to this camp of spineless bureaucrats have it that very soon; Bammy Jagne will resign from the bank and join the fray, return to the lion’s den and begin the loot-left, right and center.    

The reason why Yahya Jammeh; a poor man, a very hungry man and in fact, a very angry poor man who came to power complaining about rampant corruption etc, can now compromise those ideals is deeply disturbing because ours is a poor country, progressively tethering towards cataclysmic gloom. Evidently, the mafia has succeeded in manipulating Jammeh because in July, 1994, the now shattered fraternity of khaki boys had good intentions for the country; at least that was what many were made to believe but how those grand ideals eclipsed, remains a multi-million dollar question for the political scientist.

The saga’s saddest side is that the poverty-stricken mass of the innocent population are at the receiving end of all these nonsense. Worse still, Yahya Jammeh has forgotten his history that he came from the poorest families in the countryside and make no mistake about it; building fanciful houses at Kanilai is not the panacea to poverty. For what is a beautiful house to a poor man or woman who has no food to eat? What is a beautiful china to a poor family that has no food, no medicine and no money to educate its children? What is a TV set to a poor man who cannot pay his electric power bill? What is a satellite dish to a poor man who has malaria and cannot even have access to a medical doctor when corrupt citizens comfortably sit behind elaborate mahogany desks, with fans fanning their bellies thinking of nothing but how to bleed the nation, daily? These and similar searching questions continue to exercise our minds as we grapple with the sad realities of Gambian life for which reason, The Gambia Echo will continue  advocate for the continuous lubrication of the wheels of justice with the power of the pen written in indelible golden ink.