By D. A. Jawo
The ongoing war of nerves between the Brikama Area Council (BAC) and the central government is certainly happening to the detriment of the people of the West Coast Region and The Gambia at large and it should never have been allowed to degenerate to that level because it is neither in the interest of the council nor even that of the central government.
It however appears that both the BAC and the central government care more about scoring political points against each other than the consequences of their actions on the people of the West Coast. While there is an element of intransigence on the side of the BAC, particularly its chairman, Yankuba Darboe, but it is also quite evident that the central government, through the Ministry of Lands and Regional Governments, are using their power and the police to achieve their political objectives, which is to paralyze the BAC and drive a wedge between the people and its chairman and eventually make him unpopular and ineffective.
It appears that we are witnessing a repetition of what earlier happened at the Kanifing Municipal Council when a similar situation arose between the former CEO Sainabou Martin-Sonko and the KMC in which the central government again played a negative role by taking sides in favour of the CEO. Rather than investigate the allegations against Ms. Martin-Sonko, the government gave her full support at every level, insisting on her reinstatement and even went to the unprecedented extent of breaking the door to her office at the KMC to ensure that she resumed work regardless of all the evidence that the KMC produced to back their claims against her.
Just like the case of the KMC, the Brikama Area Council has also made similar accusations against their CEO and the Finance Director, Modou Jonga and Alhagie Jeng, producing enough justification for calling on the government to remove the two officials for alleged corruption. However, instead of acting on that evidence to thoroughly investigate the allegations, the government did exactly what they did in the case of Ms Martin-Sonko, by giving unqualified support to CEO Jonga and Finance Director Jeng, calling on the BAC to allow them to carry on with their work despite all the evidence of corruption that the BAC alleged against them.
If indeed the government was committed to fighting corruption, the least anyone would have expected them to do was either redeploy the two officials to other areas or send them on administrative leave and launch a thorough investigation into the allegations. However, the very fact that the government seems to have completely ignored all the allegations of corruption against them and instead give their full backing for them to continue working with the council is a serious indictment of the government’s lack of political will to fight corruption. This is certainly not going to be music in the ears of our development partners some of whom are quite concerned about the apparent rise in corruption within the government.
It is quite obvious that the government does not seem to have any intentions to help the BAC to fight corruption but instead, they seem to be using the situation to paralyze the activities of the council, regardless of the consequences to the people of the West Coast Region and the country at large.
We have all been witnesses to the overwhelming evidence of wanton corruption coming from the Commission of Inquiry into Local Government Councils and most of the corruption is being directly attributed to the government-appointed officials, particularly the CEOs and the finance directors of the different municipal councils. Therefore, the attitude of the government to such allegations of corruption against these officials at the BAC is quite indicative of the apparent lack of will to fight corruption.
What was the point of setting up the Commission of Inquiry into Local Government Councils when the government has not shown any commitment to fighting corruption? Even the very fact that the famous Anti-Corruption Bill had been languishing at the National Assembly for more than two years now without any commitment on the part of the government to get it enacted, while they had the audacity to send the Former Presidents Bill to the National Assembly under a certificate of urgency and get it passed in less than a week, is a clear indication that fighting corruption is not their priority.
From what we have heard so far from the Commission of Inquiry into Local Government Councils, apart from the municipal councils themselves being the bedrock of corruption and mal-administration, the other institutions that have come out quite poorly from the inquiry include the Ministry of Lands and Regional Governments and the so-called ‘independent’ Local Government Service Commission, which is anything but independent. The Ministry, instead of effectively playing its role as the policy arm of the local councils, was not only trying to directly micro-manage them, but it had also been usurping the role and powers of the Local Government Service Commission, thus making that commission quite irrelevant and ineffective.
Let us hope and pray that both the government and the BAC would realise that the only sensible way forward is through dialogue and comprise so that the council’s activities will continue rather than being paralyzed for purely political reasons, benefiting no one in particular.
