It was an accident of history, one of those things that would make someone to pinch him or herself, and ask how in the world it could ever happen. It came out of the deep blue horizon but, it was not an act of God, rather, it was the doing of five innocent, idealist young men acquiescing to their own naiveté. The selection of Yahya Jammeh as head of the group of five coup-makers on that fateful day will live in infamy in our history. The notoriety of that moment is perhaps the only parallel to Pearl Harbor, yet lessons that can be learnt from it are plentiful. As it is characteristic in many other countries around Africa, a man came into our lives, whose dreams of ever becoming a Head of State in our country would not conceivable have amounted to anything, whatsoever. It is self-evident that without a coup, the chances of Yahya Jammeh ever becoming a President in our country were as remote as impossible. Yet, as fate, a little luck, and circumstance would have it, Jammeh did wake up one day twelve years ago to find the future of a whole nation in his undeserved hands. It marked the beginning of the making of a political and social nightmare, a reminder of many other African countries where the consolidation of political power has resulted to massive social dislocations, political apathy, and an indifference that borders on condoning and abetting the abuse of power, torture and the loss of human life. Today, the fabric of social life is so corrupted and corrosive, and the continually degenerating political condition is only exacerbating the suffering and the discontent in our once peaceful country. Slowly but surely, Yahya Jammeh is learning how to be a one-man country, and he is exercising his new found adulterated knowledge to silence our people under pain of arrest, torture and death.The accidental President has come a long way from those early days of self-doubt and a feeling steeped in insecurity. On the surface at least he seems to be taking things in stride, but what his mind is telling him may be a different matter all together. Every single person who has ruled the way Jammeh is doing has met a violent and merciless end himself. In the final analysis, when push comes to shove, the mercenaries Jammeh is hiring from Iran, Cuba, and Cassamance, and elsewhere, will not be able to save him from the retribution of the long suffering Gambian people. And, while we are at it, we hope that Sana B. Sabally, Edward Singhateh and the other living members of the coup wake up each morning pinching them selves, and asking why and how they unleashed a monster in our midst. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, the one nagging question for us all is how we can put it back in the bottle again. There is no doubt that our country needs rescuing from the hands of a clueless idiot turned monster, a man who sees no value in human life, a man with a propensity to use torture and murder as a weapon to gain political and social compliance. For now, my advice to Yahya Jammeh is to be afraid, be very afraid. Remember the proverb; “what goes around comes around.” And Mao Tse Tung was not being prophetic when he said, “those who live by the gun will die by the gun.” It is plain, simple common sense.

Just two weeks ago, Jammeh completed forming his Cabinet, and like his last one, the make-up of his senior government officials was not surprising, but neither was it amusing either. The conspicuous absence of Fulas and Mandinkas from any Cabinet position, spoke as loudly as Jammeh’s subliminal message intended, but to add insult to injury, there was not a single Cabinet Secretary who comes from our provincial countryside. In his own head, Jammeh is fighting a battle against educated Fulas, Mandinkas, and those provincial born with any hint of political aspiration or interest. Jammeh is choosing his enemies and the battles he has to fight to survive, and like many other things, a lot of it exists only in his own empty skull. Jammeh like other despots before him cannot escape the paranoia that causes insecure politicians to lash out as a way to buy themselves time as well as a modicum of social order, while beneath the surface; a raging inferno of discontent is bottled up in the hearts and minds of ordinary citizens. As of now, Jammeh has effectively silenced the media at home, and effective political dissent that nurtures the values of democracy, have all but withered away into oblivion. Like it or not, The Gambia is now a one-man country, and Jammeh’s supreme powers are a humiliation to the rest of us. That Jammeh can reduce a whole country of people into little lap dogs and get away with it for so long is a testament to the fact that our fear of this non-quantity Yahya Jammeh, overrides our love of our freedom. This is not a flattering allegation to make against a whole nation, but there is no other plausible explanation for the fact that even as Jammeh continues to kill us, we come back time and again to kneel and kiss his stinking feet. When will this insanity end? When will our people put pride and honor before the pursuits of material wealth and political power? Whenever I look at the Gambian landscape and see all my very many child and adulthood friends on Yahya Jammeh’s side of the political equation, I keep asking myself whether I really knew them at all. How could they not be affected by the torture and murder of any Gambians, but equally important, why would they choose to serve under a dictatorship that takes away the freedoms that make us human beings? I don’t have the answer, but hopefully some day, as we sit them in dockets before our judges, they will have some explaining to do. And they better have good reasons for the people of our country, or I will not shed a drop of tear when they are led to the slammer in Mile Two, where Yahya Jammeh has housed or is warehousing some of The Gambia’s finest men and women.