The Poisonous Albatross called The Gambia Army – Part 2

By Saul Saidykhan

…Continued from Part 1

As I stated in concluding Part 1, I don’t see any point in engaging the Old Colonel.

One therefore would like to engage the “Young Colonel” Lamin Gano hopeful that being smart he’ll see the light and learn valuable lessons from his past association with his self-professed “god-father”.  (God-Father by the way is a word we CANNOT afford to add to our political lexicon.) God Fatherism is what has destroyed Nigerian politics. It’s archaic and medieval, and the idea should be nip in the bud.

Colonel Gano’s blog on Yaya Jammeh’s latest outrage is as shocking as it is dangerous. After reading the blog twice, I can’t help but wonder if the colonel watched the video of the call between Yaya Jammeh and President-Elect Barrow at all. First, the call was initiated by Yaya Jammeh. It was short and superficially cordial. Second, we now know a formal speech that included ALL the things Gano mentioned was taped and was intended to have been broadcast on GRTS that evening but was prevented from being aired on the orders of Yaya Jammeh underscoring his lack of good faith in the concession he gave. while Gano pulls no punches when it comes to the coalition, he has nothing to say about Yaya Jammeh’s criminal behavior that has caused the crisis other than that it is unconstitutional. But he tries to rationalize Yaya Jammeh’s behavior as being justified by what the opposition said or did. Here is Gano on President Barrow not immediately assuring the criminal call Yaya Jammeh of his safety on the phone call he initiated: “Unfortunately however, that was not the case. As a matter of fact, not only was Jammeh’s personal safety threatened, but even the well-being of his close associates and political appointees was threatened through remarks made by the coalition leadership and their surrogates and the vengeful actions of some of their supporters.” Colonel Gano hasn’t bothered to educate us on what these threats are.

And it gets worse.  Note also that it has become a stable among Yaya Jammeh’s apologists to try to subtly blame Mrs. Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang for Yaya Jammeh’s volte face.  Read Gano:

“One such statements was made by a senior coalition official and reported in a British newspaper that Jammeh will not only be prosecuted but it would be done within a specific time frame. Although another senior coalition official watered down this remark, a further statement made by the President-elect himself that investigations of the Jammeh regime will be conducted, facts gathered and the due process of the law followed did not help matters at all. Even the five month old baby who had to go to prison in order to suckle can tell that if Jammeh is investigated/tried, nothing but a bleak future awaits him.”

Interesting Young colonel Gano. So Lamin Gano knows that Yaya Jammeh is probably guilty of the things he’s being accused of since even a five months old baby knows that the man will end up with a bleak future if he is investigated. Something tells me as Jammeh’s former ADC for years, Gano knows in his heart that the man is a wicked crook all along. That aside, who the heck is Yaya Jammeh that people cannot tell the truth about what he did to Gambians? God bless Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang! That poor woman speaks for me and I’m sure most Gambians! 60% of Gambians voted against Yaya Jammeh for good reason.  For 22 years, we’ve had to bite our tongues and tip toe around the truth in our own country because calling a spade a spade offends this crooked god-father of Gano’s call Yaya Jammeh. A message for you Colonel Gano:  Yaya Jammeh WILL leave whether he likes it or not in a matter of weeks max Inshallah!

Gano even echoed the nonsense that the new government should include Yaya Jammeh’s cabinet members. I’m not sure if Gano has ever bothered to look at the quality of people Yaya Jammeh has been appointing to his cabinet. And no, the livelihood of “hundreds of thousands” isn’t threatened by the coalition’s action. Civil servants are not affected by a change of government unless where they’re appointed solely on political grounds and lack basic competence for the jobs they’re hired to perform.  The things we reveal about ourselves when we’re desperate to back a liar doing a head fake!

The only thing I agree with Gano on is for the coalition government to shelve some cases for the next substantive government to review and make their own determination if that is what ECOWAS recommends.  This is different from an immunity. Under no circumstances are we going through another election with Yaya Jammeh. We defeated the crook despite his swearing and bragging. Let him deal with it!  The clock has run out for him. Latest on January 18th, Mr.  Adama Barrow, the globally recognized winner of Gambia’s December 1st 2016 election, will take office as President of The Gambia. If the uncivilized crook call Yaya Jammeh tries anything untoward, he’ll face the consequences.  The Gambian majority has finally stopped kowtowing to this crook and his fellow brutes in the army who are bent on imposing themselves on us by force. Since you   still clearly have sympathy for Jammeh and his associates and they seem to be very obtuse, my suggestion would be for you to advise them of the gravity of the situation, and counsel them to do the right thing as your employer the UN has been urging them.   That is in addition to the AU, ECOWAS, EU, OIC, US and every respectable international body. The game is up. No to new elections. No to power sharing.

The main take- away about our army is to note that despite the lip service Yaya Jammeh has been waging supposedly against tribalism and discrimination in the Gambia, he has completely transformed our army into an ethnic force. In general, when it comes to Jammeh and ethnic bigotry, it has always been one of projection where he blames others for the things that he has introduced into Gambian public life. Some years ago, I wrote some opinions on Yaya Jammeh’s open bias in the award of education scholarships in favor of his native ethnic group. (You can google “one Gambia: two nations-separate and unequal”.)  The nepotism in the armed forces is even more blatant. Yaya Jammeh’s native Jola are 10% of the Gambian population, but account for almost 85% of all senior positions in our armed services! More disturbing than the outrageous ethnic imbalance is the plain fact that most of his kinsmen are clearly unqualified for the ranks and positions he gives them. And to justify this obvious bias in favor of his kin, he just manufactures excuses about how they’ve been discriminated against in the past. By who? What a liar! That, and the case of the Two Funny Colonels makes it imperative for Gambians to revisit the very purpose of the Gambia army.

The incoming government must have the courage to review the mess that is the Gambia army.  Otherwise, it is a recipe for future trouble. Most of the Jola officers in the army are not only unqualified for their positions, they’re unemployable in anything else. See, the willingness to engage in crude brutality isn’t a marketable skill! And if truth be told, that’s why Yaya Jammeh found them to be effective tools of repression. The problem is, once you get rid of them, they’re bound to cry discrimination as Gano alluded to. But that’s not the making of the coalition government. That’s because of Yaya Jammeh’s evil machination. Which is why it’s imperative that the coalition government educate those that support Yaya Jammeh for ethnic reasons about the grand scale of the theft Yaya Jammeh engaged in while in office.  Selling Yaya Jammeh’s house in Maryland alone for instance can create employment for thousands of Jolas in Foni.  If Yaya Jammeh cares about the people of Foni, that’s what where he’ll invest his money, not in the US, Dubai, Panama, Morocco or anywhere else. The new government CANNOT shy away from telling people why the country doesn’t have money for development needs when we know Yaya Jammeh and his clique have close to a billion dollars sitting in Panama. Gambians have very SHORT memories! And the one thing you can bet on is Yaya Jammeh will always seize on any opportunity to discredit his successor.

There is something in Gambian public life I’ll call Known Un-Sayables or Known Un-Saids because people out of politeness avoid talking about certain issues even when they’re obvious. In due course, we shall address most of these things because a liar like Yaya Jammeh must be disrobed at the Bantaba for all to see him for who he really is.

Ends