Sacked Finance Minister, Abdou Colley bounces back as Trade Minister;

Dr. Njogou Bah is new Works Minister  

--Also, Yankuba Sonko confirmed IGP

By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-In-Chief

Unimpeachable sources within the corridors of state power, report that sacked Finance and Economic Affairs Minister, Mr. Abdou Colley, was reinstated into Jammeh’s lackluster Cabinet this morning and appointed new Trade, Employment, Industry and African Integration Affairs Minister.

Abdou Colley and Dr. Njogou Bah

Abdou Colley replaces Dr. Njogou Bah who has become the proverbial political prostitute in Jammeh’s regime despite his claims to holding a doctoral degree in Public Administration from an unknown American University. Dr. Bah is the new minister of Works and infrastructure a portfolio that was under President Jammeh for sometime now.

It can be recalled that only last week, Dr. Bah was demoted as Secretary General and Head of the Gambian Civil Service and appointed Deputy Works Minister only to be elevated a day later to the Cabinet position of Trade and Employment. Now even before the dust settles, Bah has been moved yet again as Works Minister; a worrisome development that continues to raise eye-brows over his allegedly dubious qualifications that provoked the nickname Dr. Bogus Bah. Many Gambians commentators and letter writers have challenged both the Jammeh government and Dr. Bah to come clean about his allegedly faked doctoral qualifications but they do not just seem to give a damn. Instead, Bah has become a political pawn and only heaven knows if by the time Jammeh finishes with him, he might not end up at Medina Serign Mass as an Arabic teacher. It remains to be seen where Bah and Jammeh are headed but if history is anything to go by; his future under Jammeh’s regime is not envious at all.

In another development, our sources say that Acting Inspector General of Police, Yankuba Sonko has been finally confirmed as IGP. Yankuba Sonko’s delayed confirmation was probably, one of the greatest ironies of Yahya Jammeh’s routine pronouncement of rewarding hard work regardless of ethnic affiliation.

Yankuba Sonko is probably the most qualified and most competent police officer in the Jammeh era and only because the boy is Mandinka from Nuimi Bunaidou in the North Bank, it will take time to even confirm him IGP. Paradoxically, the current Interior Minister, Ousman Sonko, a Jola born in Cassamance, southern Senegal, is a Latrikunda Junior Secondary Technical School graduate while Yankuba is a Gambia High School graduate with years of professional training. Ousman Sonko was a confessed rapist before the July 1994 coup that brought Jammeh to power, yet he has presided over The Gambia Police Department and now sits as Cabinet Minister of Interior-only in Jammeh’s Gambia!

Similarly, only last week, President Jammeh promoted Corporal Pa Alieu Gibba to the rank of Captain and appointed him as his Presidential Aide de Camp at the expense of more senior and much more competent officers within State House. Pa Alieu Gibba’s meteoric rise follows the sacking of Captain Modou Lamin Manneh, (a.k.a Colonel Gilbert)-nicknamed for his British Army trainer during the BATT era at The Gambia National Army. Captain Manneh is from the army’s 10^th intake, 1988. Like most soldiers before him, he too is peacefully resting at home until the day he is either arrested or recycled. It is also reported that in order not to allow other officers from different ethnic groups to benefit, or due to Jammeh’s increasing fear of the soldiers or both, he moved one Captain Seedy Baldeh from State House. Captain Baldeh is a former member of the defunct Gambia National Gendarmerie.

For now though, it remains to be seen where we are headed with Jammeh’s government where State Ministers and army Generals come and go like passing clouds.