By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
Two students held up signs reading “Fighting Corruption starts at School Level” and “Corruption Kills our Future” at the launch of the Anti-Corruption School Champions Initiative. The initiative launched by the Anti-Corruption Coalition the Gambia (ACCG) dubbed Civic Cubs/ Clubs aims to inculcate a culture of accountability, transparency and patriotism within students.
The event took place at St Charles Lwanga Parish Hall at Fajikunda, gathering almost 300 students, including some 30 students from the Disability Community together with a sign language interpreter. The Initiative was launched by the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) on 12th June 2021 and featured statements from a UNDP Representative, ACCG and the Resident Representative for National Democratic Institute (NDI).
The program begun with the National Pledge and the National Anthem, followed by speeches from the high table punctuated with poems from students of three different schools and other performances. During the launch ceremony a strong sense of patriotism was reinforced through a motivational speech by Ousainou “Gambia” Colley who also performed a song titled “For the Gambia”.
Corruption Contributes to Poverty
Keynote speaker, Ismaila Jarju who doubles up as the Chairman of the Open Society Platform, the Gambia and a member of the ACCG highlighted that “these groups of young people are part of 360 Anti-Corruption Champion working with ACCG in 30 communities in LRR and CRR/ North since January 2020. It’s also important to note that these clubs create synergy among the different PBF project in the respective region. And this launching of the Accountability and Transparency Clubs form part of the larger ACCG initiative.”
Mr Jarju explained that “corruption remains a serious threat to our development and security. Public corruption denies the citizens of this country quality public services, slowing down the economy and overall contributing to poverty, particularly among vulnerable people like women, children, disable people, the elderly as well as youth. The latter is seriously impacted and this resulted in the most important segment of the population to embark on a dangerous journey to enter European countries in search of better lives.”
Mr Jarju took the opportunity to call “on the Barrow Government and the National Assembly to act now not later to enact the important anti-corruption instruments and amend all the draconian laws with legislation that will contribute improvement on the lives and livelihoods of the Gambian People”.
In conclusion, Mr Jarju highlighted that “our individual efforts will ensure that large constituencies of the Gambian population move out of the vicious circle of poverty and improve the quality of life of the people we serve in future”.
Corruption is Not Only at Government Level
Regional Director Region One, Mr Bah for MoBSE delivered the launching statement on behalf of the Minister. During his speech, Mr Bah told students “I’m proud of you people, in the sense that you are part of us. You’re the cream of society, you’re the people whose responsibility is to shape this country. You’re the future of this country and the steps you’re taking to shape this country is laudable.”
Highlighting the significance of the students selected to represent their school Mr Bah said you are part of “a select few to represent over 700 thousand students from Basic and Senior Secondary Education. That tells us that we have a very young population. If we are talking about 1.7 to 1.9 million and we have 700 thousand, almost a third of our population going to secondary education, how many are going for tertiary and how many are out of education? So, we know that we have a youthful population and the path of this youthful population is to shape their own future.”
Detailing the prevalence of corruption in Gambian society Mr Bah said “corruption is not only at government level; corruption is at every level of human society. We must look inward before we start looking outward. At our homes, at our schools, in our own communities. How do we behave? And that’s very important. So, let’s not point the word corruption and only put it at the government level to say that Government is corrupt and this and that and that. Are we free from it? Who is government? It’s us.”
Encouraging students to take leadership roles in their communities Mr Bah said that the initiative is “targeting you the youths and you the school children to make sure that you have those requisite skills and understand that you need to be good citizens of this country. You need to be good people in your own communities to guide and support your communities so that corrupt practices are moved out of them from the outset.”
Moderator of the day Mr Jadama of Open Society Platform, the Gambia and ACCG urged donors and supporters to expand the project to cover the other areas of the Gambia. In his view, the initiative needs a collective effort to be able to do expand this initiative.
Mr Jadama reminded all stakeholders that “this is a project that is limited in only four regions, KMC, LRR, CRR and URR. Then you have North Bank, both East and West, Western Division and then you have Banjul which is not part of this. We are calling on the donors to extend their hands so we can have a unified force across the country to tell me and others whoever is doing that unethical thing to stop. We are also calling for the Anti-Corruption Bill and the Access to Information Bill.”