By Lamin Njie

President Adama Barrow has said that Gambians have to learn how to talk to each other if the country is to solve its problems.

The president stated this on Saturday while presiding over the launch of the 35 million dollars Banjul sewage, drainage and road rehabilitation project.

Gambians have in the past few years intensified their debates in respect of governance in the country, debates that are often characterised by insult trading and personal attacks.

But President Barrow in a  speech on Saturday said insults and personal attacks do not take a country forward.

The President said: “It’s only through dialogue that a country can move forward. So I am asking Gambians; let’s come together. That’s the only thing that will take us forward. But all the debates, insulting one another, attacking one another [this] has no use. It won’t take our country forward.”

According to the president, the Banjul sewage, drainage and road rehabilitation project was part of his government’s efforts to fix the country’s capital.

“I want to tell the people of Banjul my government has resolved to develop this country and I have said that 2019 will be a turning point and it should be a turning point in Banjul too,” the president said.

The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission Friday visited the headquarters of the National Intelligence Agency now State Intelligence Service.

The TRRC is an investigation into the human rights violations and abuses which occurred in the 22 years rule of former president Yahya Jammeh.

The NIA headquarters has been identified as one of the places allegedly used by the former president to detain, torture and even kill his opponents.

The TRRC during its Friday visit toured the famous Bambadinka cell, an interrogation room, two investigation cells, a staff clinic and 10 round hooks detached from a wall in a room and a metal table bed.

Upon arrival, Ousman Sowe, director general of Intelligence welcomed the officials of the commission and produced some pictures of the old structures prior to his appointment two years back.

He described the visit as significant while assuring the support of his institution to the commission, adding that the success of the commission will be historic in the history of the county.

“The TRRC will be a turning page; it will be a coach to this country where it was to where it is going” adding no more excess was an operational guidelines,” he said.

Mr. Sowe, who has been working for the intelligent for 24 years, said so many rehabilitation and reformation have taken place since he took the helm of leadership at SIS, adding the focus the SIS is on national intelligence.

Former head of investigation at the defunct NIA, Sowe said part of rehabilitating and transforming the headquarters was the unfit environment for official duties and that they wanted to put off anything that was against human rights violation to have occurred.

Lamin J Sise, lead commissioner said: “previous intelligences were mentioned during the testimonies by the witnesses and we want to know that, educate and familiarizes ourselves and see what happens. We want to mean our words.”

Lead counsel Essa Faal, urged officials of SIS to halt rehabilitating and transformation structures of the SIS premises in the interest of the commission and investigation that may be carried out.

Meanwhile, the commission requested an inventory of evidence in both documentary record and equipment allegedly used on witnesses.

A former aide-de-camp to former president Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara has that Senegal lent a helping hand to the 1994 coup which brought former president Yahya Jammeh to power.

Momodou Lamin Gassama testifying before the TRRC on Thursday said Senegal directed Jawara not to stage a comeback in exchange for him to be granted sanctuary. Abdou Diouf was Senegal’s president at the time.

“Senegalese government refused to accept Sir Dawda Jawara. They said they will accept him on the terms if he wouldn’t interfere to come back to power. It took us 3 days before Senegal accepted Jawara,” Gassama told the TRRC.

He said Jawara and 46 others were evacuated to Senegal on an American war ship and that in Senegal, they were not giving presidential welcome but a normal welcome that was rushed, adding upon their arrival at Senegal, Jawara was taken to Medine before he left for England.

US’ Role

Meanwhile Gassama told the commission that the 1994 coup could have been foiled if his suggestion to the American ambassador was accepted, adding at the time the caliber of weapons American soldiers were having on the ship could stop the coupists from taking over the State House.

He said: “I didn’t trust the American ambassador, I see him to have interfere in the internal politics of the country. Whatever was happening he was the obstacle of it. I suspect him to be part of it.”

He also leveled his blamed on the them American ambassador to The Gambia to had wrote an article on the defunct Daily Observer Newspaper criticizing the PPP government for bad pay.

He added that in the initial stage of the coup on July 22, 1994, he informed Jawara to leave State House for Senegal but that Jawara was not willing to go, adding they had convinced him on a number of times before he would accept.

Former president Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara’s longtime aide-de-camp on Thursday said the former president returned to the country from London a day before the 1994 coup but the justice minister at the time who received him at the airport did not come with him to State House.

Former army captain Momodou Lamin Gassama testifying before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission referring to the coup said “he didn’t “see anything” on their arrival from London only that “there were fewer people.”

Gassama said: “Normally you have a big entourage of people coming to receive the president. I know the vice president wasn’t there. He was there normally and if he is in the country he should be the person to receive the president. If he is out of the country, then the next senior in terms ministerial responsibilities, the minister of justice would assume that responsibility and then receive the president like in this particular case Hassan Jallow was there who received him. So, the vice president wasn’t there. I have no idea where he was, whether he was out of the country or in the country. I have no idea at that time.

“From the airport normally, we’ll head back to the State House. The protocol had always been, on arrival at State House, the president will go to his drawing room and then the vice president should be there to brief him about what transpired in the country [and] virtually handing over command control, what has happened in his absence by briefing note. So this may take about half an hour or one hour while they are having tea and then before he retires.

“On this particular occassion, when we got to the drawing room, and he paused and then he was looking back to receive Hassan Jallow and then he said, ‘so, where is Hassan?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ ‘So he’s not coming?’ That’s where I just went downstairs. I enquired. Well, some said at the time, he branched off around Westfield.

“I came and report to him exactly what happened. He didn’t come with us. So he branched off from Westfield junction. Some said Siting Corner. So I told the president. He just shrugged his shoulders and he went in. He didn’t say anything. I don’t want to guess whether he knew his role, whether he’s been briefed properly. That’s what supposed to happen I don’t know.”

Hassan Jallow is now the chief justice of The Gambia.

A former lands minister Lamin Wa Juwara has said that he would have been dead if he had refused to work for former president Yahya Jammeh.

Juwara served in various respectable positions in the government of President before he was disgraced in brutal fashion.

Testifying before the TRRC on Wednesday, Juwara said Jammeh was very angry with him at the time and that the only solution was to work for him.

“At the time it was a question of joining or die, because Jammeh was very angry with me for what I stand for. Jammeh thought I accepted him but I never accepted him. It was a question of survival tactic,” he said.

He said him worked under Jammeh doesn’t mean joining him but that he served under Jammeh to save his life and contribute his quota to the development of the country.

He added: “I was not happy sitting in the cabinet with Jammeh, he was dictating everything because he was a dictator. Nobody would be proud of associating with Jammeh. Dictatorship will never be accepted in this country anymore.”

Meanwhile, Lamin Wa Juwara has called for Gambians to forget about the past and reconcile.

“We have to accept what have happened and forgive each other. The country is important than anyone- even Yahya Jammeh, the country is more important than him,” Juwara said.

Madi Jobarteh has said that the chief of defense staff of the Gambia Armed Forces must suspend security personnel who confess to torture.

A Gambian army captain Bubacarr Bah on Tuesday told the TRRC it was him who battered former agriculture minister Omar Jallow. The incident happened in 1995.

Jobarteh, a straight-talking political commentator, said in a Facebook post on Wednesday: “The CDS must suspend security personnel who confess to torture until the TRRC decides their fate! Such officers must not continue to wear the uniform of The Gambia Armed Forces. They have lost legitimacy the moment they transformed people’s power entrusted to them to abuse citizens.”

Lamin Wa Juwara on Wednesday said Baba Jobe and his boys beat him and broke his finger.

Testifying before the TRRC, Mr Juwara who served as a minister in former president Yahya Jammeh said this happened in 1994 while he was being escorting to Mile Two prison.

“Baba Jobe and his boys attacked me and broke my finger with the aim of killing me but some soldiers intervened and rescued me in their hands. Baba was working [for] Jammeh and not the government. He was part of the system that created problem for the people of the country,” Juwara told the TRRC.

According to Juwara, the condition at Mile Two during his detention there as bad saying “I was put on the same cell with Imam Touray and we were made to sleep on the ground.”

He added that he was also arrested in 1996 and detained at Fajara police to Yundum police and then taken to Janjangbureh prison where he said to have spent 13 months.

Mr. Juwara told the commission that the prison was overcrowded, adding that all these arrest of him that he was neither charged nor taken to a court of law.

He said while in detention at Janjabureh prison, he was tortured by Momodou Bojang -commissioner of Maccarty Division but that before Bojang left for the United States of America apologized to him.

“I was tortured and incurred certain wounds from the beaten in fact, I was molested,” while admitted writing a letter to ex-president Jammeh while in detention at Janjabureh prison that resulted to his release in prison, adding the Junta was aware of his plans.

Captain Bubacarr Bah of the Gambia Armed Forces on Tuesday told the TRRC he was given instructions by Saul Badge to plant bombs at the Gambia National Petroleum Company.

Saul Badjie is a former Gambian army general who fled The Gambia for Equatorial Guinea with ex-president Jammeh.

“Saul Badjie told me that the coalition members are bent on revenge and vengeance. He (Saul Badjie) gave me tasks to plant explosives at the GNPC and they will put the blame on them (coalition). He is a foolish man,” he said.

Bah said they were receiving ‘hazardous’ instructions from Saul Badjie during the political impasse and that they were told to build fighting positions across the greater Banjul area.

He said: “I told my officers that I am not going to follow this man (Yahya Jammeh) because he has been here for 22 years and Gambians have voted him out.”

However, he explained his arrest and detention during the political impasse that he was arrested with Captain Demba Baldeh at Fajara Barracks after his commanding officer colonel Essa Tamba called for meeting ordering him to tell other officers not to come with their weapons to the meeting.

He added he later heard vehicles roaring and later some military police from State House came and entered forcefully into the house they were holding the meeting led by Lieutenant Nuha Williams.

He said he and Captain Demba Baldeh were taken to the NIA headquarters in Banjul where they found another officers – Major Sidi Joof, Major Yusupha Jammeh, adding he was kept with the other officers until ex-president Jammeh left the country for exile into Equatorial Guinea.

By Lamin Njie

Former Interior Minister Mai Ahmad Fatty has dismissed allegations that he signed a pact for Gambians to be deported from Europe.

Allegations last week abounded of Fatty signing a deal on behalf of the Gambia government for the deportation of thousands of undocumented Gambians from Europe.

The special adviser to President Adama Barrow says reports linking him to the signing of an alleged deportation agreement between the Gambia government and European Union during his time as Interior minister are false and part of a campaign instigated by enemies to tarnish his political image, The Standard newspaper reported on Tuesday.

“It is very necessary for me to come out and clarify myself on these allegations. The signing ceremony was on the 3rd November 2017 and it was between The Gambia and the EU to help transport stranded Gambian migrants who were subjected to slavery and other maltreatments at the hands of smugglers and other syndicates. It was never for deportation of migrants already in Europe. And any case none of that money even went to my ministry. Rather it was used by the EU itself to hire airplanes among other things to bring back our stranded and frustrated citizens to their families,” Fatty said.

Fatty was The Gambia’s interior minister between February 2017 to November 2017.

According to him, the agreement to support Gambian migrants from Libya was signed publicly in the presence of the media.

By Lamin Njie

A senior Gambian army officer who broke Omar Jallow’s eye socket in 1995 said Tuesday that his level of maturity played a key part in his savage act against the former agriculture minister.

“I want to say that I’m sorry to the people of the country. I want to say that I’m sorry to uncle OJ. I want to say that to everybody in this country whether they are Gambians or they are not Gambians,” Captain Bubacarr Bah testifying before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Tuesday said.

The TRRC is trapped in a cumbersome exercise of unearthing the truth with regard to the human rights violations and abuses which occured in the 22 years rule of former President Yahya Jammeh.

Former agriculture minister Omar Jallow was among a group of civilian officials of the PPP government who were arrested in the aftermath of the July 1994 coup. He was detained at Fajara Barracks were he subjected to torture.

Gambia army captain Bah who is the first perpetrator-victim to testify before the commission said on Tuesday he stood out amid the soldiers who brutalised OJ.

He said: “Of course like every reasonable man should be able to think that time the maturity was not there. I was in my 20s. Because God tells us in rthe Qur’an that when an evil monger or a perverted transgressor comes to you with any news, verify it. But also looking at the situation at that time, I was very young and crazy.”

According to Bah, he was misinformed by former army captain Almamo Manneh who told him OJ was working on bringing mercenaries into The Gambia who ‘will kill all of us’.

“Because of my age and my level of maturity really I was very gullible and I believed in him. And then that is what led me to join in torturing uncle OJ,” Bah said.

Bah also said he was ready to face OJ and apologise to him personally.

“This is unfortunate. I don’t know how my family is thinking about me now. I don’t know the people of the country looking to this live what are they thinking about me. But I just want to say that we are human beings. We are not perfect. Sometimes when you are misguided and Satan is involved, you may do things that ordinarily you would not have done,” he said.

The youth wing of the United Democratic Party has lashed out at the president of President Barrow Youths for National Development Dou Sanno.

The youth wing in a statement signed by secretary general Kemo Bojang on Monday accused Ansu Singhateh of trying to tarnish the image of the leader of UDP Ousainou Darboe.

The statement read: “It has come to the notice of the united democratic party youth wing that on the 9th of February through an online media platform, the national coordinator of the Barrow youths for national development made claims which have been found to be false and misleading.

“It can be recalled that on the 1st of December 2017, a celebration was organized at the buffer zone in Tallinding, where thousands of Gambians gathered to grace the one year anniversary of the change of government that average Gambians made a reality.

“On this same day, a group of Gambians launched a movement with the alleged aim of supporting the agenda of President Adama Barrow. As foreign affairs minister at the time, his Excellency Ousainou Darboe, current vice president of the Gambia and party leader of the great united Democratic Party graced the occasion.

“We will like to make it vehemently clear to the general public that Honorable Ousainou Darboe did not attend the celebration as the launch of the youth organization but as a stakeholder in the coalition government celebrating a year in office and the leader of the political party which has been struggling and fighting to see a liberated Gambia, from the grips of tyranny contrary to what was said and reported by a member of the president Barrow youths for national development.

“We will also want to make it clear that the party leader of the united Democratic Party has never requested nor has he ever worn a t shirt of this said movement or organization as alleged by this said individual. We will also want to point out that the accusation made against Honorable Ousainou Darboe being issued a membership card is also false and terribly misleading.

“It is rather unfortunate that we will go this low as a country to try and tarnish the image of great men and women who have given life and blood to see our country free. The UDP youth wing will want to make it categorically clear that we will not sit by and watch the name and image of our party leader be tainted in the name of gaining cheap political points. We will also want to remind these set of youths that the united Democratic Party is on course and will not be derailed by any ill intended motives.

“The United Democratic Party youth wing will also urge the president to remember that the country has a national youth council which was set up by an act of parliament to oversee and represent young people in the Gambia. We will want to urge him to disband this youth movement and work hand in hand with the national youth council when it comes to youth affairs.

“On a final note, as alluded by our party leader, we are assuring the president that we are in full support of this transitional government in its transitional mandate and the country’s national development plan.”

Editor’s Note: The UDP youth wing in its statement addressed Mr Ansu Singhateh as the national coordinator of Barrow Youth Movement when he is in fact the president. The national coordinator of the movement is Dou Sanno. We apologise for the misrepresentation of the facts which is due to the lack of care on the part of the UDP youth wing.

By Lamin Njie

Njie Manneh has said that President Adama Barrow is The Gambia’s Nelson Mandela and will rule for 20 years.

“Adama Barrow is the Nelson Mandela of The Gambia. Any other person who calls himself Nelson Mandela is fooling himself,” Manneh a staunch President Barrow apologist said in a WhatsApp audio message made available to The Fatu Network.

Pressure is mounting on President Barrow as the three years deal that shot him to power edges to its climax.

According to Manneh who is a member of the President Barrow Youths for National Development, President Barrow will stay beyond the three years and will go on to rule The Gambia until 2035.

“I hear people advocating for President Barrow to step aside after three years. I want to tell everyone that President Barrow is the Nelson Mandela of The Gambia from 2016 to 2035,” Manneh said.