By Demba Ali Jawo
The year, 2025, was by all accounts, quite an eventful year. Apart from being the prelude to the presidential election year, which usually has its own dynamics, we witnessed many unprecedented happenings, both within and outside the government.
Some of those events included the controversy surrounding the disposal of the assets of former President Yahya Jammeh after the Janneh Commission recommended their forfeiture to the state and the controversial sacking of the Auditor General, Modou Ceesay, after he refused to accept being redeployed as Minister of Trade.
As regards the Jammeh assets, we were all witnesses to the chaotic situation that ensued after there were demands, mainly from the Gambians Against Looted Assets (GALA), for the government to clarify how the assets were disposed off. It was quite obvious that there were many irregularities in the way and manner that it was done, and the government was either unable or reluctant to give a coherent explanation how the whole process was carried out. We saw, for instance, how some hardly known individuals acquired more than 200 of those assets, heightening speculations that some of those people may have been mere fronts for some big fish to acquire those assets. We also saw how some of the assets were sold at give away prices; such as vehicles and other expensive items being sold at D15, 000 or even less.
Eventually, after some intense pressure, the government agreed to the setting up of a parliamentary committee to investigate how the asset disposal was done, and we all witnessed the ensuing drama and contradictions among some of the witnesses that appeared before the committee. We are therefore eagerly waiting to see what, if anything, would ever come out of this obvious mishandling of the matter.
On the sacking of the Auditor General, while the matter is before the courts, it has certainly raised a lot of issues of legality. According to the National Audit Office Act, 2015, there is a legal process that needs to be followed before the President can remove the Auditor General, which appears not to have been followed in this particular case.
It has become quite obvious that corruption had been the bane of the Barrow administration, much worse than ever seen in this country, with virtually nothing being seen to be done to address the problem. We have seen, for instance, several damning audit reports being released and yet, nothing is apparently done to ameliorate the situation. We have also seen that even the much-hyped Anti-Corruption Commission, which was enacted more than two years ago, has still not been made functional, an apparent indication of lack of political will to fight corruption.
We were also witnesses to the exposé of wanton corruption within the local government structure at the Commission of Inquiry into Local Government Councils, surpassing whatever anyone ever anticipated, which was certainly an indictment on the Ministry of Lands and Regional Governments and the other oversight bodies for their woeful failure to curb the naked pilfering of public resources by those entrusted with them. That of course include the National Assembly, who seem to have been more pre-occupied with augmenting their own salaries and allowances than holding any branch of the government to account.
The year culminated with the ritual ‘Meet the People’s Tour’, which seems to have been transformed into another political jamboree, with President Barrow and his ruling NPP seemingly using tax payers’ money to launch their campaign for the 2026 presidential elections. We all saw the large delegation, comprised mainly of NPP militants and supporters, using commandeered government vehicles and fuel to traverse the length and breadth of the country, talking more about political issues, including castigating members of the opposition, than discussing the problems faced by the farming community and ordinary Gambians. It would therefore not be a surprise if the tour cost more than twice what had been budgeted for, as had been the case in the previous years.
While as usual, President Barrow used the tour to announce this year’s producer price for groundnuts, but it was certainly a big disappointment to many of the farmers who had expected an increase. It is indeed hard to justify maintaining the same producer price for the third year running when the exchange rate of the US dollar on which prices of international commodities are pegged has gone up against the Gambian Dalasi more than 50 percent since the 2023/24 trade season. It certainly does not make any sense to continue to pay the farmers just D38,000 per tonne for the laborious work that they did for the whole year, which is less than what the ministers receive per night when they embark on their sometimes unnecessary frequent overseas travels and less than half of the monthly salaries of some public servants.
The government’s justification for maintaining the same price is that the world market price is D20,000 per metric tonne. However, according to the GlobalEconomy.com, quoting the World Bank as its source, the price of peanuts by November, 2025, was US$1,200 per metric tonne, which is certainly far much more than D20,000.
Some of the other issues that played out in 2025 included the decision by the Immigration Department to undertake expensive trips abroad to issue national identity cards to Gambians living in certain selected African countries. While some of the political parties had described the action as unlawful and even threatened to take legal action, the main concern to many ordinary Gambians was why the government would spend millions of tax payers’ money to dispatch teams to these countries simply to issue ID cards, especially when Gambians at home are struggling to access those same documents. We are all aware of how several people at home are spending their valuable time everyday trying to renew their ID cards and other national documents but to no avail. It is therefore hard to justify any amount being spent in sending those teams to other countries just to issue ID cards when those documents are hardly recognised in any transaction in most of those countries. Are we simply witnessing wrong prioritization of the use of scarce public resources or is there an ulterior motive for it?
During the year, we also witnessed the arrest and prosecution of some young people whose only crime was to come out and protest against a decision by Pura to intervene in a data price competition amongst GSM providers, which decision was certainly not in the interest of the consumers. Rather than allow the competition to go ahead, Pura instead decided, against the wishes of many of the consumers, to peg the data prices much higher than what some of the providers were ready to accept.
Another notable issue in 2025 was the failure of the Barrow administration to get its own draft constitution passed by the National Assembly. It was certainly not a surprise that the government failed to garner the required number of votes that it needed in the National Assembly in order to get it pass to the next stage. Apart from the fact that the administration went ahead without any consultations with other stakeholders, to produce a self-serving draft which gave too much powers to the president, it was also seen by many people as paying the administration in its own coin for orchestrating the ditching of the 2020 draft constitution by the National Assembly in September 2020. Therefore, as they say, “tit for tat is a fair game’.
Also, in 2025, we witnessed the failure by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to get approval from CAF the rehabilitation work done at the Independence Stadium, even after spending millions on the project. As a result, the Gambian teams continued to spend millions in order to play their international matches outside the country, which many people blame for our failure to qualify, at least for the Afcon. This is apparently due to the football authorities’ failure to adhere to certain basic guidelines required by Caf to carry out the rehabilitation. They instead seem to have done it according to their own ideas which apparently did not meet Caf requirements. Gambian teams and sports enthusiasts therefore continue being denied access to sporting facilities for more than three years now, for no fault of theirs.
Another issue of public concern in 2025 was the attempt by some Islamic radicals to get the ban on FGM lifted. While they tried and failed to get the required support in the National Assembly to repeal the law, they decided to go to court to challenge its legality, which case is before the Supreme Court.
The year culminated with the arrest of one of the alleged members of former President Yahya Jammeh’s killer squad, ‘the Junglers’ Sana Manjang by the Senegalese authorities and his subsequent extradition to the Gambia. While many of his alleged victims and their relatives welcome it, there is skepticism as to whether justice would eventually be served, considering that many of his former colleagues who testified before the TRRC and confessed to committing heinous crimes, are still walking freely in the streets.
While most of the issues in 2025 had mainly concerned President Barrow and his government, including a split within his own party, the NPP, but the opposition also did not go unscathed. Some of them also had to deal with their own challenges. For instance, the main opposition party, the UDP suffered a serious spilt among its ranks when some of its senior cadre, including the Mayor of the KMC, Talib Bensouda, unceremoniously left the party, apparently dissatisfied by the selection of the party leader, Ousainu Darboe as the UDP flag bearer for the 2026 presidential elections. Apparently, most of those that left with him were disappointed that he (Talib) was not chosen as the party’s next flag bearer as they had anticipated.
Even PDOIS suffered some bruises when its secretary general, Halifa Sallah was ‘ambushed’ during a live TV programme by one of its members, Alhaji Mamadi Kurang, when he accused Halifa and the PDOIS leadership of intransigence. It was therefore not a surprise that Kurang subsequently left the party to join the UDP, as his continuous membership of PDOIS was no longer tenable.
In 2025, we also saw the changing of the guard at the IEC when its octogenarian chairman Alieu Momar Njai finally stepped down and his vice chair, Joe Colley took over. However, the changes there so far look nothing more than cosmetic, as things seem to still remain the same.
Another issue that was played out in 2025 was the question of extending the vote to Gambians in the diaspora. While the Barrow administration had always re-iterated its support for enfranchising the diaspora, but when it came to legislating for it, members of the ruling party in the National Assembly voted against it, thus thwarting attempts to get the diaspora on the voters’ list.
As we usher in the new year, 2026, we are certainly faced with a lot of uncertainties. As an election year, it is certainly likely to be froth with many challenges, both in the area of security and other social challenges. We have, for instance, seen the proliferation of political parties, some of which are apparently looking for the slightest opportunity to get into the ‘NPP Grand Alliance’, hoping to get access to some of the crumbs being dished out.
While President Barrow is bent on seeking a third term in office, it is however quite obvious that with the former Senegalese President Macky Sall and former Guinea Bissau leader, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, his closest counterparts in the sub-region, both out of office, he is definitely quite a lonely man and lacks the moral and political support that he would no doubt have gotten from them. However, considering the current political climate in the country, he still stands in a much better position to win the next elections. While there are ongoing attempts to form an opposition coalition without which it would be hard to see how anyone of his potential opponents can stand a chance against him at the polls, with the obvious personality and other logistical differences that seem to exist amongst the leadership of the opposition, it is hard to see how they can form a formidable coalition to challenge him.
