Dear Editor,
Following the unfortunate deaths of two sitting councillors earlier in 2025, the Independent Electoral Commission scheduled by-elections for 10th January 2026 in Bantanjang Ward in Foñi and Kaiaf Ward in Mansakonko. In Bantanjang, three candidates have been cleared to contest, one NPP candidate and two independents, including one aligned with the APRC No-to-Alliance group.
Campaigns are underway. Democracy is alive. But something far more fragile is being put at risk.
The contest in Foñi has quickly become less about ideas and more about invectives, driven largely by two prominent sons of the soil: Minister Demba Sabally of the NPP and National Assembly Member Almameh Manga Gibba of the No-to-Alliance camp. One sits at the cabinet table; the other on the red benches of the National Assembly. Both command influence. Both command microphones. And both, regrettably, are deploying a brand of rhetoric that is deeply personal, increasingly hateful and dangerously indifferent to the already fractured social fabric of Foni.
This is not happening in a vaccuum. Since Jammeh’s departure, Foni has moved from being a formidable political bloc to becoming a political orphan. The departure of Jammeh did not merely end a presidency; it reordered the political standing of an entire region. In the aftermath of the change of government, many natives of Foñi experienced victimisation, real or perceived, through loss of jobs, exclusion from decision-making spaces and the quiet stripping away of influence they once held. A region that was once politically cohesive and formidable found itself bruised, resentful and internally fragmented.
Ironically, this fragmentation has turned the region into an open marketplace, an electorate to be courted by every party, precisely because it lacks a unified bargaining voice. That division has come at a cost: without unity, Foni lacks the collective strength to lobby meaningfully for development, justice, or redress.
And so, politicians now arrive with promises of electricity, water, community gardens and even access to public funds, basic rights repackaged as favours, dangled as rewards for loyalty. Taxpayers’ money is spoken of as charity. Public services are framed as privileges. This is what happens when a people are fragmented: they are negotiated with instead of listened to.
In May 2025, I participated in a series of community dialogues across all five districts of Foñi, organised by the Foñi Agency for Rural Development (FARD). These dialogues revealed a sobering truth: political partisanship has become one of the most corrosive drivers of social division in Foñi, breeding mistrust, resentment, and long-standing grudges. Tribalism, often amplified during political contests was also identified as a growing fault line, alongside land disputes and youth exclusion. These were not abstract observations. They came from alkalolu, women, youth, and elders people who remember when Foñi disagreed without breaking itself apart.
Against this backdrop, watching two national leaders from Foñi trade barbs that inflame passions rather than calm them feels like a betrayal of responsibility. When senior politicians normalise hostility, supporters follow suit. When leaders reduce politics to insults and threats, communities inherit the bitterness.
The tragedy is that while politicians quarrel, the people are reduced to beggars for what should be rights. Electricity. Clean water. Gardens. Roads. These are now dangled like rewards, as if development is a favour granted only to the obedient. Taxpayers’ money is repackaged as political generosity. And a divided Foni, lacking a collective voice, is forced to clap for what it already owns.
To my brothers Sabally and Gibba, this is a call to restraint and responsibility for winning a ward is not worth losing a people. Political competition is legitimate, and debates are healthy. But when rhetoric becomes personal, when it stokes anger rather than offering vision, it ceases to be politics and becomes sabotage of social cohesion, of long-term influence and of the very community both men claim to defend.
Foñi does not need champions who shout past each other. It needs leaders who remember that power, once lost, is not reclaimed through insults but through unity, strategy and dignity.
And brothers, a gentle reminder, one of you is Fula, the other Jola. Our cultures gifted us a sacred joking relationship, a social licence to tease, provoke and laugh without malice. That tradition was designed to ease tension, not inflame it; to bind communities, not pull them apart.
What is happening now violates the spirit of that covenant. When public rhetoric hardens into hostility, it risks dragging entire communities and relations between them, into unnecessary strain.
So, brothers, tone it down. Argue policies. Sell visions. Mobilise votes. But do not burn the village to win the square.
Foñi has already lost too much ground. It cannot afford to lose itself.
While we reflect on these, I am reminding all the sons and daughters of Foñi that this year’s FARD Festival will be held in Somita in Foni from 23rd to 25th January 2026, under the theme: “ Celebrating What Connects Us”. We invite you all to join us for a fun-filled and uplifting weekend.
David Kujabi
Son of Foñi
