“GPTC’s MD-Momodou Jagne-Corrupt, Nepotic & Terribly Incompetent”
By Boy Jazzy, GPTC Kanifing, The Gambia
GPTC Under The Microscope
As promised, our GPTC insider, Boy Jazzy has completed his analysis of the corruption malaise that finally bankrupted The Gambia Public Transport Corporation (GPTC). In this essay (The Final Part) Jazzy looks at Jange’s reign; the sacking of Tijan and Amat; the ill-fated TATA project and concludes with Momodou Jagne’s trip to Spain and tells us why Jagne appears untouchable.
FINAL Part
Mr. Editor:
I saw the rejoinder, which is certainly from one of my colleagues past or present. Absolutely accurate!! I hope he rejoins on this piece too. It is important that we document the demise of one of the great institutions that have been destroyed by our current government. Thank you my good friend Kenbugul Charreh and please come again.
My last piece closed off with the return of some kind of order within the leadership. Tijan was Acting MD, Amat Njie returned to his role as Acting Finance Director, Hali Gai, had taken over as Acting Director of Traffic Operations, Max was still the only confirmed Director of Engineering but with his retired status, he too was not secure in his post. Then to add to all that mess, Momodou Jagne came in as Director without portfolio.
Jagne, with his Engineering background started setting his eyes on the Engineering Directorship. Rumors started running around that Max would retire and Jagne would take over. At this stage of GPTC’s history nothing was happening as predicted. His friend Adama Deen quickly pulled over Hali Gai to the Ferries Department that was now re-merged with the Gambia Ports Authority (GPA). The move happened so quickly. That gave Tijan a quick opening to post Jagne. Jagne was therefore, assigned to take over the Department of Traffic Operations. Tijan then set to try to run GPTC.
Jagne though was not happy with being deployed to Traffic (as we call that Department). His eyes were set on Engineering. He started questioning Max’s presence. Tijan is said to have made it clear to him that if Max retired Momodou Bah was going to take over the Engineering Department. Bah had been trained for this position and was ready to step in after Max’s departure. Tensions simmered down and the ball started rolling.
Tijan’s Reign
Poor Tijan! He did try to make an impact. Tijan used his procurement expertise and experience to source spare parts for the MAN buses through his network of suppliers. In fact, he would source parts from anyone that would offer. We started seeing few more buses ready to roll out of Engineering. On top of repairing the buses Tijan had also, together with a reformed Amat, rekindled the Tata bus procurement aspiration. Deen had also kept this project alive. Amat was using his contacts at Trust Bank to convince them that this was a very viable project and hence the need for them to finance it.
In terms of direction, Tijan brought back two things that GPTC seemed to have lost. He tried to bring back the sense of quality within our services. For example, he frequently visited the bus yard and complained if a bus was released for service without being properly cleaned. He also tried to insist, to the extent possible, on reliability of the bus services. On the marketing side he focused more on the bus hire market. This market ensured maximum revenue with less utilization of the buses. Tijan insisted on prepayment no matter who wanted the services.
The biggest problem we had with Tijan’s administration was his nepotism. Tijan started putting friends and relatives in undeserving positions. At this time the exodus from GPTC had begun and every time the opportunity came through he would plug a vacancy with his relative. Most prominent was when he replaced the senior training coordinator for bus drivers, conductors and inspectors with another Jobe who was related to him. Jobe (I have chosen to leave his first name out) was clearly and totally incompetent for this role and was not at all respected by the drivers he was supposed to train. There was no way he could train a conductor yet still an inspector. GPTC’s once reputable Training School died from then on.
Another problem that Tijan had was that the staff of GPTC never appreciated him as a person. In his days as Chief Storekeeper, Tijan was seen as an arrogant and corrupt rich and spoilt young man who set himself above others especially, those below him. When he became Acting MD people did not wish him well and his cause did not get many fighters. Secondly, Tijan made it absolutely clear that he was not going to be an APRC Tomboy. He never appeared at the Airport when the President was traveling or went to any political function. He insisted that everybody who needed buses for hire paid in advance and this included the government and APRC. Therefore, it was certain that Tijan could not stay as MD.
As Tijan played the tough MD, Jagne as Traffic Director was busy learning his new job. Jagne quickly got great interest in the inter-state service (Banjul-Dakar). For one reason or the other Jagne would travel to Dakar, collecting himself a lot of Per-diem. His natural charm quickly won him a lot of fans in GPTC. However, as Jagne was busy trying to show everyone that would listen his aviation credentials the management of GPTC was becoming more and more sure that this guy is not fit to manage a fleet of ‘Gele Geles’. Sadly today, this qualifies one for a very high position in Yahya’s APRC. Like his coming to GPTC, Jange’s rise to the MD position came as a surprise to many.
One Late afternoon, Jagne and Tijan were discussing something in Jange’s office. Just as they finished someone walked in and handed Jagne a letter. Jagne opened it in the presence of Tijan and it was the appointment letter of Jagne as MD. Just like that!!! Tijan was dumbfounded and Jagne expressed surprise. Of course he was lying!
‘Super MD Jagne’
Tijan with his low popularity did not get many sympathizers in GPTC after the coup to the MD’s seat. For the staff, now that the MD has been appointed people could focus on moving the organization forward. Generally, Jagne was a lot more acceptable to the staff than Tijan. Jagne was approachable and Tijan was not. However, in reality as much as we preferred Jagne, Tijan was doing and would have continued to do a much better job.
By the time Jagne took over a young Gambian University trained officer at Traffic Department Mr. Joof had left. This made a great succession problem for the Department. Jagne therefore held on to the Traffic operations directorship as well. Max had finally been allegedly pushed into retiring by the Board. The reality is that Max’s contract was due to expire by the end of 2002 and by October 2002 he sent a letter informing the Board that he shall not be renewing the contract. Jange’s Team therefore was, Tijan Jobe as Deputy Managing Director (without much specific responsibility), Amat Njie as Acting Finance Director, Modou Bah as Acting Director of Engineering and Jagne himself as everything else; Admin and Human Resources; Traffic Operations and MD/CEO.
Tijan though held on to all the authority that he had as Acting MD. He still approved all Purchases and negotiated terms and prices. Jagne wanted to have that transferred to him but could not demand it. So the procurement officer would have a lot of trouble trying to satisfy these two fighting elephants. When Jagne saw this was not working he sought more power. He used the Board Chairman to cancel Tijan’s authority to approve purchases and also to sign cheques for GPTC. Tijan was stripped off almost everything. He then tried to take on the administrative role and to announce his status; he sent a memo requesting that employees should dress up respectfully/decently when they come to work. The next day, our new Managing Director, suit-loving Jagne, Came to work in overalls (Bilahi!!!). Mediocre isn’t it?
Having robbed Tijan of all significance Jagne set off to prepare his dream. His very first project was to halt the Tata Project. He wrote a proposal to delay the Tata bus procurement project that was vehemently opposed by all three members of his management team. He then came up with another brand of buses (Hino, made in Korea) provided by S. Madi & Sons. He forced a re-evaluation of his buses against the TATAs insisting that those were better. As Jagne himself could not do a proper evaluation, both technical and financial, he was left at the mercy of Amat and Bah with coordination done by Tijan. Funnily, even when he was presented with an evaluation that clearly showed TATAs were the better investment, Momodou Jagne went ahead and sent a proposal to his Board recommending that the Hinos be purchased even though the evaluation he attached proved otherwise. Jagne had been used to getting a lot of things through the Board. He got the Chairman on his side by including him as a signatory to the GPTC accounts and sometimes with Jagne traveling all over the Chairman approved purchases. There was one instance when Chairman James George refused to sign a cheque for the payment of equipment for the engineers insisting that they must take the item for him to see. Other Board members will ask Jagne to pay them their Board allowance three months in advance. That way, when Jagne also asked for something they approved.
The Department of State for Finance did a re-evaluation (Tata Vs Hino) through The Gambia Divestiture Agency/Authority and supported the Tata buses. Jagne lost the battle. The war though had just started. His next proposal was to cancel the entire bus procurement program until HE Jammeh completed the road construction he was doing. In the meantime, he was going to lift all the buses that were written off by the former management to ensure the entire country is connected by buses. He even did a country tour, which was filmed by Every Mbye as part of a documentary that was to show how Jagne revived GPTC. I wish I could get hold of those tapes, as they would tell the tale of the way Jagne completed the mess that Houma started.
That year, early 2003, Jagne followed President Jammeh on his Meet the People Tour. Gambian griot Mr. Every Mbye was paid (in the name of preparing a documentary and promotional video) to praise Jagne in the presence of Jammeh and Yankuba Touray. While they toured the country for 11 days the rest of us yearned for our salaries. As only Jagne was allowed to countersign cheques after the signature of the Acting Finance Director, someone had to be sent to Basse with our salary cheques for Jange’s approval. If you think that was bad, wait until you hear that the other time the cheques had to be sent by DHL to Spain for Jagne to sign and return while our families and us waited. Meanwhile, he was sitting on a lot of per diem and impresses that were never properly accounted for.
By the time the Presidential tour reached Baba Jobe’s Jarra, Every Mbye had delivered on his contract. Jagne was so adequately promoted that Yankuba Touray was heard bellowing that YAYA JAMMEH HAS APPOINTED SOMEONE WHO PROMISED TO FIX ALL THE DEAD M.A.N BUSES AND SOON THEIR TRANSPORT PROBLEMS WILL BE HISTORY. Soon- eh???
With a renewed sense of approval from this tour, Jagne set out to get spare parts to do the repairs he promised. He traveled to Dakar and returned saying he has found a big heap of many MAN spares that he could negotiate and quickly bring into Gambia to raise all the MAN buses from the dead. By this time even the lower management and supervisory level staff doubted if Jagne knew as much as he likes people to believe. As head of the Engineering Department, Momodou Bah was asked to go and check these parts out. Bah must have been shocked when he was led to a dump yard of scrap parts mainly from Renault buses used by the dead Senegalese bus company SOTRAC. As if to proof to everyone that the parts were not MAN parts he brought back key significant parts at the boot of his car and displayed them in the yard.
Battle number two was lost and you would think the man would now listen. You would even think that the man will be embarrassed but no, he even tried to find ways to make it work. At some point Bah was visibly irritated and later heard saying this guy was insulting the intelligence of the people.
The program of acquiring parts that was started by Tijan was abandoned. Jagne ignored all suppliers who dealt with GPTC under Tijan and tried to find his own. With no money and no credit history with these new suppliers he was courting, nothing worked. Standards fell again, buses reduced on the road but Jagne did not seem to notice, as he was too busy following APRC around.
By the second quarter of Jange’s reign, Bah left the Corporation. Two young engineers had returned from Training from Ghana and one of them Joof (not Joof of Traffic) was to take over from Bah. Jagne refused to even formally appoint Joof as Acting Engineering Director thereby making him (Jagne) in charge of that one too. As luck (or perhaps fate) would have it, a letter came from government stating that a certain municipality was giving out buses to third world countries and 8 were going to be given to The Gambia. Government requested that GPTC send technicians to inspect the suitability of these buses for operating in The Gambia.
The all-knowing Modou Jagne immediately himself forward and later Mr. Joof of Engineering for the inspection trip. Interestingly, he personally handled the visa request and somehow Joof never got his visa to join Jagne on the trip. Apparently, he had by now learned to avoid including others lest they speak against his desires. When the buses finally came Jagne made a big show of this.
Interestingly, these buses were old and expensive to run. Jagne got a bit of cash flow from revenues coming from these services and thought the entity was now rich. At the time it was estimated that GPTC was more than 150 people over staffed. Amazingly, Jagne went on a recruitment spree. Any NIA and APRC big wig that had someone to post was asked to send him or her at the growing GPTC. The buses meanwhile could not cover their cost especially, with the added cost burden of the new employees. The overdraft facility in the bank was becoming hard to service. Tijan and Amat kept complaining with the spending style. Not surprisingly, they were soon shown the gates. Jagne had now cleared the team that challenged him and by not replacing them he became self crowned king.
Immediately Jagne went off to State House to show them that he would flood the country with red buses. Jagne picked up all the money we had access to and set off to Spain. He would later go to Spain to do for them what Tijan, Amat and Bah did not let him do in Dakar. Jagne got over 20 buses from Spain, which curiously were shipped to the port of Dakar, Senegal. A number of the buses that were brought over from Dakar had to be towed into the country. Jagne kept saying that the Spanish had parked the buses for a long time and he would get them running swiftly. Amazingly, when that did not happen as he promised we were not surprised when he started asking for money again for per diem and impress to return for the parts that were left behind.
Remember Jagne could not get a visa for Mr. Joof, the Engineer, but he interestingly, had no problem getting visas for fitters, welders and electricians to go with him to a dump yard in Spain to remove parts from scrap buses to bring back to The Gambia. These guys sweated it out with spanners hammers and gas cutters at a dump yard from dawn to dusk helping a Spanish municipality clear their environment. The freight was paid in full by GPTC. The impact of this on GPTC? What Impact. Jagne bragged that he was bringing 5 Million Dalasis worth of parts to clear the transport problem of the country. At the end, when the dust settled, it was probably that much value in filth.
There were some large machines among these old junks that we had no idea what they did. Could they be the aircraft engines mentioned in the initial article that triggered my piece? I don’t think so. Is the man corrupt? Certainly he needs to account for the monies he used in his Spanish deal and he needs to explain why he killed off the Tata project.
Houma and Jagne share few things in Common.
- They are both teachers – thank God our children are not being thought by them anymore.
- They are both handsome and good speakers – I don’t know many people who are capable of making rubbish sound so good.
- They are both terribly incompetent. Nothing against them. We all have our capacities and it is not our fault if people let us operate beyond our capabilities. They get what they ask for.
- They are excellent manipulators and would do well in the APRC. Only the Likes of Yankuba Touray can outperform them.
- They are both filled with corruption and nepotism.
- And finally they are going to make the big decisions relating to GPTC. Thanks to Jagne at least Houma can proudly say I left the corporation in a much better state. What a shame!!!