Rejoinder: “Kanigee; who ruined the NTC?”
By Hamadi Maatong
Say it again Sankara!! These are the very buffoons that ruined The Gambia’s public corporations such as the NTC, GPA, GPTC, GUC, NAWEC, GCAA, SSHFC, Gamtel and the list goes on. This breed of leeches worked in tandem with the NIB, MFEA and fancy government schemes that include the Divestiture of Public Assets and other pots of honey to zap the juice out of the system.
The same leeches would still not let go but would keep buzzing around any thing that smells juicy. Follow the trail of our notorious Managing Directors (MD’s) and Permanent Secretaries (PS’s) past and present in London and other centers and you could present a dossier on their illicit activities. That’s how callous they are in the manner that they conduct the business of the state. The word “TUUH” in Wollof comes to mind in describing these folks. These guys were no where close to that (TUHH). They would not only “LEKA” but also “NYIT BOL BI”. That’s when they’ll all agree without exception that the Gambia was good “DEKABI NEHON-NA” while Sir Dawda and his cohort of civil service chiefs were asleep at the wheel. Frankly, in a nation where government is seen as the pot of gold where all and sundry go to make their fortune, a culture of poverty would embolden folks to rob the kitty with impunity. I get flabbergasted when Gambians would describe some of the younger MD’s as intelligent and smart. Did Gambians get to know everything that went awry at the GCAA or GIA? Yes, smart at milking the system and crafting schemes that kept their Boards of Directors dangling by the balls. These were paupers of directors that had, until their appointment, lived on half empty pockets and not seen the workings of a five star hotel in London. So, all it took to get a rubber stamp board was to wine and dine them in the UK (destination of choice for most) plus hefty transit allowances and pocket change for gifts “YOBAL” and they are good to go for the rest of their tenure. After all, it was common knowledge that the MD’s proposed their board members. Strange?!
Come to think of it, “Kakatarr” may not be the best description for this fellow Mboge and others as the kakatarr does change color with the circumstances (like Mr. Mboge) but lives on its earnings i.e. bugs that stray into its path. Conversely, these folks are hyenas (BUKI), avid plunderers that went out of their way to create the chaos that they thrived on. You’ll recall how some of these guys were paraded on open trucks around Banjul soon after the AFPRC take-over. Well, most of them deserved every bit of that unsavory treatment as they singly and jointly laid claim to and plundered our national coffers. It was an open secret that our “Managing Directors” belonged to “Director’s” clubs in the UK and paraded their girlfriends at the London Tara Hotel and other top venues where they would routinely meet to partake of the national cake and the late Saihou Ceesay would play fiddler, chaperone and host. Serign Jobe was no exception when he headed the GUC and would not talk to a Gambian simpleton but was still dubbed smart while he ran the GUC aground. Jeff Renner was also part of the gaboodle when he was Managing Director of the SSHFC.
Alieu Mboge must be remembered for running the NTC aground with his evil machination and further hatched a scheme to sell off the assets at a pittance to one Mr. Charbel Elhaj that he was in cahoots with from the outset. Some of us vividly recall the artificial shortages of commodities imported by the NTC like corrugated iron sheets, cement, rods and sugar when those very commodities would be discharged at wholesale prices to businessmen that would in turn hoard these items, creating shortages that drove up retail prices fostering a scheme that enabled Mr. Mboge and cohorts to profit immensely. It was evident at the time that Mr. Mboge’s Chief Accountant at the NTC was his brother-in-law in the name of one Steven Davies that kept the books of accounts close to his chest and away from the scrutiny of the Finance Director. Alieu ran the NTC like fiefdom. It was little wonder then that the proprietor of Boule was offered the NTC and its assets on a platter chiefly because Alieu Mboge had Sir Dawda’s ear at the time and was seen as the “Pa’s other son”. Meaning Jawara’s other son aside from Saihou Ceesay and David Jawara. The commonly held belief at the time was that Mr. Mboge managed several prominent Serakhule properties and businesses in the greater Banjul area and made lots of money in the process. Yeah right! How smart was Alieu Mboge? He was blessed, at the time, to keep a wife in the name of Comfort Dawodu (RIP) that did all the heavy lifting while Mr. Mboge partied with the top brass, “Yai Kompins” and “Jeggs” in Banjul. Comfort held the fort and worked to keep the family together through sheer expertise in marketing. The plain fact was that Alieu was well connected in the corridors of power and spent so much time shoring up his gains and connections that he could twist the arms of all the heads of the civil service that included Sarah Janha, Francis Mboge and the whole gang. That’s how much mischief runs in this guy’s veins. This invokes the Mandinka saying that “NING E BAMBU-TA SAMO KOMA, KOMBOO BIKEH MAA”. Yep, he also happened to believe and still does that he had to make hay while the sun shines “Jawara Jamano”. My young son would say “DUHH” it does not take a college professor to figure that out. Now why would the Jammeh regime want to bring such fellows back to hold key positions in government?????
Yaya will do us all a whole lot of good by keeping folks like this scumbag away from our national institutions!! I do not have to scratch my head to find answers to this question.
There is no secret to the intent or evil machinations of Alieu and our “Managing Directors” that were steeped in the art of “DIRIMOCRACY”. Only problem was that the DIRIMOS kept the loot offshore where it did not serve the interests of Gambians or their own interests as it tends to fizzle away with time. Otherwise Kaba Jallow, formerly of GPMB, has no business acting broke. Demba Ndow is not! Or is he? Who is he kidding? Sarah Janha could be playing golf at an English country club at this time. Or would he rather be rubbing shoulders with his mentors at Medina Bai in Kaolack?
The former ministers of state may have had their own stew bowls to eat out of but it was nothing compared to the Permanent Secretaries, MD’s and Principal Accountants that really served out the portions of the cake to be had. Frankly, the ministers and Parliamentary Secretaries were not quite as smart. Actually, we could start counting the ranks and find a number of former CEO’s, MD’s and PS’s, a.k.a. the “smart ones”, sitting on sacks of loot and tinkering away at a small Gambian business in the guise of earning a living in the public eye.
Well folks! The same old breed of leeches is working to make a comeback into the corridors of power and they seem to be making inroads towards their targets. However, fate would have it that they would often get ahead of themselves, stumble and fall with a heavy thud that comes with the attendant disgrace from Jammeh. Then they resort to writing demeaning letters and putting together phony delegations of elders to plead their sorry cases. The sad thing is that they don’t know when to quit but keep muddying the waters and clouding young minds in The Gambia with the “rat race/dog eat dog” mentality.
The likes of Alieu Mboge should be kept where they belong. The sidelines and the dump!!! Public office is not the place for these guys. Talking about credibility, Alieu never had and still has none. He merely happens, by a sheer dose of luck, to be at the right place at the opportune moment and had this uncanny ability to fill empty seats in Jawara’s PPP government and now again in the Yaya adhocracy. What do these buffoons have to offer that bright, young Gambians can’t offer? The buffoon, Alieu Mboge, was chairman of every board that held sway at the time and the open secret was that where the MD’s did not offer generous perks, heads rolled!!! He was, as were many others “Mr. BUGA DARA”. We are reliably informed that Amadou Samba and his pals saved his nasty skin and paved the way for his return to The Gambia, after his self-imposed exile to the UK but it remains uncertain that Alieu showed any gratitude for the effort.
The bright side however, is that we know them all (the hyenas and wolves in sheep’s clothing) and when the tables turn, the grain will be sorted out of the straw in earnest. The cards will then be laid out for all to see and despite a dysfunctional system of government; Gambians are forging ahead under their own sweat, tears and sheer ingenuity.
Gambians do not need the likes of Ousainou Darbo, Waa Juwara, Fafa Mbaye, Bala Gaye, Jeff Renner, OJ or any other pin-headed appointee to show us the way forward either!!! Birds of the same feather they are!!! “MBURU FOF KO FORIGN”. They are bereft of sound ideas have nothing new to offer other than a dissenting voice and schemes on how to surround themselves with hungry crocs to rob the kitty!!!!
On another note, the Nigerian judges that have been infused into our judiciary and working to introduce the horrible canker of ineptitude and graft in our judiciary, calls for us to collectively raise our voices in dissent and kick them out. They only serve the purpose of shoring up the machinations of the current sitting regime and introducing a novel way of doing business Nigerian style a.k.a. “OGA-MI”. The fact is that we have absolutely nothing to learn from half-baked Nigerian judges that earn fat paychecks at the expense of Gambian taxpayers. Gambians can do a better job in the judicial system!! Our legal experts graduated from the same colleges, if not better and will do a superb job if accorded the respect. Was the late Solomon Njai not a fine Gambian judge? Admittedly, one black spot in the legal system is that across the board, our private lawyers seldom deliver the goods that they are hired to deliver. One pays legal fees but still has to chase attorneys around town to get them to show up in court. Then attorneys that brand themselves as human rights stalwarts bribe the status quo with a cheap building for a police station in his hometown and in doing so wins favors from the establishment. Yes, digressing a bit, I’ll take a swipe at these uncouth and unrefined fellows that hatch schemes from afar only to land exactly where we expected them to. No surprises here!! Feuds between the Darbo Kunda, Banja Kunda, and the Jobarteh Kunda clans of Bansang do not amuse Gambians that can see through the wool.
Frankly, Nigerian technical “experts” have only offered us Gambians disservice from way back when. From the Nigerian Oil Scandal to the schooling of our military in the art of staging a military take over (may be a good thing), how you can get a judge to “understand the language that you are speaking” albeit that one is speaking Serankhulu and how to launder ill-gotten oil wealth and offering us interns for Nigerian doctors that learn by trial and error on poor, unsuspecting Gambian patients. Thus the myriad of Nigerian banks in The Gambia in all shades of colors and nomenclature comes as little surprise to those of us that have gotten to know Nigerians through and through. The fact is that these banks (sixteen as at the last count) do not lend by any significant measure to local businesses or start ups. Thanks to Musa Gibril Bala-Gaye and cohorts for the misplaced gesture! Do we assume that these banks exist to, in the words of the Central Bank, “mop up excess liquidity” in the Gambian financial market? Any straight thinking person would expect excess liquidity to spill over where there was saturation or a surplus. So what is there to mop up other than ineptitude and big fat lies? However, Gambians do not wish to see, in the words of a Nigerian official, the “Nigerian hegemonic and social brouhaha” spilling over into our beloved nation. Again, I wish to emphasize that Gambians have very little to learn from our Nigerian neighbors in the areas of banking or jurisprudence. They may have a lot to offer though in other areas. I have been to Tallinding Kunjang and Latri-Kunda Mampatokoto that are fast evolving into a Gambian SURULELE (as in Lagos) with the attendant chaos and shady auto parts shacks, dives and eateries. “Dereiba Taalinding” for driver Tallinding, you would often hear from the roadside to taxi drivers plying the Serekunda-Mampatokoto route. Meanwhile our police have a field day, thriving on the chaos and singing, at the end of the dusty day in Mandinka “BII NGA KUU MAA LEH”. Meaning, I have made a monetary killing today.
Indeed, this is fertile hunting ground for everyone. When one finds all the brand new government SUV’s currently plying our dusty roads in The Gambia like there’s a contest going on Nigerian style, gasoline at D33 a liter, a soft drink at D25 a pop, the TDA going around coercing and milking small businesses in a tax and spend adhocracy, one is tempted to question where our development priorities lie.
Meanwhile our “able” economists at the Central Bank keep spitting out fictitious economic data and touting single digit inflation that have no bearing to the realities that indicate 100% plus inflation on the ground. Now, that gets me very upset, as I see such antics as an insult to the intelligence and integrity of sober Gambians.
While I share Karamba Touray’s concern on the current regime’s tax and spend, drunken sailor policies, I do not share his confidence in the narratives supporting fiscal prudence from the former PPP/Jawara era stalwarts such as Assan Musa Camara and I happen to believe that much of the blame for what befalls us today must be laid squarely on Jawara’s doorstep. Yes, the first Republic did attempt to nurture an effective and fiscally disciplined public service, thanks to Eric Christensen and others. However, it was all about what the average Gambian did not know and the “Gambian colonial boys” looking to live the good life of the former colonial administrators. First came the “AKU” elite (for want of a better term), the Joneses, Forsters, Mahoneys and Grants. Then came “Them JOLLOF BOBO”, the “ndongo” boys and then came the “Provincial boys” in the shades of the “TERI Kaffo” and rival camps. To buttress Matthew Jallow’s assertion, the Jollof Bobo camp did far more damage than any other group in this sequence.
We need to be a lot more critical of the PPP era and stop lauding Sir Dawda as the elder statesman that is sorely missed. After all, it was his ship and his team, with the likes of Alhaji Yaya Ceesay, Kuti Sanyang, OJ, Saihou Sabally, M C Cham and Landing Jallow Sonko that was asleep at the wheel. So, the buck stops at his desk.
The Gambia under the PPP could boast of a cadre of fine, young professionals that could deliver the goods but these men and women had to sit on the sidelines, tow the status quo line to see any rewards or sit on the sidelines watching the game of “SOSOLASO”, a popular Mandinka childhood game. One can count a good number of able, young Gambian professionals that were marginalized by the Jawara regime only because they upheld a standard of ethics in government that befits their professional standing. Folks like Isatou Njie, Ousman Koro Ceesay, Ndey Sireng Jobarteh, Basirou Jahumpa, Nyada Baldeh, Mamadi Ceesay, Baba Marong, O. Touray, Tamsir Manga, Sariang Ceesay, Ousman Jammeh, Abou M’boob, Captain Sam Jassey, Anthony Taylor, Captain Sam Gibba, Baba Khan, Reuben Andrews and Pa Macoumba Njai. The list goes on. Yes Sariang is on this list because he was a hard-working and astute public servant before his appointment to head Customs and Excise. Alas! He would never be the human being that he was thereafter! Shows how being in bed with the Gambian “Mafioso” or witch hunters can transform otherwise decent people!!
The older folks in the Jawara era never wanted to make room for this younger cadre of Gambian professionals as they always felt that their nest eggs for retirement were never well feathered. So they stayed on and on, by any means, well past retirement jockeying for crumbs off the table and elbowing the younger fellows out in the process. It is little wonder then that one would see the likes of Musa Bala Gaye, Ousman Othman, Alieu Ngum, Fafa Mbaye, Abdoulie Sallah, Tamsir Jallow, Sulayman Masaneh Ceesay, Alieu Mboge and Jeff Renner working to stay connected to the corridors of power at all cost. The very fellows that left in search of greener pastures after the plunder are back promising to work miracles or crawling on their knees and shedding tears to get a foot in the door. Did Bala-Gaye not walk away from the empty kitty in search of greener pastures at the African Development Bank? We must not forget that this is all that these folks know. Government largesse, freebees and a kitty to loot!! Boy! One needs to hear what they say and promise the powers that be, to get measly appointments. Thanks to Sulayman M’boob that he has gone into processing agro-products that Gambians can emulate and benefit from. Kudos to Saul!! Show more young Gambians how to break that stranglehold. I love your “SOOW”!!
Get more Gambians involved in a contract scheme, manage the product and market the world over. The sky is the limit!
We must remember that there’s still a body of level-headed and intelligent Gambians standing on their toes and keeping a tab on the silly games that public servants and leaders alike will be held accountable for!!
The old adage that “Ku Boka Chi Gaeta-gi Naan Chi Meew-Mi” stills holds true in The Gambia today but when the grass that’s supposed to feed the cows is all gone, dire consequences await the herd, the source of the trickling milk “MEEW” that the top brass has been feasting on for too long.
Good thing is that Saul Mboob’s “SOOW” is for all to benefit from and eat healthy. NOW THAT IS THE GAMBIA AS I SEE IT!!!