Africa-Press – Gambia. In human affairs, even the largest footprints are buried in the sands of time.
So the Thousand Year Reich of Nazi Germany, Hitler’s disastrous, if immensely consequential experimentation with European, and global hegemony
And so also the billion year project of His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhajie Dr Yahya A J J Jammeh (the Professor). Gone but not forgotten as even in his political grave, he continues to direct public affairs in The Gambia in unthinkably incisive, if detrimental ways.
Hitler cheated his conquerors by avoiding the monumental humiliation of the Nuremburg trials constituted by the victorious powers to prosecute the Nazi high command. The Professor, alive and kicking somewhere in Equatorial Guinea in what approximates to protective custody, remains within the zone of danger of the proposed special hybrid court likely to prosecute him.
The central logic of violence in governance as overriding philosophy linked the two rulers and for them the adage proved true that if you live by the gun you are likely to die by the gun.
And the man who brought television, and more fundamentally, the University of The Gambia (UTG), that hugely vital national asset that continues to educate youngsters with second names like Jammeh, Jeng, Bondi, Conteh, and others, is in danger of having his huge footprints eviscerated by the passage of time.
I was in Faraba a few weeks ago for a UTG commencement in which a mentee was among the students being celebrated, a long programme that made no mention of the visionary behind the nation’s preeminent institution of learning and the man who made it possible for poor Gambians to obtain quality education within the nation’s geographical contours without crossing seas, deserts, and air spaces to obtain university degrees all the way to Doctor of Philosophy.
In the sublime words of William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar “… the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oftinterred with their bones”. Food for thought for the President who excluded the Professor from his UTG, his baby, andGambia’s premier driver of thought and civility in the global intellectual arena!
Mis-governance may kill a country, but its first victim is usually a lawless head of state.
In tiny Gambia, the existential threat to friend and forecrystallised in the 2016 amalgamation of political forces at home, and in the Diaspora, that catapulted His Excellency President Adama Barrow (the President) to power on 01 December of that year.
It was a heady period, with the new President hiring the ‘finest’, ala the ‘best and the brightest’ in David Halberstam’s satirical description of the hubris of the Kennedy era intellectuals at the White House, State, Defence, and other key sectors in the U.S. Federal Government.
The 35th President raided the elite universities, preeminent think tanks, and foundations, to people his administration on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts with some of the leading public intellectuals at the beginning of the American Century. In our own case, the President poached from the international system for an Attorney General, and recruited other legal luminaries for his cabinet, other portfolios in government, and the Commissions of Inquiry.
The new government was fitted for a reckoning of the period between July ‘94 and January ‘97.
By Legal Notice No. 15 of 2017, the President constituted a ‘COMMISSION OF INQUIRY INTO THE FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES OF PUBLIC BODIES, ENTERPRISES AND OFFICES AS REGARDS THEIR DEALINGS WITH FORMER PRESIDENT YAHYA A. J. J. JAMMEH AND CONNECTED MATTERS. (THE JANNEH COMMISSION)’
The remit of any Commission of Inquiry constituted by apresident is exclusively delineated and bounded in sections 200 to 206 of the Constitution of the Republic of The Gambia, 1997:-
Commissions of Inquiry
(1) The President may, whenever he or she deems it advisable, issue a Commission appointing one or more Commissioners and authorising such Commissioners to inquire into-
(a) the conduct of any public officer;
(b) the conduct of any District Seyfo or Alkalo;
(c) the conduct or management of any department or authority of the public service or any local government authority or Public Enterprise; or
(d) any matter whatever arising in The Gambia in which an inquiry would the opinion of the President, be for the public good.
(2) The National Assembly may request the President to establish a Commission of Inquiry for any of the purposes set out in subsection (1).
(3) Except as may be ordered by the presiding Commissioner in the interest of public morality, public safety or public order, the proceedings of a Commission of Inquiry shall be held in public:
Provided that the presiding Commissioner shall be entitled to exclude any particular person or persons for the preservation of order
201 (1) Presiding Commissioner
1.A person shall not be appointed a sole Commissioner or the Chairmen of a Commission of Inquiry unless –
(a) he or she is, or has been, a judge of a superior court, whether in The Gambia or outside it; or
(b) he or she is qualified to be appointed a judge of a superior court. (2) Where a Commission of Inquiry consists of more than two members, at least one Commissioner shall be a person who has special qualifications or knowledge in the field of the matter under investigation.
2.Where a Commission of Inquiry consists of more than two members, at least one Commissioner shall be a person who has special qualifications or knowledge in the field of the matter under investigation.
202Functions and powers of Commission
(1) A Commission of Inquiry shall –
(a) make a full and impartial investigation into the matter in respect of which the Commission is established: and
(b) furnish in writing a report on the results of the inquiry, including a statement of the reasons leading to the conclusions of the Commission.
(2) A Commission of Inquiry shall have all the powers, rights and privileges of a judge of the High Court at a trial in respect of –
(a) enforcing the attendance of witnesses and examining them on oath, affirmation or otherwise;
(b) compelling the production of documents;
(c) issuing a commission or request for the examination of witnesses abroad; and
(d) making interim orders.
(3) A Commissioner appointed under section 200 shall not be liable to any action or suit in respect of any matter or thing bona fide done or omitted to be done in the performance of his or her functions as a Commissioner.
203 Publication of report
On receipt of the report of a Commission of Inquiry –
(a) the President shall within six months publish the report and his or her comments on the report, together with a statement of any action taken, or the reason for not taking any action, thereon; or
(b) where the President refuses to publish the report for reasons of national security or otherwise in the public interest, he or she shall, within six months, publish a statement to that effect.
204.Adverse findings
(1) Where a Commission of Inquiry makes an adverse finding against any person, it shall, at the time of submitting its report to the President, inform such persons of the finding and the reasons therefor.
(2) A person against whom any such adverse finding has been made may appeal against such finding to the Court of Appeal as of right as if the finding were a judgment of the High Court, and on the hearing of the appeal the report shall be treated as if it were such a judgment
(3) An appeal under this section shall be made within three months of the appellant being informed of the adverse finding as provided by subsection (1) or such later time as the Court of Appeal may allow.
205.Immunities of witnesses.
A witness before a Commission of Inquiry shall be entitled to the same immunities and privileges as if he or she were witness in proceedings before the High Court.
206.National Assembly to make further provision.
An Act of the National Assembly may make further make further provision for the purposes of this chapter, and subject to any such Act, the power conferred by any law to make rules of court for the superior court shall deemed to include power to make rules regulating the procedure and practice of all Commissions of Inquiry.
On the foregoing, how did the Janneh Commission got it so wrong vis-a-vis the disposal of the assets purportedly owned by the Professor considering the Constitutional architecture framed around a Commission of Inquiry?
As Lyndon B Johnson was in awe of the intellectual glitterati he inherited form the assassinated President Kennedy, so probably was President Barrow with his high flyers crisscrossing the corridors of power in dark suits and shiny shoes. With no experience in public governance, he likely relied on the counsel of his intellectual heavy hitters. He trusted, but failed to verifythrough other channels available to him as first citizen of the Republic. In the words of one Saul Mbenga somewhere in Trump country, the President didn’t train himself to “sleep with one eye open”, in case a schemer was contemplating a fast one on him, and The Gambia.
By selling the Professor’s assets during the pendency of its inquiry, the Janneh Commission diverged from the Constitutional matrix it was mandated to follow. It danced on forbidden territory when it started unlawfully disposing of the Professor’s purported assets, thereby assuming powers within the exclusive domain of presidential authority, and even here, ONLY AFTER the conclusion of the work of a Commission of Inquiry, and the submission of its Report
To progress beyond conceptual fantasy to implementation of a clearly unlawful act was extraordinary in its audacity. Were the actors emboldened by the thought and probable certainty that No. 1 Marina Parade was in no position in terms of intellectual sophistication to disentangle the elaborate scheme of some of the President’s “best and brightest”.
Under section 202 (2)(d) of the Constitution, the JannehCommission had authority to issue “interim orders” to preserve, not dissipate the res. Inexplicably, it chose the latter by selling materials belonging to the Gambian people without any authority whatsoever. The preservation was within the lawful powers donated to the Janneh Commission by the Constitution, but it had no authority to dissipate, to fritter away as it was a mere investigatory body.
Why did the Janneh Commission travel the route of wastage of national resources?
Why did then Minister of Justice Abubacarr Tambadou not inform the President that the Janneh Commission was diverging from its legal mandate by selling within the pendency of the Inquiry?
Over time, there were demands for a publication of the items sold, to whom, and for how much, a simple request the Government refused to comply with for years on end. By its current primary legal adviser, it stonewalled and interposed the ridiculous argument of protecting the privacy of the buyers, an argument that must have crashed the gates of No. 1 Marina into the presidential offices through the medium of newspapers like The Standard.
Into this deadlock was thrown the report of The Republic, edited by the distinguished investigative journalist, Mustapha K. Darboe, and titled: THE ASSETS OF GAMBIA’S FORMER DICTATOR GO FOR A SONG. It detailed the behind the scenes dealings of a whole range of actors tasked with administering, albeit informally, of the Janneh Commission process.
The scandal triggered by the wrongful Janneh Commissionconduct of interim selling, as well the overall disposal of hugely expensive items at giveaway prices, outraged a majority of Gambians. It gave birth to Gambians Against Looted Assets(GALA), whose application for a permit to protest this incomprehensible behaviour was refused by the Inspector General of Police.
In haste, the IGP ordered a prior restraint strategy, arresting citizens before any protest, dispersing them for detention across police stations in the greater Banjul area all for the malevolent purpose of protecting misconduct by public officers.
When the President spoke to the nation on the evening of 14 May 2025, he said all the right things about accountability for those who frittered national assets even if negligently but one wonders whether he isn’t submerged in an ocean of denial and empty platitudes.
The former Attorney General in the person of AbubacarrTambadou is no longer in Government but the President can hold him accountable by withdrawing support for his ICJ quest.
“With malice toward none; with charity for all”!
Lamin J Darbo
Source: Kerr Fatou Online Media House
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