Africa-Press – Gambia. Essa Faal, the lawyer-turned-politician who helped lead The Gambia’s truth commission, offered a nuanced assessment of former President Yahya Jammeh’s possible return, calling the matter a delicate blend of legal rights and political realities.
Speaking in a recent interview with Eye Africa TV, Mr. Faal—now the leader of the APP-Sobeya party—said that while Jammeh, like any Gambian citizen, retains the constitutional right to re-enter the country, the circumstances surrounding his 2017 departure complicate the question.
“As a lawyer, I have to say what the law emphasizes, but as a politician, I have to think beyond the law,” Mr. Faal said. “Yahya Jammeh and any other Gambian citizen have the right to return back to his/her country. That is what the law emphasizes.”
But Jammeh’s case, he added, is “different.” The former head of state went into exile in Equatorial Guinea after regional leaders negotiated his exit to avert a potentially violent standoff following his refusal to concede defeat in the 2016 election.
“He was a former head of state, and how he leaves the country has to do with something that we have to secure,” Mr. Faal said. “We thought if he stayed here, the peace we needed to come to the Gambia would not be here.”
Mr. Faal noted that Jammeh cannot simply board a flight home. Any return, he said, would require cooperation from the government of Equatorial Guinea as well as formal clearance from Gambian authorities. “Even if the Equatorial government gives him a passport, The Gambia has to accept it first,” he said.
The APP-Sobeya leader used the moment to criticize President Adama Barrow’s administration, accusing it of treating the issue as a political tool. “Whatever the government does is a political calculation so they can remain in power,” he said.
His comments followed President Barrow’s statement last week that Jammeh is “not ready” to return—a characterization Mr. Faal suggested reflects political expediency more than candor.
Mr. Faal also recounted a personal anecdote from Jammeh’s time in power, saying the former president had once tried to recruit him into the army as a legal adviser. His refusal, he said, contributed to a long-standing tension between them.
Jammeh’s potential return remains one of the most divisive questions in Gambian public life. For some citizens, it is a matter of constitutional rights; for others, a test of the country’s commitment to justice after the Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission documented years of abuses under his rule.
“A day will come that I will come out and say a lot,” Mr. Faal said. “That time has not come yet.”
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