OPINION
Gambia at 45: is she growing up?
By: Jeggan Grey-Johnson
From the clanging of the bell at Ballanghar, by Edward Francis Small, to the lowering of the Union Jack in 1965, after 300 hundred years of British colonial rule, when a Republic deemed improbable was born, this nation’s journey has always been about a search for an identity- one of peaceful and quiet existence. Always deemed to be tolerant, open and hospitable, our nation mostly referred to as stable; our economy small but resilient; our temperament- a predictable calm. However, after 45 years of self determination our national characteristics have altered. Perhaps age is taking its toll, or perhaps we are neglecting our greatest strength and strongest features and approaching mid-life crises prematurely.
Our older compatriots, such as Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ghana, have gone through the growing pains, in varying degrees. Some in their teenage troubles were on the brink of self destructing through a succession of military coups, one in her terrible twenties underwent an experiment as a one-party system, so reviled that it gave birth to a civil war that blemished it eternally. And others still in their thirties had not come of age, but struggled with delayed political maturity, and development held hostage by the resistance to change- and refused to learn any lessons. And is the latter situation that The Gambia seems to be flirting with, which is the refusal to learn from the mistakes of other countries, whose recklessness has caused it much consternation over the decades.
Gambians continue to demonstrate patience, to a point where the urgency of now, is slipping away. The country is losing the chance it has, to seize the day, before middle age. It must do away with childish things, like wasting precious time on partisanship, refusing to speak truth to power, conveniently mistaking patronage for patriotism, shrieking fundamental responsibilities to others and refusing to hold public officials accountable. The country must move away from the culture of silence, where truth is compromised, leveraged to a powerbase determining its worth. A trend that has landed us in a state of delirium, where now a right angle may equal 80 degrees, depending on which perspective we are told to view it from. After forty-five years of nationhood, we should be assessing our achievements in equal measure to our short comings. The time for us to pat ourselves on the back has not yet arrived.
It is true that there are more health facilities today than before, but child deaths are still alarmingly high at 109 per 1000 with maternal deaths amongst the highest in the region. It is true that more children go to school today than before, but many do not complete the full educational cycle. It is also true that roads networks are better. But it still takes longer in some places and costs more to travel. It is true that electricity supply and access to water has improved, but more households find it difficult paying utility bills. And it is true that a university has been going strong for half a decade, but more school leavers are unemployed. Public officials are more preoccupied with representing themselves, than representing the people that have put them there. Civil servants are seldom civil, and rarely serve. And the political parties are largely ad-hoc, only coming out several months before an election to trick us of a right we can only exercise once every five years. Thereafter, we seldom see or hear from them again.
Our history too has been marked by a checkered past. Revenge disguised as a revolution in 1981, led to at least 1000 people dead in less than eight days; a political space that narrowed, as one party, based on personality cults, dominated the political landscape for almost thirty years, with little signs of letting go. A student protest violently put down at the dawn of the millennium, causing a nation to hang its head in shame. And we witnessed a loud silence befall our guilt at the slaying of a son of the soil, who protected the weak through the power of a mighty pen he wielded. We have also heard promises of a new dawn, that power will not be hijacked by the few at the expense of the many. But seen instances where might is deemed right, and where liberty and independence exist in a Constitution wielded as a tool of restraint.
The time has come therefore, to engage in a national conversation, as the country reaches forty-five. The time has come for Gambians to learn from the colossal mishaps that befell sister states like Nigeria, a far bigger nation, which after more than six military coups, and almost half a century later, is still quietly grappling with its new found peace. Sierra Leone, where the itch for political excesses and repression was scratched by the powerful few, who remained at the helm for seventeen years, with seven of those years as a one-party state, embroiled in corruption and patronage. This hegemony led to a military coup that ushered in a period of anarchy that was to last a decade, amidst false starts and shattered hopes, which in the end left 200,000 people dead. Ghana, the first nation to gain independence in Africa, declared a one-party presidential system three years after attaining independence, six years later it was a military coup that toppled that government. It was to take almost thirty years, for stability to finally take root in the country. But Ghana had to endure several Republics before settling for the path of maturity. In each of these situations there is a lesson that we can and must learn as a nation and a people: a free society will thrive and be prosperous, and a restricted one will implode, for freedom is a gift from God, and no man or single entity can curtail it in perpetuity; we must see each other as partners in the best interest of our country of which we all belong- none has a monopoly over the love of country; a nation’s willingness to reform is necessitated by the people’s willingness for change to nip arbitrary power in the bud and reject the notion of a democracy deferred.