By Plarke M. Caneckouteh, London UK
Our great nation turned 42 years as an independent sovereign state on Sunday, 18th February 2007, marking the day when we threw the yoke of British colonialism.
Sir D. K. Jawara, Gambia's 1st.President
I would therefore, say Happy Birthday to you The Gambia. It is a great day indeed worthy of celebration. It could have been one of the greatest and joyous days that every Gambian on this earth and beyond would be proud of. A day that even those in the Diaspora would proudly celebrate with a lot of exhibitions, symposia and all sort of celebrations to sell the good image of our beloved nation. But can we do? How can we do it with a Head of State who recently developed mental illness and bends on disgracing and tarnishing the image of the nation?
I am in the UK but I did not hear of the Gambian Ambassador making a statement about independence. Unlike other foreign missions in the UK he is as silent as a raped girl in the midst of her friends. I know he is full of shame and would not like to be further embarrassed by the British press if they should ask him about his boss’s recent mandate of curing HIV/AIDS and Asthma.
Moving away from Boy Yahya’s recent madness, I just want to join my colleagues and friends in reflecting on what we have achieved since becoming an independent nation on February 18, 1965. What do we have to celebrate? What is there to show the world that it is worth celebrating this liberation day? I can fully remember when I was a schoolboy. I used to love the colourful match passes and melodic music played by The Gambia Police Band. In the evening I enjoyed school sports either as an athlete or as spectator shouting among the crowd. Those were the good old days, some thirty years ago. As I advanced in both age and education I began to ponder and question a lot about independence. What does independence mean to us? What have we achieved so far since attaining nationhood?
These questions may appear simple to answer but in actuality they are loaded questions that need unpacking. But to make this discussion interesting and precise I will give an analytical summary of our political, economic and social developments since independence. I will start with the political development.
The Gambia was among those African countries that attained independence without bloodshed. We never waged a guerrilla war like Guinea- Bissau, Zimbabwe or Angola to gain independence. Although there were some tensions and frictions here and there, it was not such a painful struggle where thousands and thousands of people had to lose their lives. The struggle was started by great personalities like Edward Francis Small to Sir Dawda Jawara and finally the British agreed to withdraw from The Gambia and allowed Gambians to take over the sovereignty of their nation. So Gambia had ever been blessed as a peaceful and diplomatic nation before the Jola Boy was born. Peace, tranquillity and harmony have long survived among Gambians since time immemorial. It is therefore, naïve for Jaliba Yankuba Touray to be singing all over the places that they took the country without spilling a blood of a chicken or breaking someone’s cooking pot. Of course, Gambians are not violent unless they are pushed to be. Gambians hitherto do not cherish killing people. It was a rare thing in Gambian culture. It was not that Jaliba Yankuba and his evil boss were so professional and tactful in their coup d’etat that people did not die. Gambians were less concerned about what was happening on that fateful Friday. No blessing of the takeover, as Yahya and his bandit crew try to pretend. It was the similar nonchalance of Gambians that led to the failure the rebel attack on Farafenni. If Gambians were politically aggressive and accepted the arms offered to them by the rebels during that Farafenni Military Barrack Attack, it would have been a different thing altogether. So the peaceful takeover is not a boast or blessings. In fact, it is a curse that marks the beginning of the political decadence of the country.
Although Jawara cannot be credited for creating political awareness in the country he had never promoted political violence throughout his regime. While some may argue that there was evidence of corruption and general negligence with respect to development of essential social services such as university education, television and well-equipped hospitals; he had never institutionalized killings, kidnappings and torturing of the innocent people as it is happening now. Today as we celebrate our independence, some of our loved ones, brothers, uncles, and close relatives are callously brutalised. Some are killed and buried like dogs or their remains are being littered somewhere in the bushes of Foni and other parts of the country for vultures and wolves to devour on. Is this what independence brought us? When I read the account of Captain Pierre Mendy and others, I wept throughout the day. It made me remember the group of soldiers who were bundled and massacred in the bushes of Brikama following the events of November. It reminds me of the brutal burning of Finance Minister Koro Ceesay, a brilliant academic, by Captain Peter Singhateh; it makes me recall the killing of Hon. Foday Makalo at Barra Hotel and then buried in Alhaji Tabora Manneh’s Orchard in Barra; it brought images of the brutal shooting of the veteran Journalist Deyda Hydara by the criminal team led by Musa Jammeh and the maiming of the eminent lawyer Ousman Sillah who is forced to live in the USA as a handicapped. The list of brutalities is endless. Why? Why the killings? For what are fellow Gambians butchering their fellow Gambians in this manner? Is this the nationhood we fought for? Give me the answers my dear friends and citizens?
Politics in The Gambia was fun and jokes although it was clouded by people’s ignorance of their political roles. The Jawara regime did little to educate the people about their civic rights and responsibilities as citizens. This is where I hated Jawara’s style of politics. Secondly he overstayed up to a point that people were tired of his repetitive political blunders and needed a change for a better person. It was in this midst of frustrations that the Kanilai Devil sneaked into the State House with his bandits. This is why I will never credit Sir Dawda despite the fact that he was a gentleman. He had created the environment conducive for the devil to grow.
Introspectively, our political systems and structures have been completely broken down. The political system now fittingly compares to Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Botha’s Apartheid-South Africa, Idi Amin’s Uganda and Bokassa’s Central Africa Republic. People are living in fear and cannot express their opinions on issues affecting their own country. A country that they work for and pay their tax to feed the monster!!! So what do we have to celebrate??? My dear brothers and sisters tell me what are we celebrating? A foolish coward who chose brute as weapon to cover his cowardice seizes our basic human rights. “Ninjaism is the order of the day in the Gambia”. Idiots from Bwiam and other villages in Foni have been recruited to butcher innocent souls for nothing. May Allah save The Gambia!!
Today people cannot express their opinions freely and happily; they only whisper in timidity for fear of the night daggers and ninja boys. These so called ninja boys are our people, our brothers that we grew up with and hustled together in a bid of finding happiness in live. How then can they be brainwashed to become such wicked and brutal souls eliminating their fellow brothers and friends? Since the takeover the number of people who had been killed, disappeared and imprisoned is uncountable. Our human rights are violated. Records all over the world show that The Gambia has the worst human rights record. We lost our position as the champion of human and people’s rights.
Today, as we celebrate independence our media houses are closed. They have been vandalised, burnt to the ground, their owners killed, others imprisoned and the rest chased away to live outside their beloved nation. Is it not a mockery for Yahya to say that he has developed the country when our own journalists cannot stay with us and participate in national development? I admire the West simply because the media is free to disclose any malpractices going on in their society. The police in connection with how he funded his labour party in the last election recently questioned Tony Blair. Many other top personalities of the party and its supporters faced police interrogation. Why have they been questioned? Why do you think Blair had to comply with police interrogation? The simple answer is that he is a public figure who had taken oath to serve the people without fear or favour. So, in democratic states public figures are accountable to the people who elected them to lead. Is Yahya and his regime accountable to the Gambians? He does want he likes even worst than the colonialists he constantly accused of looting the wealth of the nation. This is why our older people in their quite moments questioned why we took independence from the British. This is not because they do not like to be independent but because they are amazingly disappointed at the failure of our political leaders. Some of our elders argue that colonial rule was better than the regimes of the post-independence era. They are desperate, dejected and disillusioned about the manner the country is run. If Sir Dawda Jawara had plunged us into The River Gambia then, Yahya Jammeh has jettisoned us into the bottomless Atlantic Ocean. So we need to struggle hard to save ourselves.
Secondly independence should bring us economic development that will provide opportunities for the citizens to work and earn a better living standard. Today when one looks around the country, there is nothing but collapsed economic infrastructures. Poverty is at its highest peak as the economy is plundered by the current regime. According to an International Labour Organization study conducted in The Gambia in 1989, 40 % of the population lived below an estimated food poverty line and 60% were below the overall poverty line. In 1992 a Household Economic Survey was conducted and it was found out that those living in extreme poverty were 18%, those in poor conditions were 33% and those who are not poor 67%. A year later the junta seized power and looted all the coffers leading to worsening economic indicators. Another Household survey was conducted in 1998. According to a 1998 Household Surveys 51% were extremely poor; 69% were poor and only 31% of the population were non-poor. Where is the development that the bragging idiot brought? These are authentic statistical figures from the Interim Strategy for Poverty Alleviation II. The source is the Department of State for Finance & Economic Affairs, 2000.
|
Year
|
Extreme Poverty
|
Poor
|
Non Poor
|
|
1992/93
|
18%
|
33%
|
67%
|
|
1998
|
51%
|
69%
|
31%
|
|
2004
|
?
|
?
|
?
|
Source: Dept. of Finance & Economic Affairs
Furthermore the UN Human Development Report 2006 indicates that out of 102, The Gambia ranks 86th position, almost at the bottom of the list of the poor countries. This means we are the poorest of the poor. Then where is Allah’s Bank? Is Managing Director of Yahya Allah’s Bank dead or has resigned? The same report maintains that 64% of Gambians are poor. Population living below $1 per day from 1990 – 2004 is 59.3 % and the proportion of population living below $2 per day is 82.3%. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine the level of poverty in a country where the President boasts of being so rich that his family will never be poor again in this world? Jammeh goes around boasting of his riches. But those who know the poor Kanilai boy before coming to power can describe his wretchedness and poverty under the bed of his parents. I personally saw his early pictures of the coup where his big mouth displayed symptoms of poverty. Tell Toni Dabaa to watch out.
Toni boasts of improving the lives of Gambians and he has gone out lying about roads, hospitals and schools he built. I am not against building infrastructures for development. But I am against building empty structures that serve no purposes. Hospitals and schools are built but the services they offer in these institutions are very poor and sometimes non-existent. Hospitals are built but not even a needle is there. Schools are expanded but we have the worst examination results in West Africa. It is the worst results ever produced by our schools since independence. Where is the development and improvements that have been brought to our health and education sectors? Afternoon shift teachers are fighting for pay, but money is wasted in Kanilai farms paying government civil servants and soldiers who are working in Yahya Jammeh’s Farm. Gambians need to be told if Yahya Jammeh’s Farm is a government property or a private property?
As I write the inflation is galloping like that of the Germans before the war. People are suffering as prices of goods increase by minutes. Records have shown that in 2002 inflation was 8.6% and in 2003 it rose to 17.0 percent (source: Common Country Assessment Report, 2006). God knows the current rate. But why is the inflation rocketing. From the economic point of view, it is due to bad macro-economic policy. The policy is bad because it accommodated money laundering from Yahya Jammeh’s Allah’s Bank through his MD Baba Jobe and the nasty business Yahya was engaged in with Lang Conteh, the former Foreign Exchange chief at the Central Bank of The Gambia.
Such nasty economic policies cannot create environments conducive for private business operation. This coupled with corruption and nepotism the private sector has been stifled and could not operate without going through the corrupt government officials who demand bribes before business from the private investors and businesses. We can go on and on in citing examples. If individuals are bigger or powerful than our institutions how do we expect economic development to take place? Some people are more powerful than our government departments to the point that they do whatever they like. We have seen how people mismanaged our foreign exchange for nothing and just walk away with it. Is this misbehaviour the reason why they never want a free and independent press? They fought them; hunt them up to their private premises. Economic crimes are so rampant to the point of paralyzing our economy.
Thirdly we want a nation in which people live in harmony, peace and respect for each other. Good neighbourliness and social cohesion is a Gambian culture. These good social traits have been with us for time immemorial. But within these forty –two years of nationhood, they had been torn apart thanks to present regime’s principle of divide-and-rule strategy. The government has sharp political knife that bluntly cuts the fabrics that have hold Gambians together by preaching tribal politics. Yahya’s regime keeps on using tribalism and religion to divide the country. I know just around the 70s and 80s Christians and Muslims interacted a lot as one family, especially, in Banjul and “Toubab Bankoo” (i.e. Serekunda, Bakau and environs). Everyone respected his/her fellow and his/her beliefs. Today it is quite different; hostilities have grown between the two main religions to a point that there were series of confrontations between Muslims and Christians when Muslim schoolchildren were instigated by Imam Fatty of State House to rebel against dress code in Roman Catholic Schools. I cannot imagine such a stand off between the two friendly religions in The Gambia. Yahya even divide the Moslems by creating two Mosques that offer Friday Prayers. It is the first time in the history of Banjul to have two central Mosques in the city. It is through such hypocrisy that he used to set one religious group against another. He did it to the Brikama Imam, and to the hard working Ahmadiyya Community in The Gambia.
Yet this is a man whose religious belief one cannot tell. Born Moslem, Baptised Christian, adores fetish and carries Moslem praying beads but wears jujus from the oracles of Jolas and Manjakoes. He pours libations and goes to the Mosque but was expelled from the Church by the former Bishop of Banjul. Well the late Foday Sanko said he was “Chrismus”, may be Yahya is “Fetischrismus”. He is ahead of Sanko by one rank. I may appear sarcastic but that’s the real picture of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh.
Editor’s Note: Mr. Caneckouteh knows a lot about The Gambia and may as well serve as an expert witness in the trial of Yahya Jammeh. We at The Echo are appreciative of his mostly scintillating and always passionate analysis.