By Omar Bah
Following an intense and bitter exchange and interpretation of President Barrow’s recent comments at Faraba about his son’s death, the State House director of press, Amie Bojang Sissoho has said the President’s statement was taken out of context and blown out of proportion.
The President did not mean that he killed his son so that he can be elected into office as has been rumored and widely spread to mean, she told journalists at State House Wednesday.
Madam Sissoho said what the president was emphasising was that we all have lost somebody for the sake of The Gambia, either directly or indirectly. “He was trying to say that he had to leave his family behind for Senegal as president-elect and in his absence, his son accidentally got killed by a dog. If he was not the president, he would not have done that at that point in time; he wouldn’t have left his family behind. That is what he was trying to explain; that even he too has lost his family in the struggle to free Gambia, but he had to move on because he has taken a responsibility to serve the country.”
President Barrow’s statement attracted a huge reaction on social media. Many Gambians interpreted his statement as if he meant that he sacrificed his son for ritual purposes to become president.
“We have to understand things in their context,” she further clarified.
