By Alieu Jallow
Essa Mbye Faal, the former lead counsel of The Gambia’s Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) and current leader of the APP Sobeya party, accused President Adama Barrow’s administration of mismanaging public funds during an interview on Coffee Time with Peter Gomez on West Coast Radio.
Faal claims that Barrow’s administration has transformed the ‘Meet the People’ Tour, which he said was originally intended as a state outreach initiative, into a political campaign platform, describing this action as both “illegal” and a misuse of public funds.
Faal highlighted several instances of what he perceives as financial mismanagement, including the expenditure of 63 million dalasi on the President’s “Meet the People” tour. He contends that such spending is unlawful and constitutes a misuse of public resources.
“This is an absolute waste. Look at the Meet the People tour. This is legalised waste that is given to the government. In 2020 how much was approved? I think it was D6 million and how much was spent by the government, 20 20-something million. In 2021, they spent 40-something million and in 2023, 10 million was approved to meet the people. The president spent 61 million dalasis, 61 million of taxpayer money just to go around and meet people in the country,” he said.
Faal argued that the tour, funded by public money, no longer serves its original purpose of engaging with citizens to address their concerns. Instead, he claims it has evolved into a campaign strategy for the ruling party to effectively blur the lines between state and party activities. According to Faal, such practices undermine democracy and public accountability, as taxpayers’ money is used to advance partisan interests thus labelling it as a national “Bumbai festival”.
“I cannot call it any other way, the whole essence of the Meet the People Tour is supposed to be a solemn program where the president goes around the country and meets the people and discusses issues of concern to those people and those areas but what we see is a national ‘bumbai festival’ wherein they gather, slaughter cows and eat and launch a political campaign to further entrenched themselves in power. That, by itself, is illegal and is unconstitutional because the constitution does not allow taxpayer money to be used for a political campaign,” he said.
Faal, who was a presidential candidate in 2021 and equally eyeing the 2026 presidential election, pledges to redefine the narrative of the Meet People’s Tour, noting it to be a period of soul-searching, a period of consultation and a period of listening to the people such that the policies of the state would be tuned around the needs of the citizens.
“It should not be a festival to just waste money to have a convoy of 80-something gas guzzlers spending money unnecessarily. This is supposed to be a solemn occasion wherein we soul-search and look at the problems and find solutions, but this is not looking for solutions, this is not even trying to identify the problems.
“What they do is go around and Politik and try to sell the president’s agendas so that the president could be voted for again and that is the illegality in the whole thing. You take a legal activity and turn it into something illegal and the test is look at 2021, it was an election year they spent 45 million out of 6 million that was approved,” he said.
The APP Sobeya party leader noted that even the D45 million approved for the President’s People tour in 2025 will likely be around 500 hundred million, stressing the obscurity in the spending for the upcoming year noting the wasteful expenditures he decries daily.
