By Ndey Jobarteh
Africa-Press – Gambia. Interior Minister Abdoulie Sanyang has now confirmed that after the controversial pilot in Mauritania, the Government plans to dispatch more missions to Gabon, Congo, and Togo to issue Gambian National Identity Cards. This revelation came in Parliament in response to direct, probing questions from Latrikunda NAM Yaya Sanyang.
Yet despite this massive step with clear electoral implications, the Minister failed to cite any Law or Statutory instrument that authorises Immigration Officers to operate Identity Enrollment missions outside the Gambian Territory. Instead, he loosely referenced Section 17 of the Nationality and Citizenship Act, stating that Gambian citizens have a right to an ID card. It does not extend the operational jurisdiction of the Immigration Department outside The Gambia, nor does it regulate how identity verification will be conducted abroad.
By his own admission, the team in Mauritania simply conducted interviews and document checks, then sent the data back to The Gambia for printing, an awkward, hybrid process with no basis in any gazetted regulations, wide open to manipulation and abuse.
No Parliamentary oversight or IEC involvement!!
The National Assembly was never consulted or asked to approve these extraordinary operations.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), which is constitutionally responsible for safeguarding the voter register, was bypassed entirely.
We are witnessing the unchecked expansion of executive power into core electoral spaces, disguised as “service delivery,” with no transparency, public accountability, or independent oversight.
The Risk to Electoral integrity is growing!!
By extending these operations to Gabon, Congo, and Togo, countries with often weak civil registries, the Government is laying the groundwork for a massive, undocumented expansion of the voter base.
With no published verification standards, independent observers, or constitutional amendments to authorise this process, the danger of registering non-citizens or fraudulently enrolling Gambians with dubious ties grows exponentially.
Red flags in the justification!!
The Minister’s justification itself raises even more alarms. He argued that Mauritania was targeted first because it is a transit country under EU pressure to push back suspected migrants.
This was not a strategic Diaspora Engagement Initiative; it was a reactive move to European anti-migration crackdowns, opportunistically disguised as documentation.
When pressed why the government did not simply issue passports, since these people are, by his own account, migrants in transit, Minister Sanyang admitted it was merely an urgent, improvised solution to Mauritania’s migrant raids.
Bottom line: Electoral fraud starts before votes are cast!!!
This is not a genuine Diaspora Enfranchisement Programme.
It is a poorly regulated, high-risk identity enrollment operation carried out without: Any Act of parliament, published criteria, IEC involvement or any meaningful public oversight.
It is a calculated, State-sponsored operation to inflate the voter roll with potentially ineligible or undocumented individuals, carefully timed ahead of national elections. This has all the hallmarks of electoral fraud in preparation for the 2026 elections.
I condemn this unlawful operation in the strongest possible terms.
Issuing Gambian national identity cards abroad without a lawful mandate, outside any constitutional or statutory framework, and beyond all public scrutiny is not simply an administrative irregularity. It is a deliberate attempt to rig future elections by potentially engineering the voter register. This is electoral fraud in the making, plain and simple.
I therefore call on: Under strict independent supervision, the National Assembly should urgently launch a public inquiry into these operations and halt further deployments until a clear legal basis is established.
The IEC is to publicly clarify its position and outline safeguards against unlawfully documented individuals being incorporated into the voter register.
Civil society, the media, and all patriotic Gambians should remain vigilant and resist these illegal manoeuvres, threatening our sovereignty, our Constitution, and the foundation of free and fair elections.
Enough is enough. We will not stand by and watch the will of the Gambian people undermined through clandestine identity schemes orchestrated purely for political gain.
Source: The Standard Newspaper | Gambia
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