By Mafugi Ceesay
Dou Sanno, an adviser to President Barrow, has criticised the private initiative of the truth commission’s Essa Faal, for failing to work with President Barrow in the fight against Covid–19, instead, choosing to work with the opposition.
In an interview to be aired on City Limits Radio today, Mr Sanno said:”When Barrow called for collective opinion from everyone on the Covid-19, Essa Faal who is an important person had the idea of a food bank, but instead of sharing that with the head of state he chose a wrong person, Ousainu Darboe of the UDP who went ahead to betray him (Essa Faal) who came up with the idea.
I am not blaming the opposition, I am blaming Essa Faal who ignored the GCCI among other independent bodies he could have worked with,and chose the opposition. He did not share with the head of state who made the first call for such ideas to combat Covid-19, now the opposition are using his idea as a political weapon with the country going through these hard times. How can we have an opposition who are only interested in politics and never have the interest of the country?”
Apocalyptic curse
Sanno claimed that Covid-19 is a divine curse similar to the afflictions that befell humanity during the era of Prophet Noah.
“As Muslims, we can only believe that it is a curse brought upon human beings by Allah… Just imagine something that has caused big and rich countries to close their borders and lose billions, with economies collapsing. This can only come from God.”
Mr Sanno urged the people of The Gambia not to politicise Covid-19, adding that people must respect social distancing and cleanliness at all times. “We are all hearing about mass burials of thousands dying of the illness in richer countries so we should be careful,” he noted.
He said it is not fair for one to attack President Barrow over the Covid-19 crisis when even presidents of superpowers are struggling to deal with the pandemic.
“People who are saying that Barrow’s failure to close the border with Senegal much earlier led to the case of Covid-19 failed to consider that even superpowers are facing grave challenges despite locking their borders and imposing total lockdowns. In our case, the opposition are only good at blaming the president even though he called on them to join him in the fight against Covid-19 and none of them bothered to even share opinions”, he said.
