Around the middle of 1993, while serving in the PPP government as the liaison or Military Staff Office at the Ministry of Defense, Office of the Vice President, Statehouse, Banjul, I incidentally once thought it my responsibility to warn the senior bureaucrats both at the office of the President and Vice President about a dangerous national security reform carried out in the Gambia by the late General Abubacarr Dada, commander of the Nigerian Army Training & Assistance Group (NATAG) and his 84-person team. In a letter addressed to the Secretary General Office of the President and Head of the Civil service at the time, Mr. Sara Janha and the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Defense Mr. Sulayman Bun Jack, I explained how General Dada and his assistants in their tactical and technical reform of the Gambia security forces had deliberately or inadvertently insulated the GNA with the capability of organizing a successful coup d’tat that no other force could deter, by arming and training the army far better than the police Tactical Support Group which until then had maintained a balancing strength for deterrence that was in effect completely compromised. Other officials privy tony latter at the Statehouse was Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Defense Mr.Omar G. Sallah and Permanent Secretary President’s office Mr.Ahmed Bensouda.

I was as a result reprimanded for offering an unwelcome counsel with a stern warning not to ever advise them on ideas they could receive from the “Nigerian generals and colonels contracted purposely for enlightening us about the state of Gambia’s security imperatives and not from you, a Gambian Captain”. Barely a year later, the GNA successfully carried out what I had feared, thanks to the GNA’s tactical and technical superiority over the TSG.

Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara’s secret MOU in 1992 with his then Nigerian counterpart, General Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria to send Nigerian troops he would rather trust than the GNA he had created in 1984 to undermine the SeneGambia Confederation pact, turned out to be a mere time buying resolution that lasted from 1992 to 1994. Factually, neither Senegal nor Nigeria could have preserved the politically decadent PPP government from being forcefully removed from power any longer than in July 1994. This is not about justifying or encouraging military takeovers in any way or form but a simple reminder of when ignorant and condescending authorities too drunk with power turn into their own worse enemies.

That was then; and 27 years later, I again find myself seriously worried about what President Adama Barrow is negotiating with the Nigerian government about a secret-security MOU being ostensibly hidden from the Gambian people.

From every indication, the Barrow government according to independent sources had in early October sent his Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Mamadou Tangara and Defense Minister Hon.Sheikh Omar Faye to Nigerian on a mission that among other things featured a strange MOU aimed at replacing the ECOMIG troops in the Gambia with Nigerian forces in 2021. We have read an authentic report about how and where that meeting was held in Abuja, the attendees both from Nigeria and Gambia and most importantly about the drafted MOU that the Nigerian Defense Minister had assured the Gambian delegations its ratification by the Buhari government. To seduce the Nigerians into complying with their demands, the Gambian envoys hypocritically offered to posthumously decorate the late commander of NATAG General Abubacar Dada who since 1994 had been blamed by several Gambians for causing the coup. The General, in 1992 was exclusively entrusted with commanding and controlling the GNA, of keeping it professional army and ensuring that the entire Gambia was safe and peaceful on his watch. He had promised Jawara a successful completion of the task in two years, precisely by the end of 1994. In July 1994, five months before the end of 1994, the PPP government was overthrown while General Dada was at home enjoying his morning coffee and cookies.

He even helped the junta with ideas on how to stabilized the chaotic situation in the early hours of the July 22 coup. I was a live witness to that.

It’s therefore fair to conclude that Dr. Mamadou Tangara and Hon. Sheikh Omar Faye simply lied to their counterparts in Nigeria about General Dada being a household name in the Gambia whose contribution to the development of the current professional Gambia Armed Forces had everything to do with his efficiency or proficiency. LIARS ON STEROID!

It was however reported that soon after Ministers Tangara and Faye left Nigeria, President Mackey Sall of Senegal who has been in the forefront of building and maintaining the foreign forces in the Gambia since 2017, flew to Nigeria with President Umoro S Embalo of Guinea Bissau on a trip that was also to discuss the Gambia’s security requirements. Barrow was oddly not taken along. The details of that meeting are yet to be publicly revealed although information filtering from keen observers, spoke of Mackey Sall being unhappy with Adama Barrow for turning to Nigeria for military assistance when Senegal has been adequately providing that for him.

Then today, December 3, 2020, barely a month after Mackey Sall’s visit to Nigeria, Adama Barrow left for Abuja for an undisclosed reason.

In my view, it’s way overdue for Statehouse to start letting the public know the purpose of the visit by the president to any foreign country. Simply telling us that it is official is not enough and doesn’t help either when he comes back with mixed messages or zero information for public consumption.

What is going on about the fate of Gambia’s security forces and all these international players toying with it need to be clarified to Gambians. Replacing Senegalese troops with Nigerian soldiers is reminiscent of the same blunder committed by the PPP government in 1992 after the departure of the Senegalese in 1989 and Jawara mistrusting the GNA more than foreign troops.

Let us hope and pray that something that stupid is not in Barrow’s agenda when Nigerians are today suffocating from their overbearing troubles of pervasive government corruption and the nightmare of Boko Haram growing stronger, deadlier and uncontainable.

Thanks for reading.

SAMSUDEED SARR

BANJUL, THE GAMBIA.

By Famara Fofana

These days in our country, talk of money and its usage or the lack of it seems to be a permanent fixture in most public discourse. In fact, CORRUPTION is arguably one of the most widely used words, with or without evidence of it being occasioned. It is even common nowadays to see outrageously jovial comments like “we are better off selling this country so the money can be shared fairly amongst the citizens. Those may be mere jokes, but such a line underlines the foreboding sense of national malaise and discontent on the part of the citizenry.

So, as sections of the public and Gambia’s online community were frowning upon a motion seeking to provide a 54 million dalasi loan package for parliamentarians, a few innuendo questions from some of my colleagues also emerged on social media. The point of their thinly veiled Facebook outburst was not explicitly clear, perhaps out of fear for internal reprisal or lack of clarity on the intent and purpose of what is dubbed Covid-19 Media Support Grant.

The raison d’être of the funds

For starters, the Covid-19 media support grant is the by-product of engagements between Gambia Press Union (GPU) and the ministries of Health and information and Communications Infrastructure informed by the plight and/or vulnerabilities of journalists in the face of Covid-19. The justification is that besides reporters, a host of media practitioners such as camera operators have been at the front and center of efforts to contain the pandemic, qualifying them as frontline workers. They may not be mentioned in the same bracket as doctors and nurses, but the media’s role in disseminating Covid-19 related information is no less important. This was even more crucial at a time when the so-called denial syndrome was refusing to go away. In the end, a D15 million package was shared among a total of 45 media houses from across all news media sectors: newspapers, commercial radios, community radios, private television stations, and online media.   The money was proportionately shared taking cognizance of the staff strength and other operational expenses of the entity.

Will the media cozy up to government because of the Covid-19 support grant?

Even as discussions were underway to iron out the finer details of the Covid-19 Media Support Grant, some observers expressed fears that media houses that took delivery of the package may find it difficult to speak truth to power or in a broader context put the government and its agencies in check if and when they falter. For such critics, the media by all accounts should stay away from any form of cash injection from the state as it tantamounts the classic case of taming the beast into silence or more extremely turning the media into the lapdog of the powers that be. For others too, there are certain public sector employees that are more deserving of these funds than media people despite failing to bring out any correlations between those poorly paid public servants and the COVID-19 money in question.

Can a one-off financial incentivization from the state make the media shy away from its cardinal responsibility of holding the government to account? Personally, I doubt so. My argument is that governments do not necessarily need to dole out money to gag the press. History would tell us that the promulgation and enforcement of repressive laws has and always will be the Achilles heel of the media. In our case, one other way of such an unhealthy thing will be government resorting to denying the media advertisements through its institutions. But chances of that happening look slim or almost non-existent so long as public institutions, particularly departments and parastatals remain operational. In all fairness, citizens are within their rights to question any move they believe could compromise the independence of the media giving the industry’s status as the supposed ‘last best hope’ in a democracy.

What we need to know

While it will be utterly disingenuous to accuse any media chief of anything ever since money exchanged hands, it will be helpful for the purpose of clarity to state here the ELIGIBLE EXPENSES as far as the Covid-19 media support grant is concerned. Also, it would appear not every journalist is clear about the funds and the purpose for which they are meant. Here is the meat of the matter:

• The grantee is only permitted to expend or incur costs related to: payment of salaries and wages for staff and free media practitioners
•  Hands-on, in-house general training on job-related skills operational expenses such as electricity and water bills, consumables such as newsprint, fuel, internet data, inks, boom poles, mic shields, reorders and laptops, and PPE such as masks and disinfectants
• At least 50 % of the entire grant received by a Grantee shall be spent on payment of salaries and wages for staff and freelance
• For the avoidance of doubt, capital expenditure such as purchase of vehicles, landed properties, computers and heavy-duty printers shall not be eligible

See money, see trouble but asking simple questions won’t hurt

For a lowly paid industry like journalism, Covid-19 only added fuel to the flame. Years before the virus hit our shores, the case of journalists running heavy on passion but light on money has been well documented. It’s a reality that is pushing many out of newsrooms these days for fields that yield better take-homes. And in the face of the pandemic, I have it on good authority that some media practitioners were made redundant while others have their salaries slashed. For those that were laid off and/or suffered salary cuts due to plummeting revenues triggered by the pandemic, their welfare should be treated as a matter of utmost priority by the management of affected media houses. This will only serve to inspire confidence and trust in employee-employer relations. With money hitting the accounts of the beneficiary media houses, it will also help the cause of all parties if open-air discussions are held to clear any lingering doubts in the minds of journalists who never hesitate to ask others the tough questions, but conversely get nervy when the matter is internal.

There is no fire in the fat yet, but few recent grumbles online cannot be disregarded.

Famara Fofana is a freelance journalist and a student of Media and Communications Student. He is also the author of When My Village Was My Village.

I hope Gambian President Adama Barrow and his close advisers are following the hot revelations on CNN about the “Wuhan-Files”, classified-leaked documents from China confirming how the communist government mishandled the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in its early spate. The secret documents did not only confirm what several Chinese dissidents had said all along about reports received from their family members of more Chinese killed by the disease than the government had reported, but further disclosed the secrecy aimed at keeping the rising number of infections concealed to the world until it was too late. That even the first 6000 proven infections were reported to be less than half that number. In total, the Chinese government reported about 4000 deaths from the virus, while dissidents put the number to over 700,000.

They had also strongly opposed requests from the World Health Organization scientists to allow them access to the locations in Wuhan to independently investigate how the virus turned deadly from there. And when the world was still in shock, questioning how the killer virus started in China, President Xi Jinping was dogmatically against any independent foreign scientists to go and probe into the root of the plague.

We all could recall when the US government at the peak of Americans’ death rate from COVID-19 around June/July announced the disproportionate death rate on African Americans, compared to whites giving rise to the Chinese in their ill-conceived, short-lived and shameless tactics of blaming the African migrants living in China for bringing the disease from Africa to the extent of brutally persecuting blacks in their major cities. US State Department had to even warn African Americans living in China to be extra cautious of vigilante groups in key cities.

So for President Adama Barrow to say that world leaders like him shared the guilt of the globalization of COVID-19 by their failure to help the Chinese government control the virus in its first upsurge sounded like an ignorant pandering to falsehood. He either didn’t know what he was saying or was afraid of calling out China for their recklessness and angering his government donors and charity givers.

China is not responding to the new revelations from the leaked documents and may never do so until they find a good excuse of disputing it as habitual, making it ever more compelling for a concerted effort by world leaders to ensure that the communist government paid for the damage they inflicted to humankind and African nations in particular. Exempt President Adama Barrow.

In my opinion, it is very possible that if the Chinese are left unpunished and allowed to continue their uncooperative tendencies in such deadly matters, another killer virus could in the near or long future erupt again after being already exposed to their 2003 SARS virus that infected 8000 and killed 800 Chinese and Vietnamese and their COVID-19 that so far has infected over 63 million and killed 1.5 million people worldwide. Another pandemic from this secretive communist nation could very well cause our extinction as humans. Call me a pessimist, but I will keep on reiterating this warning of Communist China posing the biggest existential threat to our survival as a species. We used to fear the detonation of nuclear bombs in a senseless superpower war as the biggest threat to our civilization; but after COVID-19 with close to five-thousand more different strains of coronaviruses reported in certain cave bats in Wuhan, the likelihood of another killer virus emerging from reckless China far outweighs any probability of a nuclear war or sophisticated terrorists manufacturing and detonating a dirty bombs in crowded cities.

We cannot let China get away with this crime, period.

Thanks for reading.

SAMSUDEEN SARR

BANJUL, THE GAMBIA.

The Ambassador of India to Senegal and High Commissioner Designate to The Gambia has stated that India has been a steadfast partner of The Gambia with regard to development partnership. In an OpEd dedicated to the inauguration of the Electricity Expansion Project in the Greater Banjul Area on 28 November 2020 in Kiang Kwinella, GV srinivas said the project has been completed in time despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Below is the diplomat’s take on India-Gambia bilateral relations titled ‘Inauguration of the Electricity Expansion Project in the Greater Banjul Area on 28 November 2020’.

– Ambassador GV srinivas –

India has been a steadfast partner of the Gambia in Development Partnership. The electricity expansion project in the Greater Banjul Area has been completed in time despite the challenges posed by the covid 19 pandemic. This underlines very clearly the solidarity of India with The Gambia in the fight against the pandemic, as the two fight not only for lives but also livelihoods.

Just as president Adama Barrow in the Gambia, Prime Minister Modi in India has been leading from the front during the tumultuous and pandemic times.

The year 2020 has been a defining experience for all of us. In India it has reinforced our determination to build a stronger national economy, with robust industrial capacities and deft use of technology. Technology is a cross-cutting instrument, whether in factories or farms, in software or social transformation.

We have learnt this over the past few years in India as digital banking and biometric identities have made our financial system more inclusive and accessible to underprivileged sections; as renewable energy and water conservation and recharge have sought to redress ecological and environmental imbalances; and as IT and biotech have emerged as cutting-edge tools for economic opportunity and societal transformation.

A slew of reforms introduced in India has positioned it as a favourite of MNCs given what India has to offer viz: Openness, Opportunities and Options. A series of infrastructure projects in India including in the area of optical fiber connectivity, solar power plant, river navigation have been inaugurated even during the Covid-19 times.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been the most globally disruptive event since World War II. Its devastating impact on society and on the economy is still being tabulated. Recovery, resilience and rebuilding will require both perseverance and planning.

When the pandemic struck, India found itself short of critical health supplies. We did not manufacture personal protective equipment (PPEs) or ventilators. Only two companies in India made N95 masks and we were woefully lacking testing kits. In a short span of time, with a whole-of-government and I would say whole-of-society resolve, led by the Prime Minister, our people rose to the occasion.

National capacities were built, by the state, by civil society and by the private sector. We created 15,466 dedicated Covid-19 facilities with 1.5 million isolation beds. Today there are over a hundred PPE manufacturers in India, making 150,000 PPE kits a day. At last count, there were 48 companies making ventilators. And our Prime Minister mentioned that when we started with the Covid crisis there were 16,000 ventilators in hospitals all over India. Today, we plan to have 500,000 ventilators. Testing kits production has gone up considerably and we are conducting about a million tests a day.

We are supplying masks, PPEs, diagnostic test kits and ventilators to other countries. Our pharmaceutical companies ramped up production of drugs, especially HCQ and paracetamol. We shipped these to 150 countries even in lockdown conditions. We are on the cusp of the availability of a vaccine for the novel coronavirus.

As the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, India is at the forefront of this effort. We have at least five promising vaccine candidates at advanced stages of trials. Dozens of sites across India are conducting vaccine trials on all ages and social groups.

To ensure that the fruits of human endeavour to defeat Covid-19 reach all, India made a joint submission to the TRIPS Council on “Temporary Waiver from Certain Provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the Prevention, Containment and Treatment of COVID-19” In October 2020, to ensure that the intellectual property rights do not become a barrier in the timely and affordable access to medical products, including vaccines and therapeutics, and enable nations to deal effectively with the public health emergency arising out of Covid-19 pandemic, and received ready support from many countries.

Bilaterally, we have been organizing a series of events for strengthening trade and economic relations, capacity building including in wellness and healthcare.

The capacity building flagship program of India under the banner of Indian technical and economic cooperation in place since 1964 has evolved and now even has eITEC program.

Degrees from prominent Indian academic institutions are being brought to the door step of students from the Gambia, on gratis basis, via iLearn tele-education program. The rich knowledge of India in Yoga and Ayurveda, Indian traditional medicine, found effective to boost immunity and fight Covid-19, have been showcased during a series of interactive sessions in the recent past.

The Gambian healthcare workers joined in the eTraining course on COVID-19 Prevention and Management Guidelines. 25 Senior Civil Servants including Permanent Secretaries and Deputy Permanent Secretaries from The Gambia participated in a Special Training Programme organised for them at National Centre for Good Governance, Mussoorie from June 10 to June 21, 2019 under ITEC+ programme.

A Special Training Programme (June 20 to July 20, 2018) was organized by Foreign Service Institute for 20 Gambian Diplomats. I am also happy to share that during the current academic year 32 students have been awarded scholarship under the iLearn Program and 34 students were awarded ICCR Africa Scholarship for higher studies in premier universities in India.

And I am happy to mention that this is the highest number of scholarships ever awarded to the Gambia in any academic year.

People to People relations between our two countries are very strong. As part of the celebrations of 150th Birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, President Adama Barrow was kind enough to share his thoughts on the subject “What Gandhi Means to me”. DanceSmith Bollywood troupe performed in January 2020 to packed halls presenting Bollywood numbers.

Once again, the issue of loans to NAMs confirms that this country is yet to create system change by updating our laws in order to modernise our institutions and practices hence strengthening the good governance of this Republic as a democracy. For example, it is Section 95 of the Constitution that talks about the ‘remuneration and allowances’ of the members of the National Assembly. It says such remuneration and benefits shall be decided by an act of the National Assembly.

The only law that talks about the salaries, pensions and gratuity of NAMs is the ‘National Assembly Salaries and Pensions Act’. But this law does not mention loans to NAMs. Furthermore, this law is outdated because Schedule 1 of the law gives the exact figures for the salaries of the Speaker, Deputy Speaker, Majority and Minority leaders and Members.
Yet the figures given there are not the same amount as in the 2021 budget. This means the salaries of NAMs as set in the 2020 or 2021 budgets, and indeed any other budget, are illegal as far as this Act is concerned. Yet it is four years since we have an elected President and elected NAMs and none of who ever took time to address the issue of the salaries, pensions and benefits of NAMs.

Therefore, one would have thought that Hon. Ya Kumba Jaiteh and indeed each and every NAM would have concerned themselves with these issues in order to better situate our National Assembly as the apex accountability and governance institution in the country. Unfortunately, our NAMs did not only fail to do so but some would go further to propose and support millions of dalasi loans for themselves at a time when the country is highly indebted and painfully impoverished by bad governance since Independence to date.

I totally oppose the idea of loans to elected public officials such as the President, NAMs, Mayors, Chairpersons and Councillors, especially on the argument that appointed public servants do receive such incentives. Appointed public servants could spend their entire life in office as career public servants. But elected officials serve only on the basis of terms hence the focus should be to ensure that while serving their term they enjoy all necessary and ethical benefits except loans. This is to protect elected officials from being trapped by loans such that it might undermine their functions. Given the role of elected bodies as oversight, approving, law-making and accountability institutions, loans can undermine their independence, objectivity and integrity.

While it is true that all workers must have the necessary incentives to live decent lives, public office must not be seen and designed to serve oneself more than the ordinary citizen who are already reeling under poverty and deprivation due to the failure of elected and appointed public servants.

Thus, the incentives public officials obtain must be measured by being reasonable and justifiable lest citizens feel cheated and hold that public office is an avenue to serve only oneself! That would tantamount to corruption and abuse of office. It will make citizens lose trust and confidence in the Government and its officials hence pose a threat to national security.

This loan proposal from Hon. Jaiteh and sadly supported by the majority of NAMs is utterly unreasonable, unnecessary, unaffordable and unethical. This is because the need to build homes for NAMs is not a national priority and indeed not even a matter of personal urgency for the NAMs themselves.

No NAM is currently homeless while others have more than one home. But the majority of Gambian workers do not have personal homes while most homes lack basic structures and facilities. To now have NAMs request D54 million to build their own homes is to tell citizens that the National Assembly and politics in general is about self-aggrandizement.
The unreasonableness and unaffordability of this loan is the fact that the National Assembly election is on 9th April 2022 which is 16 months away. Hence on what basis could a public official contract a loan of nearly a million dalasi to pay within 16 months and still remain financially viable? None of the NAMs can guarantee that they will return to the Assembly in 2022, including Hon. Ya Kumba Jaiteh as a Nominated Member. Or is it that the plan is when NAMs take this loan they will not pay back? Would that not amount to defrauding the Gambian people?

Furthermore, the ticket to the National Assembly should not include the desire to build one’s home or build personal fortunes. That would be to reinforce the widely held believe that politics is about selfish interest, and not national interest. Thus, this proposal has the tendency to severely corrupt and weaken our National Assembly hence weaken the Republic as a whole as a failed State. With this proposal succeeding, the tendency for the next Assembly to also propose a loan for themselves would be hard to deny because a terrible precedence has already been set.

Compared to the rest of the Gambian populace, NAMs indeed enjoy huge salaries and benefits. One needs to only look at the budget to realise the many allowances that they carry such as car, house rent, transport and sitting allowances as well as per diems when they go on trek. Furthermore, NAMs are paid transport allowances when they go to workshops and other meetings. Hence the life of a NAM is a very privileged one in the Gambia. How on earth therefore could NAMs demand a loan of such magnitude at the very end of their term?

Even though this loan proposal was approved, I strongly hold that it is illegal and unethical and must not be implemented. Neither the Constitution nor the National Assembly Salaries and Pensions Act provide loans to NAMs. While NAMs have the power to review the budget estimates before them, the Constitution did not state that they can inject budget lines for personal loans. The budget is a national cake and there is no space for personal cake.
As a young NAM, Ya Kumba bears a sacred and historic duty to see to it that high values and standards are set in our governance institutions and practices. This is the legacy a young lawmaker should strive for and not to seek to succumb to that aged-old self-serving politics. Therefore, I demand Hon. Jaiteh to endeavour by all means to reverse this loan proposal with immediate effect. Her decision is utterly ill-advised and misplaced and needs to be reversed ASAP!

For The Gambia Our Homeland

By Basidia M Drammeh

I am utterly disillusioned, disappointed and disheartened by Gambia’s National Assembly where the lawmakers have allocated themselves loans amounting to 54 million dalasis to develop their properties while the average Gambian continues to strive and toil to make ends meet.

It’s clear that politics in our country is a venture to enrich oneself at the expense of the hugely impoverished nation where the bulk majority lives under the poverty line.

My respect for Hon. Halifa Sallah is immeasurable. He diligently tabled a motion to reject the proposal reminding his colleagues about the need to put the country first, but his plea fell on deaf ears and the motion was eventually rejected. The instituition that should serve as a watchdog to keep the Executive in check is itself drowned in corruption!

People, like myself, have previously pinned high hopes on the current National Assembly, as the country transitioned from autocracy to democracy but those dreams have been crushed by our greedy, selfish so-called lawmakers. The current Parliament might even be worse than those that existed under Jammeh and were slammed for being rubber-stamp parliaments.

When are we going to have compassionate politicians in our country, who put the country first?

Honestly, Gambia needs a new breed of selfless, honest and trustworthy politicians to move the country forward, otherwise, we are doomed!