By Tabora Bojang
Lamin Sima, an ambassador-at-large for business and investment, is actively considering running in next year’s presidential elections under the ticket of the newly registered Alliance of Progressive Citizens, (APC).
Disclosing this to The Standard yesterday Sima said he has been approached by the party to take up its leadership and become its flag bearer. “I am yet to take any decision but I am seriously considering the request of the party,” he said.
Sima, a former staff of the Social Security and Housing Finance Corporation (SSHFC) said he is giving the request serious thinking because the current state of affairs of the country is “unacceptable”, citing rampant corruption, poor economy, and high cost of living, lack of employment and wastage of public resources.
“The country is hard and since we depend on imports we cannot control the cost of materials which is going up each day. We import rice, chicken, eggs, cooking oil, potatoes and everything we consume. That is absolutely unacceptable”, Sima said.
He accused the government of not doing much to alleviate these problems, alleging that the country’s resources are misplaced.
“Does it make sense to spend $100 million on roads while you are importing eggs? Why couldn’t you encourage production in poultry, create employment, minimise costs and reduce pressure on the need for foreign currency. Before you spend $100 million on road construction or hospitals that will not have enough medicines, how about spending that money to produce 200,000 tons of rice annually; how about encouraging the production of sesame to produce vegetable oil. How about spending $10 million to stop the importation of chicken and egg and employ the youths? So their priorities are misplaced,” he said.
Sima aded this is happening because the people leading the country don’t have the right ideas to bring about changes.
“We need to change the narrative so that every Gambian feels as part of the economy,” he said.
Background
Sima worked as an insurance agent, a public servant and served as a manager at SSHFC until his retirement.
In 2019, he was appointed by President Barrow as an ambassador-at- large for business and investment, a position he still holds.
