Posted by Alagi Yorro Jallow
Mamudu: Leadership: There is virtually no peaceful part of the Gambia. Armed robbers, bandits, and criminal gangs instill fear in the population. Public order is a condition characterized by the absence of widespread criminal and political violence, such as murder, intimidation against a targeted group, armed robbery, theft, larceny robbery, and burglary; however, there is a risk of instability that contends with multiple vulnerabilities and that the specter of failure is often present.
It remains an open question whether the Gambia will realize a more positive trajectory, continue to experience stagnation and violence, or suffer a descent into calamity. The time to act is now. We delay at our peril. We face this new crisis, this new threat to the security of the Gambia with the same courage and realism. Never before has the Gambia’s civilization been in such a danger as now,
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
The law enforcement agencies’ slow response to the criminal acts or violent clashes has allowed the rights balancing challenge to mutate into what it is today. Regrettably, and to our consternation, the narrative has shifted from the letter and spirit of the Constitution to ethnic profiling and philosophizing nativism and stereotyping of perpetual foreigners. Victims of the bandit’s narcissistic acts pin the blame, not on their tormentors but the offending ethnic affiliation, in this case, putting ethnic minorities at greater risk.
We, therefore, exhort the Government to change gear and ensure that the average Gambian feels its impact. It should step up its war on corruption.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: The Gambia government should fight poverty, create jobs, and expand access to public amenities. It should pay serious attention to the recruitment, training, welfare, and motivation of the law enforcement and armed services personnel. The security agencies’ needs for sophisticated weapons should be addressed, along with the excellent transport and communications challenges.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
As citizens of unmistakably the smallest and most peaceful nation in sub-Saharan countries, we cannot express our concern about recent events across the country. We watch with trepidation as disparate forces, wittingly or unwittingly, come together to plot and execute the devilment deviltry with the promise of instability, if given a chance, has the potential of becoming a disgrace of the continent. Unfortunately, blinded by personal ambitions, greed, or sheer stupidity, some of our compatriots have turned themselves into fissile material waiting to merge and set off a massive explosion. The fissile material we have in mind include plain criminals like bandits, hoodlums, and armed robbers, narcissist trampling on the rights of vulnerable communities who are tribalists, agents-provocateurs, and fake news propagandists.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: This is the time for statesmanship and statecraft, building a new vision of leadership and transformative ambition. Prevarication, specious lack of political will, and opposition to the Security Sector Reform (SSR), an agenda for criminal Justice Reform to accept the harsh exigency of security, highfalutin equivocation on the issue, the politicization of the debate, ethnic chest-beating, and high sounding doublespeak would achieve nothing. We are losing lives. We are losing property. We are losing our humanity.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
The nonsense we establish for the toothless intelligence-gathering to aid the existing Gambia police force should be jettisoned. We need well-trained, equipped, and armed police services country-wide at all levels to saturate the Gambia to immediately bring down the unacceptably high level of banditry and criminality that are choking Gambians to death right now. Unarmed Intelligence gatherers cannot mow down armed wielding bandits running the kidnap and homicide industry in The Gambia.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: The Gambia Police Force is underpaid, undertrained, and overstretched. Consequently, the Gambia Police Force, the last line of internal security of any nation, is now not operating on police accountability, civilian oversight operations, and police integrity. There is virtually no household that is happy. Armed robbery in the Country Country, particularly around the Greater Banjul Area, is typically committed by heavily armed gangs who killed and maimed their victims whether or not they resit. Robbers strike any time and anywhere, realizing there is little risk of apprehension or armed resistance since few citizens carry firearms for self-defense. There is virtually no individual that is not living in fear in the Gambia today.
The state of insecurity in the Gambia is very grave. Very dire. Our citizens are not safe. Both the people and government know this. People are murdered in cold blood by bandits and properties stolen by armed robbers. The above are brief examples of the unpalatable security breakdown in our CountryCountry. Security and safety-wise, we are in an actual but undeclared state of emergency!
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: About 70 percent of the permanent secretaries and directors serving are not trained administrators; consequently, some are not good in either policy formulation or implementation. Some are only good at what they know best: making money. Our terrified citizens are now adapting to the insecurity pandemic. Many people are ensconced and shunning the rising insecurity and banditry industry even when security is guaranteed.
Many elites, middle class, and semi-middle class citizens are abandoning travels, even when doing so may not be that affordable. They are increasingly resorting to either hire private security to provide security for themselves to safely protect their homes and offices and entertaining the fear of abduction by bandits. This identity concealment strategy is not “kidnap-proof,” however. On many occasions, armed robbers were known to have stopped these rickety vehicles on the roads to carry out “eminent person identification,” examining exterior indicators of material comforts to tear down the deceptive cloak of ordinariness and fish out their money yielding victims. This exercise is not only cruel but reminiscent of the slave trade era, in which slavers and slave merchants looked out for sturdy young men and women and used their hands to feel their muscular build before selecting them for procurement!
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Given the insecurity situation in The Gambia, we need a total remaking of our policing and security system. Anybody insisting on the retention of the existing unitary, anachronistic police force in the face of its glaring inability to deal with Gambians’ security and safety needs, at this time, is a murderer. Unitary police in a state like the Gambia are contradictory in terms. Therefore, what the bandits have achieved recently is to expose the poverty of the Gambia governance structure.
Is the President not aware of this?
Mamudu: We all do. For leaders who endorse evil, when things get pretty bad, they will be alone and lonely. Political powers are sacred costumes fit only for the fit. When a masquerade names itself “SAMAYA or KANKURAN IFANBONDI” (masquerades), it will dance alone, rejected, uncelebrated. Every power must expire – and this includes powers being wielded by those with life-and-death influence over their cowed worlds. For if masquerades are benign ancestors, why would they beat the world around them? Every Kibilo in a village has had a masquerade which is/was notorious for excessive wickedness. In its moment of strength, the hooded one will not remember that no JAMBADONGO festival lasts forever. When the feast of ‘Benechin and Super Kanja’ ends – because it must finish – the man behind the mask must account for all his profanities while inside the sacred costume. A fortunate government should know the very limits of its luck and logic.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Open disagreements at the highest level of power tend to scare mere mortals. Internal strifes in government rob poor citizens of the attention they need from persons they hired (for a fee) to manage their affairs. However, when the state’s smooth running suffers in the backyard of ethnic rivalries and petty class squabbles, there is reason to fear. Much hate is being pushed daily into the public space –enough to alarm all patriots. Youth organizations mushroom daily to advance the insidious agenda of ethnic warlords.
The pivotal elements of these alternate paths could determine free and fair elections, leadership, elite strategies, and key economic indicators. The endurance level of ordinary people has been stretched to its limit.
Is President Barrow is not aware of this?
Mamudu: The verdict out there in public is that this government, as constituted now with its skewed appointments, is the most sectional and most primordial. Moreover, no one would have complained if competent ones were appointed. However, this team is one of the least competent and talented, thus lacking the capacity to deliver. Thus, an already difficult situation is becoming disastrous, as if reminding us of what Machiavelli said: “the first impression that one gets of a ruler and his brains is from seeing the men he has about him.” Is the President not aware of this?
One of the swiftest ways of destroying a state is to give preference to sycophants and blind loyalists over another, or to show favor to one group of people rather than another, and draw near those who should be kept away and keep away those who should be drawn near.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: Even the immediate two predecessors of President Barrow, as unexposed to national limelight as they were, tried to have a national outlook like former President Yahya Jammeh has shown a more significant commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion tenure than perhaps any president before him. It may seem like a provocative or exaggerated statement. However, the fact is, no president has ever centered so much of security, in policy and practice, at every level on addressing the most profound inequities in our society. Indeed, suppose President Barrow must continue on this trajectory. In that case, your administration is one of the most consequential presidencies in Gambian history.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
However, at a time when Most Gambians say they view diversity as “very good for the Gambia,” Adama Barrow should be doing more than just righting the many wrongs of his predecessors. Barrow should be working to destroy bad laws and policies that hold us all back and is building toward a vision of a better Gambia. One where all people are not just created equal but treated as such. It is about time.
Is the President not aware of this?
A nation can endure with unbelief, but it cannot tolerate injustice. Dan Fodio wrote that:” the crown of a leader is his integrity, his stronghold is his impartiality, and his wealth is (the welfare of) his people. There can be no triumph with transgression, no rule without learning, and no leadership with a vengeance.”
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: President Barrow should know that he has squandered enormous goodwill both in The Gambia and outside since he took over about five years ago. He has disappointed so many people. No one would ever think that Adama Barrow will preside over this tragic mess. If he had done the right things, no one would have been talking of the discredited taf yengal parties and tangal cheeb politicians by now. The dozens of political advisers or people who have caged him cannot deliver even one local government to him politically.
Is President Barrow not aware of this?
Mamudu: Since President Adama Barrow believes in democracy, he should prepare for his stewardship of the country’s security needs since he will contest again on December 4election for a second mandate. Without a doubt, Adma Barrow believes in God and a devout Muslim and prayerful. He should also prepare to account for his deeds, as all of us will surely do one day, in the hereafter. That is the ultimate accountability we are all waiting for. History is on the side of the oppressed. Is Barrow not aware of this?