To many people at home, it looked like another propaganda coup, one similar to many others just over the last year alone; the releases of Dr. Amadou S Janneh, Tamsir Jassey, Lawyer Moses Richard, Lawyer Lamin Mboge, the hiring of Nana Grey-Johnson and now the recycling of Fatou Camara, who was recently hire and unceremoniously fired. In some of these instances, the one constant was the dubious, demeaning and insulting platitudes about Yahya Jammeh’s celestial benevolence that each was coerced into uttering on live Gambia television. More telling still, for some of those who fell within the Gambia’s new and unprecedented incarceration and abduction crisis, the opportunity to reecho Yahya Jammeh’s “benevolence,” was a coerced concession worth the price of their freedoms. On Friday last week, the newly released from five months of illegal abduction and incarceration, Kanifing Imam, Baba Leigh, surrounded by Banjul Imam, Cherno Kah and State House Imam, Abdoulie Fatty, fell into the same trap and was forced into repeating history; praising Yahya Jammeh for illegally and criminally abducting and holding him prisoner for so long. Baba Leigh’s repentance on a television episode was clearly forced on him. But, still more baffling than the release of Imam Leigh, is the revelations, by US based American Street News online newspaper of Alieu Mboge’s involvement in Imam Leigh’s abduction and illegal incarceration.
But, talking about a propaganda coup, such coups by their very nature, are rare; so rare, it almost seems miraculous when they occur. But, not in the Gambia; or at least, so thinks Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh. That said, the real story behind Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s infrequent bursts of reconciliatory “magnanimity” has a tint of political undercurrents that bear possible vicious international dimensions that threaten the very existence of Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s regime. The British and US governments were unequivocal in their unwavering positions on Kanifing Imam, Baba Leigh; even calling for his unconditional release, and the addition of their powerful voices to the hidden and deadly human rights violation in Gambia, which the European Union and Amnesty International have constantly and unforgiving criticized, have succeeded in pushing the regime to the very edge. Their combined pressure has forced Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh military regime’s hand into releasing Imam, Baba Leigh. Beyond that, Imam Baba Leigh’s incarceration five months ago illustrates the preponderance of the contempt for Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s downright vexing and often deadly human rights violations over the past eighteen years. The international community and Gambians care more about the politics and policies that have had disastrous consequences in Gambia since the ascension of the AFPRC military regime to power in 1994.
Clearly, for more than a decade and half now, sweeping criminalization of even the most innocuous activities and utterances in our country has transformed Gambia society into one massive gulag; unforgiving, lethal and as deadly as the starvation camps of North Korea. In Gambia today, the consequences of free expression, which our neighbors the Senegalese take for granted, are in our country, often characteristically fearful, merciless and sometimes deadly. But, even as Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh is applauded by a narrow spectrum of Gambians at home and abroad for committing acts of crime, one fact remains that he also often tries unsuccessfully to disengage Gambians from what matters, in order to compel us to focus, more often on trivia, but also on the consequential. More significantly still, Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh, is married to a superfluous, if not down-right, burdensome logical fallacy. The exploitation of Nana Grey-Johnson and recently recycled Fatou Camara, to cushion him from the perils of both national and international wrath, is a clear amplification of his misguided miscalculations of the collective Gambian mindset that is not swayed by unethical paternalism. Both, Nana Grey-Johnson and Fatou Camara’s new appointments will have no effect, whatsoever, on the media and for Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh to think differently, is the height, not of folly, but of his utter absurdity.
In fact, I will take that back. Instead, the ability for Nana and Fatou to bend the will of the unwilling media is predicated on their divine powers and ability to resurrect fellow journalists Deida Hydara, bring back Chief Ebrima Manneh safely to his grieving family, resurrect Omar Barrow and the hundreds of murdered Gambians and non-Gambians back to life again. This is the only saving grace Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh has left in his quiver; not Nana, not Fatou, or anyone else. But, an even deeper scrutiny of the central position Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh espouses and his intermittent parody and ridicule of the Gambian media, insults their selfless sacrifice and patriotic dedication to the Gambian liberation cause. Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s beguiling hatred of the Gambian media presents an overview of the narrowness of his worldview; and above all, how he has lost the race to stand up as a model of admiration for any sane Gambian journalist. Both at home and abroad, the new Gambian mind is now colored by a national crisis of monumental propositions to which our country is plunged into. The Gambian media in the Diaspora, whose power and influence holds the sway and endanger Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s regime’s existence, will never succumb to Nana’s graciousness, Fatou’s charm offensive, or lose focus of the issues of material significance to our country.
Today, through every lens one looks at it, Imperial King Yahya Jammeh will go down in our history as the worst thing to happen to Gambia. And, woven in the fabric of his mind, is Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh’s erroneous belief that he can inject spurious ideas into our collective mind to detract from the bedrock of his Machiavellian idealism. Eighteen long years of deaths, forced disappearance and exiling of Gambians, has, like Arab North Africa, created a core moment of rupture that has led to a new outburst of Gambian imagination and power. There is universal realization that our country has to change, and no event in recent Gambian history epitomizes that more than this week’s Raleigh, North Carolina convergence of Gambians determined to restore unadulterated democracy and the rule of law to our country. There may be a numbing, even sometimes the boring repetitiveness of Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh executions, murders, disappearances of Gambians and Gambia’s prevalent climate of fear, but in the end, what Raleigh, North Carolina will represents, is the first gathering of true, blue-bold Gambians doggedly fixated on reclaiming and bringing sanity back to the country we all love. There will be the powerful juxtaposing of politics and camaraderie, and the humbling and sobering realization that all of us are barred from returning to the country of our birth. But, even as the Raleigh conference is partly colored by the more mundane, the overarching concern of Raleigh will be manifested by the kind of deadly seriousness worthy of each of our proud Gambian citizenship. The murders, incarcerations, forced disappearances, exiling of citizens and the continuous harassment of Gambians has gone on for far too long. The state of our nation under Imperial King, Yahya Jammeh is extremely precarious. And that is unacceptable. It has to change.