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Gambia lost vital finance and human capital under Jammeh misrule
Saturday, 14 May 2011 18:46
By Sarjo BayangIn the course of more than 16 years Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh can proudly beat his chest with responsibility for causing severe damage to the nation’s financial and human capital. It started with the ways that the army lieutenant ventured into tearing apart Gambian public service structure and systems. Jammeh refused to take warning from deposed president Jawara who
at the time of his departure from power clearly told the coup makers “not to tamper with the structures.” That was interpreted by the army invaders to mean solid structures like buildings. Soon after seizing power, the armed forces ruling council began demolition and restructuring in a bid to demonstrate how much they are fit to rebuild a nation they put in ruins. By that scheme of massive deception, Jammeh decided to construct a new airport terminal many saw as a move towards modernisation of Gambia.Destruction of systems and structures
Before the airport building was completed junta leader Jammeh made strong promises that he was ready to start or complete a new project in every six months. He built new schools and health posts at diverse rural locations. Visitors and Gambians away from the country for long time thought the new buildings paved development for the country. Whether true or false, Jammeh earned good political capital from his grand scheme of development politics.
Focusing his interest on making political gains Jammeh continued to embark on other building schemes. There was no television station at the time. In a makeshift style of operation, the junta regime bought studio equipment and transformed the Gambia Telecommunication Company GAMTEL premises into a television relay centre. Before the next presidential election Jammeh began appearing on public TV to sell his grand scheme of national development. Soon it became clear that he held higher ambitions than leaving politics after a promised return to barracks following two year transition to civilian rule. More than 16 years now, Jammeh is ready to use every force of Iran weapons to stay in power at all cost. He is not prepared to negotiate it neither is he willing to entertain civil dialogue. In his own words, Jammeh who keeps more confidence in gun power than the ballot insists that anyone who wants to rule Gambia has to fight him or keep patient for 40 years like a vulture. In Gambian context vultures are not hunting birds but patiently wait till animals die for them to feast on. With that in mind Jammeh will only have to die in power before anyone is able to succeed his lifelong presidency.
To supporters of president Jammeh he brought so much development that every Gambian owes him obligation to praise and to support his ambition of making Gambia a superpower. The plan of transforming Gambia into a superpower is called Vision 2020. Only Nine (9) more years remain before Vision 2020 time line vanishes but all indications are that the mighty plan is less than 10% fulfilment.
What happened to Gambia’s financial and human capital is one story never fully told without causing offence. We begin the enumeration with the highest seat of public service, the position of Gambian presidency. By staging a coup, junta leader Jammeh and his cohorts broke down order to instil fear and disorder.
How Gambia lost role of president
Deposed Gambian president Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara left his post vacant as he decided to board an American navy ship bound for Dakar on 22 July 1994, first day of the coup that unseated him. Coup leader Jammeh renamed the seat of power Chairman and Head of Government, Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council AFPRC not even having the courtesy of calling it government of Gambia.
The fact that Yahya Jammeh at the time was not mandated to rule Gambia due to lack of legitimacy, the transition to civilian rule was marked by arbitrary scheme of things. Gambia as a nation lost the post of president and not ever ready for military rule. It was rough times for Gambia as the new Chairman and Head of Government for the junta regime paraded the country in army uniform, flanked by fellow coup makers and other ranks in military outfit. The first casualty in Gambia’s loss of human capital began with post of president. Though Jammeh carved his way with the deception of undressing the army uniform, his character and conduct remains largely militaristic. Being called president does not restore civilian rule in the ways of political dispensation for Gambia, 16 years since the big bang on 22 July 1994 with the coup that brought Jammeh on the weak shoulders of oppressed Gambians.
Hiring and firing in the public sector
After dismantling the seat of president, next in the line of destruction was the entire civil service structure and system. Jammeh’s test of power began with appointment of Gambia’s head of civil service, the Secretary General. Less than two weeks, he fired the Secretary General. Until this day, only keen mathematicians are able to tell the number of Secretary Generals hired and fired within shorter and medium intervals of time.
The slippery oil spill continued with position of Justice Minister. Again, the number count is lost. Not many in Gambia can tell by head how many Justice Ministers have been hired and fired since this junta regime came to power. Some of the fired ministers used the profile to earn positions in the international job arena.
Before we continue, it is worth noting that the whole destructive scheme began with renaming the position of ministers to Secretaries of State. In that way, all state ministers lost their rightful public titles not just their functional roles. Gambia lost the post and responsibilities of a president as Jammeh transformed himself into supreme employer of the public service, whose only job has been hiring and firing all the 16 years since staging that July 22 coup of 1994. All public positions including those of ministers and top civil servants have experienced the sky jumping effects of twist and turn in a musical chair motion. What this produced for Gambia is a massive scale of discontinuity. For more than 16 years no public servant in Gambia can boast of having made any type of improvement in their capacity as head of an institution. There are many competent civil servants who prefer to play low key in order to avoid attention suggesting they are in control. Jammeh does not know what the position of president carries. Instead, he turned to interfering with everyone’s role in public service. Gambia lost the important duties of a president and all the public servants are denied basic opportunity to deliver their rightful duties in full exercise of knowledge and competence. That is how far the entire public service of Gambia fails to deliver. Bad enough, Jammeh with no idea of how systems work will still insist he is doing the right thing. All we know is that he scared every public servant to icy cold timidity and fear of job loss, including state ministers and even elected Members of Parliament.
Public service in Gambia is reduced to the lowest level of productivity and high level voluntary unemployment. Productivity has declined to the extent that nobody works freely but goes by dictates of a president who has no clue how various positions function. There is voluntary unemployment as far as skills and competences no longer matter. All we have in Gambian public sector employment is a case of keeping to the payroll and no commitment to serious work. In fact, try to work outside the dictates of Jammeh and expect to be sacked next day.
Tearing society apart
Fear of the sweeping powers is not restricted to public servants. The scheme of divide and rule continues to plague entire Gambian society. Members of a family are set against one and other so that there is no trust between the left and right hands. That is seen in the way a member of one family is sacked from public position, next day another member is hired on the same position. One household sobs in pain as next door rejoices in silence. Over a period suspicion has grown between close neighbours and members of the same family. Those who rejoice over temporal favour only did so as the musical chair of job- gain-job-lost set for their turn.
Society is largely divided not just into job seekers and job losers. There exists a spy network by which friends and families are turned into secret agents to report anything ranging from simple gossip to whatever they consider threat to national security. In public places and commercial transport, everyone keeps tight lips even about things directly affecting their lives for fear that the person next to you is part of the national spy network. For some people, having something to report is another source of earning. Matters have gone so serious that cordial relations are lost to back stabbing and social mistrust. Rather than working to improve personal skills, many have settled for the cheap job of spying on friends and neighbours. The entire fabric of Gambian society is now reduced to chronic suspicion, mistrust and vagary.
Muslim religious leaders selling the soul
The most serious disappointment comes from Muslim religious leaders of Gambia. Many people trusted the nation’s Imams and Quranic scholars. Before the July military coup that brought him to power, Jammeh was known as animist or Christian. His name Jamus suggests James. Nobody can tell with greater certainty Jammeh converting to Islam and when if he ever did. Knowing that many people in Gambia hold the Muslim religious leaders high, Jammeh openly corrupted Imams and Quranic scholars in ways never anticipated. Gambia’s Islam council transformed into a fully operating political wing of the regime and its top officials count in the patron club of social opinion holders.
Going by the ways that Muslim religious leaders continue to serve as political force for the regime, it is clear to everyone in Gambia they are corrupted for the sake of worldly gains. In that regard, Gambia continues to suffer loss of scared human capital. Confidence in the fairness and trust for Muslim religious leaders has declined sharply in recent years. The junta regime has built mosques where none existed and the president personally handed huge sums of money in millions towards the demolition of century old mosques and reconstruction of new buildings to replace those sacred places. Community opinion leaders and religious elders are paid money to keep quiet or those who refuse to go by the flow are marginalised.
Along with these religious leaders, community opinion holders are equally corrupted by the regime. The young generation of Gambia will need to restart life on a clean platform altogether. Society has failed in serious ways and people seem not knowing how to go about it or simply afraid to mention it.
Disoriented and radicalised youth force
Young people of Gambia are the most fatal victims of the junta regime. At time of the coup, it was part of the propaganda that the regime came to salvage the national and youth in particular. The coup leaders paraded themselves as promoters of youth aspirations and values. Soon to come up was the July 22 Movement. The movement was an initiative by some experienced persons who wanted to secure positions from the junta. Of course they ended up getting their desired positions even for short while. Some of them have gained higher positions and managed to stick on before being finally discarded. Metamorphosis of the July 22 Movement from a docile youth club into an aggressive state orchestrated thuggish gang is something even the initiators would not wish for peace loving Gambians.
Rather than encourage the youth towards educational advancement, they are formed into shells of thugs to harass and terrorise the population including members of their close families. Many young people joined the ranks of July 22 Movement misguided in the belief that the 22 July coup was indeed a revolution for youth emancipation. Before some of them could realise it, the damage is already done. Many of these young people now sit without required skill and no form of training to make them useful and dependable citizens. They turned into a hostile gang in defence of the junta regime. Some of them have married with children and rely on the regime for bare upkeep. They are bitterly hostile any genuine critic to the systemic flaws of the regime.
Backed by the president, the July 22 Movement members could do anything from abduction to various secret operations without fear. It got to a level where Gambia almost turned into anarchy with the movement causing so much harassment and intimidation. They are worse off during election times. Government later declared a ban on the movement. The next thing that emerged from that ban is the Green Boys. These are members of the 22 July Movement now operating underground. Their activities range from driving with vehicles without number plates, abductions and secret killings among several other atrocities. These are people injected with high doses of hate against real and perceived enemies of junta leader Yahya Jammeh. They pose real terror to Gambians. They are everywhere. When they realise the amount of critical information generated from the Internet, they sneak in with faked names playing ghost fingers on keyboard. Their contribution is mainly destructive and backward comments including use of bad language. Going by the level of anger and misguided reaction from supporters of the junta leader, it is easy to measure how much damage has been done to the nation’s human capital in that particular count.
Financial institutions vandalised, poignant visible systemic failure
Between state resources and personal possessions of junta leader Jammeh there is no demarcation. Central Bank of Gambia and the Accountant General’s Office, the National Treasury, are transformed into the personal money pot of Jammeh financial misappropriation with unrestricted and unlimited drawing rights. The Ministry of Finance is only carrying a name. Jammeh has no respect for Gambia’s General Orders (GO) and Financial Instructions (FI). These were the systems put in place for movement of cash in and out of government coffers. Now there are no rules to follow. When Jammeh requires money from these public finance institutions they now call it executive orders to lift funds. Clearly seen, Gambia’s financial institutions and whole system of operations can be best described as total write off. This is happening because nobody dares raise a finger to have your head cut off.
To impress international development partners, government agents resort to cooking figures and manipulation of statistics duping economic performance. No wonder, reports from international development partners relying on such manipulation portray a state of improved economic performance that does not translate into real life experience for Gambians. Inflation is biting deep and price levels bring everyone to knee level in total despair.
President in private business
Nothing makes it worse for finance and national economy of Gambia than leaving the president in multi venture private business. Prior to taking control of government, Jammeh has never known business. The time he spent anywhere near a business was a local bar where he only served green tea to some of the customers. That is no enough experience to call it business.
Even if Jammeh had been in business since before joining the army, the position of president is full time employment and he should have considered leaving business for genuine entrepreneurs. Today, Jammeh is selling all form of products openly or secretly. They range from beach sand to cement, bread, hospitality, transportation, drugs, weapons, raw meat, vegetables, and some unknown products and services.
Jammeh’s business ventures have no boundary. He claims to have discovered cure for HIV/AIDS. Though he says his treatment is free, it is still a business venture if anyone bothers to estimate how much this impact on the provision of medicine from recognised genuine providers. Damage caused to the health of the population is enormous. That is another serious loss of a healthy population. When his family members need medical or health care, they travel abroad at very high expenses. His wife delivered their two children in America despite the propaganda of building hospitals all around the country. Despite building schools all around the country, Jammeh’s children attend privately operated American School in Gambia. These are clear proves of deception.
Remedies
What we have seen is only a pinhole view of the bigger picture. Gambia continues to experience irrecoverable loss of vital finance and human capital through carelessness and mismanagement at executive level. The sitting president deliberately excused himself from the rightful duties required for Head of State. In place of that, he steps into everyone’s shoes and not being able to perform a single duty right. He concentrates on personal gains at high cost to the public.
When change comes to Gambia, no one person or group of persons must be allowed to mismanage public resources and institutions. For now so much damage is already done with nothing to indicate that the president is ready to admit his faults for better. Succeeding regimes have so much to rectify from personal to national level. The good news is that Gambia has what it takes to restore good governance, proper structures and systems to replace the lost finance and human capital lost over 16 years of junta misrule. There is enough light at end of the tunnel.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Jollofnews.
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Comments
Comment
Can’t agree more; God bless Gambia & friends; Amen!
Comment
With ‘demise’ of baba jobe, serving time in mile-2, yaya hadn’t proper direct control on the operational functions of july 22 movement, as baba-loyalists were genuinely unhappy, this lead to then ban; then he took assertive control of the green-kanilai-ranger boys & girls; the rest, everybody knows/sees daily.
There is no doubt in my mind that the good ship Gambia, post 22nd July 1994..was struggling for some time.
In and out of Governments offices, one noticed, the isolation of Ministers, devoid of basic contact with there staff and there sphere of operation.
It was as though they were empty shells being allowed to exist without direction, purpose or any noticeable guidence or leadership.
The entire command structure seemed elsewhere...or nowhere?
It does not surprise me that The Office of President claims all the plaudits for every piece of good news for The Gambia.
I never knew President Jawara..had pleaded that the "structures" should not be tampered with.
For I could find little.
Jawara was clairvoyant.
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