The Verdict

 

By Adama Hawa

 

Once again, Gambians are being mobilized to celebrate Yahya Jammeh’s birthday in a very big way. It is now quite common that every time the day comes, he would organize a grand event to coincide with it, consuming millions of Dalasis of public money and resources and mobilizing all government employees to leave all their work and concentrate on the event. Last year and the year before, it was the so-called Kanilai and African International Cultural Festival. This year, it is a bogus Miss Black USA, which has absolutely no relevance to The Gambia.

 

This is once again another opportunity for him and his numerous praise singers to deploy the state machinery as well as use public resources just as a public relations gimmick for him and with no benefits to The Gambia.

 

Apart from mobilizing the entire government machinery for the celebrations, we shall begin to see the numerous newspaper and television birthday wishes being put up by public institutions wishing him a happy birthday, no doubt spending quite a lot of public money for it. They are also using all sorts of gimmicks to compel para-statal and private sector institutions to contribute huge sums of money towards this bogus event.

 

While no one is suggesting that Yahya Jammeh himself sanctions such expenditure being done in his name, the mere fact that he is not only casting a blind eye to it, but he seems to enjoy such exaltation, is an indirect endorsement of what is happening. Indeed, taking such scarce public resources to pay for birthday wishes is certainly incompatible with the letter and spirit of his so-called “operation no compromise”. Casting a blind eye to such unauthorized expenditure of public funds is certainly synonymous with corruption and therefore, a compromise with the uncompromisable and yet another manifestation of his penchant for “mbumbai” and a disregard for the welfare of the country. It is just hard to understand why every month he organises one form of party or another, spending millions of Dalasis of public resources in such events.

 

We all know that most of the heads of these public institutions pay for these media advertisements not because they are really sincere in wishing Yahya Jammeh well, but they just want to impress him so that he would spare them from his “electric broom”. One can imagine institutions like NAWEC and the GPTC for example, that can hardly meet their basic obligations to the people, spending thousands of Dalasis to pay for television and newspaper announcements just to wish Yahya a happy birthday when they need every butut they got to plough back into their ailing infrastructure.

 

Coincidentally, Yahya’s birthday (May 25) is also Africa Liberation Day. While one would not fail to see the symbolism of the day, but the truth, as we are made to understand, is quite different. We are privy to some irrefutable evidence that Yahya deliberately chose that date as his birthday but that he did not know his actual birthday. Someone who claims to know his family very well said Yahya was not even born in Kanilai as he claims but that he was born across the border in Cassamance. The man said Yahya was brought to Kanilai when he was quite young and that there was no way that he or anyone would know his real birthday as he was born in a place where records of births were not kept. However, the man claims that Yahya is much older than the age is claiming to have. However, because he was enrolled in school when he was much older than the normal age, they had to reduce his age so that he would qualify to sit to the common entrance exams. “There is absolutely no way that Yahya can be 42 years old. He is much older than that,” the man said.

 

Our informant even went on to claim that Yahya was not the biological son of Asombi Bojang and Sulayman Junkung Jammeh as he claims, but that they only brought him up. His actual parents were in Cassamance, he said.

 

While all these are mere allegations and they do not make much difference, certainly his frequent use of public resources to mount such expensive ceremonies is not in the interest of the country. Therefore, if he is indeed interested in the welfare of the country and its people, then he should stop this extravagance and focus on developing the country.

 

One would wonder why Yahya would spend all these amounts of money to sponsor Miss Black USA in The Gambia. Of course, it is only those Americans and the few cronies who would help him organise this extravagant event that would reap the benefits, but certainly not ordinary Gambians.

 

It is quite hard to understand why Yahya Jammeh would still not learn from the numerous negative encounters he has had with African-Americans, who invariably always end of duping him. We can all recall in the early days of his regime when there was an American lady who came and posed as the Mayor of Harlem, making all sorts of promises and no doubt scooping a lot of money from Yahya, only for him to realize that the lady was neither a Mayor nor any office holder but a mere nonentity.

 

Recently also, we heard about the American who posed as a US Senator and who even brought along a fake medal which he used to decorate Yahya Jammeh on behalf of President George W. Bush, and it was later learnt that the man was neither a Senator nor even doing it on behalf of President Bush. Instead, he was said to have picked that medal in the street.

 

Here we are again with Miss Black USA, no doubt costing the Gambian treasury millions of Dalasis to organise. Therefore, we wonder how long Yahya Jammeh will continue to be fooled by these Americans just because he is looking for a false image as a pan-Africanist.