THE VERDICT

Presidents Jammeh & Koroma: The Devil Advising The Angel

By Adama Hawa in Banjul

In the GRTS broadcast of President Jammeh’s meeting with President Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone during his visit to that country to attend Koroma’s inauguration ceremony, we heard him advising his host not to fear anyone but to do whatever his conscience dictates him to do. “The only superpower is the Almighty Allah,” he told him.

It was quite obvious to anyone listening to that programme that President Jammeh was simply inciting President Koroma to adopt the same belligerent attitude that he himself has adopted towards certain Western powers like the United States. It is however hard to see a democrat like President Koroma taking such an ill-fated advice from a lunatic despot like Yahya Jammeh who sees the whole civilized world as his enemies.

In his discussions with President Kororma, we also heard him tell Koroma not to make any promises but instead to do as he himself had been doing in The Gambia, which is to deliver without making promises.

However, we can all remember the numerous promises President Jammeh had been making to Gambians and none of which he has fulfilled.  We can recall when more than five years ago, he had promised to transform the whole country into a city-state by providing every town and village with potable water and electricity, but none of which has been realized. Instead, the lot of the average Gambian has become much worse than he found it when he came to power, with the roads and the other social infrastructure being worse than they had ever been in this country since independence more than 40 years ago.

Another of President Jammeh’s unfulfilled promises includes the crazy idea of providing a railway line to The Gambia and his famous petroleum discovery. We can recall when in February 2004, he made a special announcement on GRTS giving people the impression that large deposits of oil have been discovered in Gambian territorial waters and it was just a matter of a few months before Gambians became rich. He even said “The Gambia was going to be transformed from an aid recipient to a donor country.” He was so confident of his so-called discovery that he convinced his Taiwanese friends to provide several scholarships to Gambian students to go to Taiwan to study petroleum technology and he also set up a Petroleum Department with its entire staff and all the expenditure associated with it.

However, here we are almost four years later and nothing has happened. Indeed neither he nor any of his numerous sycophants are now even talking about that crazy dream.

Therefore, we can only hope and pray that President Koroma does not take heed of whatever President Jammeh tells him, otherwise, he will surely regret it in the long run. Instead, we had expected President Jammeh himself to learn from President Koroma how his country has managed to conduct such a free and fair election, which saw his opposition party win the polls, and he assumed power in such a peaceful manner, which is a far cry from the type of elections held under President Jammeh’s leadership.

This is also an opportunity to send condolences to President Jammeh on the death of his most loyal executioner, Major Musa Jammeh (Malia Mungu), who has been credited with the most brutal torture of innocent Gambians. Indeed, with the death of Tumbul Tamba and Musa Jammeh, two of his gang of torturers, this is no doubt a message to him and the rest of the gang that the Almighty Allah is on the side of the innocent Gambians they are so brutally suppressing and it is just a matter of time before all of them would be neutralized. I therefore, hope that the other torturers like Ousman Sonko, Bombarde, Alhagie Martin and Sana Manjang are taking note that their days are numbered, and some of them may even meet more tragic deaths than Tumbul and Musa, just like some of their victims such as Koro Ceesay, Deyda Hydara, Daba Marena and all the other innocent Gambians as well as the more than 50 innocent West African migrants they tortured to death.