The Gambia’s Interior Minister has buttressed the importance of the Gambia’s security reform. Mai Ahmad Fatty firmly believes in overhauling a sector that had been turned by the former regime into an instrument of oppression.
“The security reform is an important part of our new democracy that is about building and keeping peace,” Mr. Fatty said at the launch of the security sector reform project at State House, Fajara.
The reform comes at a time when the tiny West African nation is enjoying a new democratic dispensation that poses a good number of challenges. The United Nations, ECOWAS, European Union and the African Union have okayed the reform agenda, pledging to support the Gambia government.
Mai Ahmad Fatty said the new government’s commitment in collaboration with the UNDP is an indication that the security reform the would prove to be effective in restoring peace and promoting development. “We are fully aware that this reform will face multi-problems and challenges.”
The Interior Minisiter reminded the launching gathering about the role played by the security forces in entrenching Jammeh’s dictatorship under whose watch a lot of people either went missing or killed.
“The key security institutions are especially singled out as principal perpetrators of the worst of this state oppression under the single and direct authority of the Jammeh Presidency,” he said, adding that some of these institutions continue to “lack the trust and respect of the citizenry.”
“This mistrust run deep and hence the call in many quarters for a total overhaul of the primary security institutions especially, and the whole of the security sector in general,” Fatty ststed.
Abdoulie John
Ends