Mr. President Jammeh is Ousman Koro Ceesay’s ghost haunting you thus making the political oxygen in the Senegambia region toxic and unbreatheable?

By M’boyedoh Yoba Sabally, Zighinchoir, Cassamance  

Hello President Jammeh,

Since your assumption of power in a bloodless coup on July 22, 1994 I am one pan-African that have been following your records in the sub-region. A pan-African in the sense that my biological ties straddle my land of birth, The Gambia, Senegal, and also the Casamance or region whose MFDC rebels you are openly aiding and abetting for your own parochial ends. To my utmost awe, I’ve read recently the stance of your Secretary General, Dr. Njoggu Bah, as your proxy or fig leaf to castigate the entire Senegalese government headed by President Abdoulaye Wade. It is interesting for Dr. Bah to condemn President Wade as an un-pan-African character. Anyway, let’s give time to such an unsavory and unacceptable allegation your government made to drag Senegal and its government into a diplomatic morass.

Since the idea of Pan-Africanism was pondered over and coined by great men like Marcus Garvey, Dr. Du Bois, etc, their prime aim was to reconnect, or better said, to create an imaginary umbilical cord between Africans at home and those in the Diaspora. If great men like Marcus Garvey did this best to recreate the African brotherhood in Africa and Diaspora Africans, who are you, Mr. President, to sow seeds of suspicion and mistrust in the Senegambia region? To be more precise, what is your gain in fomenting the flames of hatred between The Gambia and Senegal?

Since your fallout with the great revolutionary leader of the Libyan Arab People’s Jamahiriya, Colonel Ghaddaffi, the first misstep you tragically made was to recall your ambassador from Libya. This was ensued by the trumping up of financial charges against your APRC majority leader in Parliament, Mr. Baba Jobe. I possess no telepathy or super-natural powers to read your mind, but the moves you are making on the political chess board of the Senegambia sub-region is very simplistic to be read and analyzed. Even the little Algebra student in primary school could solve our A+B equation which you are trying to solve in the underground world through the unprofessional and ineffective NIA.

I’m dead sure you jailed Mr. Baba Jobe not on the grounds that he mismanaged funds in your government but that he is a friend of Ghaddaffi. If your relations with Libya were not frosty, Baba Jobe would have been a freeman and still manning key positions in the APRC. Since you and your gang of looters were no longer in the good books of Colonel Ghaddaffi, and you innocently jailed Mr. Jobe, your next target was Kukoi Samba Sanyang. The paranoia in you is that Mr. Sanyang might be a friend of Ghaddaffi. He is not, however!

Mr. Sanyang is only a pan-African freedom fighter who seeks to loosen the iron fist you are ruling our dear country with. I know Mr. Sanyang is now your greatest dilemma. Even within The Gambia National Army, you falsely accuse soldiers of embezzlement, especially your fellow Jolas. Your actions have made the ideal of separation of powers immaterial. On the other hand, this fear in you is eroding all your strong military men either in jail or exile. Eventually, you are sowing the seeds of your own downfall! In this year alone, there are a good number of discipline soldiers and security officers who are from your own tribe you loosen in your erratic behavior. At this point, I would like to refresh your memory on the mysterious assassination of your ex-Finance Minister, Mr. Ousman Koro Ceesay.

There are strong and clear indications from your former APRC  spokesman, Captain Ebou Jallow, now residing in America, that Mr. Ceesay was actually murdered by your ex-Defense Minister, Mr. Edward Singhateh, Mr. Yankuba Touray, and a handful of other officers. Why was Koro Ceesay killed? Was he not ready to cannibalize funds from the philanthropic Col. Ghaddaffi at your benefit and other pseudo revolutionary gang of egoistic Robin Hoods or APRC clique of Draculas? Even Robin Hood of Nothingham is far more human than you because he robbed the affluent and gave it to the poor but you are performing robberies out of the detriment of the Gambian peasantry and giving yourself a revolutionary title. At this angle I can only inject life in your skull, Mr. President, that Mr. Ceesay’s blood washed away your fallacious and bogus revolutionary agenda into a real rat race. In another fashion, Mr. Ceesay’s death or murder reduced you to a hungry man for money and power, comparable to dictators like Idi Amin, Mobutu Seseseko, Augustus Pinochet, etc.

It is fresh in the minds of the people how mighty men fall and quickly jettison to the world’s political dustbin without getting any chance of being put in any pantheon. Mr. President, you don’t have the lowest iota in you that would qualify you to be called a revolutionary. On the African political scene, great revolutionaries like Thomas Sankara, J.J Rawlings, and of course all our fathers who I revere as key figures in spearheading and setting the pace for the decolonization process. The torchbearer and forerunner who kick started the liberation struggle was Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana whose fantastic work was emulated by Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo, Kenya’s Kenyatta, Senegal’s Senghor, etc, etc.  These great African men gallantly fought to revolutionize Africa and you tasted freedom from the efforts of these great revolutionaries in which the winner of our independence, Sir Dawda Jawara was a formidable force. Sir Dawda has more revolutionary credentials and values to offer or proffer to The Gambia than you. I see you just as a charlatan who is trying to instill fear into Gambians who are ready to oust you from power. Do you think the claim you made that you are an AIDS healer suffices to deter us from leading an arms race against you? NO! The liberation movements are mushrooming all over. Maybe we’re going to absorb Kukoi in our camp to form a formidable liberation movement to force you out Mr. Butcher. Which nomenclature fits you, the Kanilai butcher or the butcher of Banjul?

Stop putting or creating a cold war atmosphere in the sub-region of Senegambia thereby making everybody engulf in a perpetual state of fear as proclaimed by Kukoi Samba Sanyang in July 1981: “Jawara has kept in a perpetual state of fear.” I don’t know Kukoi in person but for sure I will sit with him one fine day and know him more. Coming back to Dr. Bah’s disastrous diplomatic utterances to exonerate your regime from the Iran-Kanilai scandal in which you were single-handedly using the giant of Africa, Nigeria, as a point of conduit to traffic arms into The Gambia is ridiculous. Mr. President, I am quite sure you regretted why you killed Koro Ceesay.  All this hypocritical love you are showing to Casamance and her people is fake. You know Koro’s men are mobilizing—and the Casamance straw is very weak—to save you from our ferocious tsunami. I am more of a Casa than you.

At the beginning of your bogus revolutionary days in 1994, the deficiency was evident on your lips. Remember, Mr. President you have created more enemies in the region than friends. You are on the bad records of Ghana for being murky about the Ghanaians killed by your security personnel. Nigeria is also putting a tongue in its cheek after plaguing relations with them by supporting their former tyrant, Sani Abacha. Or have you given the Nigerian government the millions of dollars Abacha entrusted you for safe keeping. My President—or Mr. political delinquent— the oxygen layer of the political arena is getting more and more toxic. The political moss you created will soon bubble out and you are going to harvest it.

As the iron of all African freedom fighters puts it, “there is no easy walk to freedom.” There is no political battle that is unwinnable for us. As Napoleon also puts it, “C’est pas possible, nest pas Francais.” The same maxim is adoptable for the children of Senegambia and her ancestry in totality. Maybe history will allow me with Kukoi Sanyang or any other bonafide Gambian underground movement to come together to emancipate out dear fatherland from the draconian policies of your government. After this emancipation, the children of Senegambia will enjoy more stability, peace and development in all spheres of geopolitics.

Now that your government has severed diplomatic ties with Iran, who is your next protective shield? Try to get another babysitter or are you worried about the Koro Ceesay conundrum? The answer to the Koro conundrum is to go to Ghaddaffi and clearly explain why you killed such an innocent technocrat. I have the firm conviction that you were an accomplice in his murder. The whole world is keenly waiting for an overdue explanation of Mr. Ceesay’s death. If I could remember, I read in 2003 about some Libyan officers sent by Col. Ghaddaffi to negotiate Baba Jobe’s release. They were even ready to pay the funds you accused him of mishandling. Mr. Ceesay is now dead while Baba Jobe is languishing in jail for 8 years now, don’t you think it’s too late to go to the Jamiliya? You may mend your broken ties with Ghaddaffi since he is a good follower of Muhammad (S.A.W) and will forgive you but we Gambians cannot. I can’t talk for Baba Jobe but I think he will never forgive you for putting him behind bars since 2003. The great Libyan leader gave you money but you weren’t satisfied given your insatiable greed for money. Mr. Ceesay was a man of integrity who sacrificed his life for his incorruptible principles.

Recently, we read with amazement from one of your ex-American lobbyists that you gave twenty thousand dollars to a dentist as tip. You don’t have to squander such a handsome amount of money, rather, you need an eye specialist to make your lenses powerful and rectify your political myopia. Great men— like Sir Dawda Jawara—of substance, are deeply documented in the annals of history for winning us our freedom from the tyranny of the British. Statesmen like Hon. Dibba belong to this legion of great Gambian men but your blood suckers claimed his innocent life through torture. The reader must, at this point, be worried about the fact that I am trying to forward Koro’s case with a myriad of other atrocities committed under your watch. Remember that Idi Amin had forty eight hours to flee to Saudi Arabia, a similar fate awaits you.