By Lt. Col S. S. Sarr

Lt. Col. Sheriff Samsudeen Sarr 
This might come rather late on Mr. B.B.
Dabo’s interview, but I think the originality of what
I intent to share has not yet been compromised by the diverse and informative critiques shared by different authors. While some showed their unaltered supportiveness to Mr. Darbo for whatever might have transpired in his past political life, wrongly or rightly, others think he was somehow not quite forthcoming over his reasons to serve the Jammeh government after the coup. In whatever way one may see Mr. Dabo’s decision of coming forward to share with us some crucial information that I think may never have been otherwise known, one must admit that his message told a lot about the man’s sharpness and his ability to sound undeniably impressive.
I didn’t know anything about him, never even
remembered speaking to him anywhere in the past; and it is quite likely that he may harbor the same feelings about me- nonetheless after reading his interview, the first of its kind I could ever recall from him in such manner, I came to like a lot about the guy. Apart from the courage he has shown in coming out as a person of substance from the PPP era to talk about his beliefs especially, with regard to that turning point in our history, the coup, he has, I think, done us a great favor that few among his peers would attempt to do today. I am sure he was absolutely cognizant of the possibility of tough critics braced up to descend hard on him, a threat factor seemingly responsible for intimidating and keeping his likes permanently mute; but by his brave posture to take the challenge, I think he has acquired sufficient meritorious points deserving him the forgiveness from those who couldn’t understand his actions in the past.
To call on him to go further and admit total guilt
followed by an apology to the Gambian people would be a little over the necessary pressure. As humans we have to remember that few among us can shoulder the weight of making honest public confessions of that magnitude, especially to a faceless crowd characterized by certain elements bent on judging the glass of water as being always half empty instead of half full. I think Dabo has suffered enough from the ever-lingering thought of committing that mistake of ccepting the position and risking his way back home to serve the military government. In fact it had indeed almost cost him his life.
The only sign that could have served as a warning of
the wretched conditions ahead were perhaps the senseless arrest and detention of Gambian senior officers while the Nigerians in charge remained untouched throughout. But if those in the country could have viewed it as perfectly normal and indeed found a simple way of rationalizing their intuitions, then what about Mr. Dabo who was still away
monitoring the situation through feedbacks from
friends and family members on the ground?

BB Dabo

I was in jail when he came back to the Gambia-I was
arrested and detained on July 27th- but I was there
when the Council members three days after the coup took the decision to include him in their new government. One of the key reasons behind their decision to choose Mr. Dabo was what they felt was the presidential role he was unfairly denied by the PPP government in 1992 when Jawara in that political escapade almost went on retirement but surprisingly  changed his mind in the last minute. I think we all remember that incident with all its deceptions that in the end cost Mr. Dabo his vice presidential position and elevating Mr. Saihou Sabally to the number two position. I may be wrong, but on an honest note, I believe Mr. Dabo’s final decision to come back and serve the military government that had overthrown the very government he was working for was to a great extent influenced by his past difficulties with the P.P.P’s treacherous political landmines compounded by ruthless internal rancor. In the end however, almost all of them suffered the bitter consequences in one- way or the other.
Anyhow, I think the grey areas in Mr. Dabo’s exchange with Mr. Sankareh were clear evidences of his weakest link in his effort to rehabilitate his injured personality; but I suspect in trying to stretch him beyond what he could endure we might sabotage the attractive trail established in making him speak in the first place. His case, I am afraid to say was not too different from that of those Department heads, Permanent Secretaries, Security Service Commanders, Managers and Directors in the country who readily resumed work on July 26th 1994 the day the AFPRC government invited every civil servant to return to
work and treat the situation as perfectly normal. The
PPP government was already overthrown, the
Constitution suspended, air, sea and land borders
closed and the future totally bleak. But people still
chose to float in that Egyptian river called The Nile
or living in denial by accepting the situation anyway.

Was that not one possible signal sent abroad to
wherever Mr.Dabo was indicating that all seemed to
be well and rosy at home with the new government in
charge? We can of course argue that refusing to accept work at that time from the military boys could have been rather fatalistic; but what better way was there to register signs of resistance to that so-called unacceptable status quo than the refusal of all those PPP stakeholders and professional technocrats to accept any employment from the AFPRC government at its most fragile state? That would have immediately brought the government down in a style of civil resistance unique in the history of coups in Africa.
But I was there and had seen all of the heavy and
lightweights quietly sneaking into their offices and
workplaces in their attempts to continue from where
they had stopped on July 22nd 1994. Yet I am
sympathetic to them because like all Gambians, we
didn’t actually understand what coup d’etat really
meant other than what we had been superficially
hearing about it in other countries without imagining
that someday it would be the poor Gambia’s turn.
Notwithstanding, in my research for a logical answer
surrounding certain events of July 22nd 1994, there
were two educative points raised by Mr. Dabo that
finally provided me with the missing links vital for
an acceptable conclusion. First, I had always wondered
how IGP Press Jagne, the main coordinator of the
forces of resistance that day ended up, at the most
critical moment, in the American frigate USS La Moure
County with the rest of the politicians he was
supposed to defend on the ground. Of course, regardless
of the flawless impression the PPP government, or the
civilians in general had had about him, those of us
who were in the security forced and had known him well
had always doubted the competence of Mr. Jagne in the
face of real crisis. But none of us, especially, Chongan who was deployed at the Line of Contact (the LC as we called it in the military) would have thought that he could do what he did by going to the ship to ask for President Jawara’s permission to order the presidential guard to surrender as demanded by the advancing GNA mutineers. I sincerely thank Mr. Dabo for that crucial piece of information. We were all together in jail-Jagne, Chongan, Cham, Jawneh, Ndure, Kambi, over thirty-five of us- arrested and detained but a situation that also provided us with the opportunity to share our experiences of the coup on a daily basis, but never was anything like that ever revealed by Mr. Jagne. I am sure there are many more hidden facts of similar nature that could only come to light if we keep on encouraging people like Mr. Dabo to come forward and share their valuable knowledge with us.
The second point was about the arrangement for
President Jawara to come back alone in the early days of the coup, an offer by the military government that was accordingly rejected by the PPP leader. I don’t know how the actual story behind that arrangement was altered to deviate from the actual truth; but for those of us at the State House that day, the initiative by the American Ambassador Mr. Andrew Winter to broker for the return of President Jawara was at first partially welcomed but was eventually rejected by Edward Singhateh who was basically calling the shots of the junta. But who knows? It might have been directly from Mr. Winter who was overly optimistic about the prospects of implementing the idea that was exclusively his. If it hadn’t been Singhateh, I must admit that the chances of striking a reasonable compromise with Jawara might have been realized.
Anyhow, looking back in time, I could confidently say
that except perhaps for very few Gambians, a good
chunk of the population initially thought that the
AFPRC government overthrowing the PPP regime was a good phenomenon. Just like almost everybody who had heard about our arrests and detentions had thought that we had committed offences that warranted our predicaments. And without doubt, our children would have been left with the everlasting stigma of beingthe off springs of state criminals if we were lined up by the popular government and shot by firing squad in those early days. We too would have been just another Barrow, Faal, Dabo, Nyang, etc rotting in mass graves at the Yundum Barracks toilets.
But ask the average Gambian today who by incident or accident had had a change of heart from being
supportive before to being antagonistic to the pariah
government later, especially those safely away from
home living in their comfort zones abroad, and
almost everybody would more or less distance him or herself from that blemished clique and may even vow to lynch them on the day of reckoning. I don’t think many could muster the courage Mr. B.B. Dabo had demonstrated by at least trying to discuss the discussible; and I also doubt the possibility of some of us to honestly narrate how we actually perceived the Jammeh government from day one to this day with a consistent perception of the regime unaltered
throughout. I am however not calling for anyone to come forward in a bid to prove me wrong or right; all I am trying to say is that Mr. B.B. Dabo like most of us had made a common mistake based on what had seemed to be and may still be a deceptive terrain that has devoured countless vulnerable and gullible Gambians in their sincere endeavor to make a difference. I think President Jawara falling into that slippery slope epitomized the grim forces within that terrible magnetic field.
I have seen the statistics in all forms. There were
those who had loved the government before but later
hated it for genuine reasons, some on personal matters while others on national issues; and there were also those who had hated it but evolved into loving it on similar reasons; and this same cycle of hate and love depending on one’s perception of the system had affected a lot of us and still continue to do so especially among those at home whose ability to leave the country when coping is no longer tolerable, is limited or absolutely impossible.
Therefore, seeing a man of BB Dabo’s caliber coming on line to engage the Gambian readers in such a thought provoking dialogue was, in my book, very progressive and should be exploited in everyway possible to encourage others to break their silence and share the shielded information that may ultimately be lost in death for merely fearing cyber bloodhounds. In fact, considering President Jawara’s case as a lost one, I think politicians like Mr. Dabo, could have ventured into writing their memoirs on the rise and fall of the PPP government.