By Lamin Njie
A staggering 73 percent of Gambians have told a poll they ‘strongly’ agree that the draft constitution should establish that The Gambia is a secular state – where the government is neutral in matters of religion.
Secularity proved a vexed issue during the consultative process of the Constitutional Review Commission with Christians campaigning heavily for the new constitution to carry the word ‘secular’. That never happened.
However, a nationwide survey of The Gambia by the International Republican Institute’s (IRI) Center for Insights in Survey Research was conducted on the draft constitution between November and December 2019.
The survey used a multistage probability sampling method through face-to-face interviews with 1,178 Gambians aged 18 and above. A staggering 73 percent of those interviewed said they ‘strongly’ agree that the draft constitution should establish that The Gambia is a secular state.
The data was weighted for age, gender, urbanicity, and local government area based on results of the 2018 Labor Force Survey of The Gambia.
Thirteen percent strongly disagreed.
