Africa-Press – Gambia. I. Introduction: A nation’s reckoning
The year 2026 stands as a crucible for the soul of The Gambia. It is not merely an election cycle, it is an existential referendum on whether our republic becomes a sanctuary of sovereignty or a graveyard of squandered dreams. We arrive at this juncture bearing the scars of a dictatorship that ruled through fear, and the disillusionment of a democracy that governs through neglect.
After 22 years of autocracy under Yahya Jammeh, the promise of a New Gambia in 2016 was sabotaged not by coup d’état but by continuity disguised as change. Article 5(2) of the Barrow and APRC Coalition agreement intentionally neutered transitional institutions. The TRRC’s volumes gathered dust. Zero of 47 recommended prosecutions were initiated. The perpetrators of state terror walk freely, and justice remains hostage to political cowardice.
ECOWAS, once heralded as a guarantor of democratic order, now provides a security umbrella while remaining silent on the failure to extradite Jammeh from Equatorial Guinea, an arrangement forged in regional expediency. At home, 89% of Gambians believe TRRC recommendations have been ignored, per the 2023 Afrobarometer. Abroad, IMF conditionalities masquerade as reforms, tethering our sovereignty to debt ratios (now over 60% of GDP).
Yet, the reckoning is not purely economic or judicial. It is moral. What does The Gambia see when it looks into the mirror of African history? A nation once called ‘The Smiling Coast,’ now smirking through impunity. Our people, especially the youth, hover between exile and apathy, while our institutions shrink under the weight of their own irrelevance. If we do not confront this moment with clarity and courage, we risk becoming a footnote in the chronicle of African self-determination.
But history is not a prophecy, it is a choice. And The Gambia, though small in geography, has a colossal opportunity: to become a moral north star, like Serrekunda Market’s indigo traders who outlasted colonisers: small, persistent, indispensable. for the region, a country where integrity is GDP, where memory fuels justice, and where governance ceases to be ritual and begins to be reality.
II. Memory and misrule: from dictator to democratised deception
From 1994 to 2016, The Gambia endured the brutal consolidation of state power into one man’s hands. Yahya Jammeh’s regime perfected the art of authoritarian illusion, framing terror as patriotism, and silence as loyalty. But it is the betrayal that followed his downfall that haunts the republic more acutely. In 2016, Gambians did not merely vote for change, they voted for closure. Instead, they received continuity draped in democratic theatre.
The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) revealed that 1,018 victims were tortured, sexually violated, or murdered under state orders. Yet, as of 2024, none of the 47 individuals recommended for prosecution have faced legal accountability. A 2023 Global Integrity report gave The Gambia a score of 12/100 in accountability, citing ‘executive interference’ and ‘judicial paralysis’ as systemic risks.
President Adama Barrow reappointed 73% of Jammeh-era judges, including known enablers of the former regime. The National Assembly, dominated by political defectors and patronage loyalists, voted down the 2020 draft constitution, which would have introduced presidential term limits. The weaponisation of reconciliation as a tool for elite recycling is a form of democratised deception. The legacy of Jammeh is not just intact; it is institutionally rebaptised.
In this theatre of national forgetting, victims of state violence watch their tormentors walk free. The exiled dictator lounges in Equatorial Guinea, untouched by ECOWAS protocols or AU accountability frameworks. Jammeh-era security elites now serve under Barrow’s government, heading key departments like the National Intelligence Agency and the Ministry of Interior.
What we have is not a democracy, it is a ritual. A ceremony of ballot boxes devoid of justice. And unless we shatter this mirage, The Gambia will remain a cautionary tale: a nation that ousted tyranny, only to baptise its ghosts: Hence we demand the Extraordinary African Chambers (Senegal v Habré precedent) try Jammeh if Ecowas fails. The ghost lives: Junglers commander Bai Lowe acquitted by Judge Emmanuel Amadi, a Jammeh-era appointee.
III. Youth at the edge: Exodus, addiction, and despair
The Gambian youth are not merely restless; they are in revolt, though often in silence, exile, or intoxication. Nearly 60% of the population is under 25, yet they inherit neither opportunity nor dignity. The ‘backway’ to Europe is no longer just a route, it is a scream, a collective indictment of a nation that treats its future like disposable labour.
The Kush epidemic has become a national security crisis. Addiction is not just an escape from poverty but from meaninglessness. Government response has been largely performative: arrests without rehabilitation, condemnation without causality. No nationwide mental health framework exists. Teachers receive no trauma-informed training. Families are abandoned to cope alone.
A National Youth Investment Bank (NYIB) must be more than a slogan. Seed it with 20% of the $140 million in annual remittances via diaspora bonds, backed by state guarantees and monitored by an independent public trust. Let NYIB fund agribusiness startups, tech co-ops, and climate-smart innovation zones in the Upper River Region. Follow Lesotho’s cannabis export model: legalise, regulate, and tax for health and jobs.
Introduce TechCorps; with blockchain-certified skill credentials recognised Ecowas-wide: a one-year mandatory national service in AgriTech or green infrastructure as a precondition for university admission. Complement this with a Youth Resilience Curriculum embedded in secondary schools, focusing on emotional intelligence, civic duty, and digital literacy.
The nation must pivot from youth abandonment to youth governance. No country can rebirth itself without recruiting its future as architects, not victims. This should be funded by redirected cannabis taxes: 30% to mental health clinics and 70% to NYIB startup grants.
IV. Tribalism and the war against nationhood
What began as political arithmetic has metastasized into an existential threat to the very idea of Gambian nationhood. The NPP-APRC alliance was not a strategic miscalculation, it was an ethical betrayal. It rebranded impunity as inclusion, and in doing so, validated the trauma of those whose lives were erased by the very regime now courted for votes.
WhatsApp and Facebook groups have become tribal battlefields, where truth is sacrificed for electoral advantage. Political operatives stoke identity-based anxieties to fracture solidarity. But beneath this digital vitriol lies a deeper wound: the unresolved land dispossessions during Jammeh’s reign, particularly among the Serahule in the Upper River Region. Without land justice, there can be no national unity.
The Gambia must create a Truth & Land Commission co-chaired by traditional chiefs and international mediation bodies like UNFAO, to resolve interethnic land claims and end weaponised grievance cycles.
We need a National Civic Identity Curriculum anchored in schools and religious centres. Core modules must include: ‘History of Gambian Unity,’ ‘Digital Truth Discernment, including mandatory ‘Tribunal Simulations’ with verdicts enforceable by Ecowas standby troops if domestic security forces fail to comply.
Where students prosecute Jammeh-era crimes using TRRC evidence, and ‘shared futures across ethnic lines. Rwanda’s Ingando civic camps offer a model: post-conflict youth re-education programs that fuse history, ethics, and collective memory.
To defeat tribalism, we must make citizenship sacred again. We are not Mandinka, Fula, Wolof, or Jola. We are Gambians. That identity must be taught, practiced, and protected, before it is too late, including mandatory fact-checking drills using Jammeh-era propaganda archives.
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