By Omar Bah
APRC former National Assembly Member for Banjul South has said the claims by Abdou Sara Janha the last secretary general of President Jawara against former president Yahya Jammeh and the APRC were “arrogant and condescending”.
Mr Janha had warned that The Gambia is not out of the woods as the structures and loyalties former president Jammeh relied upon are still intact.
But reacting on behalf of the APRC to Mr Janha’s comments in a statement shared with The Standard, Babucarr Nyang wrote: “For all I know, Sara was one of those dishonest intellectuals who as secretary general consistently and destructively misled Sir Dawda Jawara in the final days of his administration that culminated in the downfall of the PPP regime in 1994.
“He was among the ultimate architects who deceived President Jawara into believing that surrendering the command and control of The Gambia Armed Forces in 1992 to Nigerian forces was all that the PPP government needed to rule the country securely and indefinitely,” Nyang argued.
He however added that everything Janha lamented in the article about the absorption of the APRC members in the Barrow government “simply illustrated his habitual tendency of misleading and misguiding his dupable readers”.
“Here he goes again attributing Jammeh’s long time success of running the country to the support he had enjoyed from the army and the MFDC rebels and therefore wanted to know what has been done to remedy the problem through the Security Sector Reform (SSR) sponsored by the international community. Without doubt the likes of Sara Janha contributed a lot in peddling the nonsense that the Gambia Armed Forces had limitlessly recruited MFDC rebels that prompted the illusion for the failed SSR,” Nyang alleged.
He argued that Mr Janha wanted Gambians to believe that the Barrow government including the entire three branches of the government are controlled by the APRC. “What a stack of rubbish!” he pilloried.
“Contrary to his insinuation that Jammeh’s APRC loyalists are still committed to bringing him back to power, the reality far indicates that his principal political loyalists had merely engaged the government to ensure that he could return home and live as an honourable former president, the same way Sir Dawda Jawara was eventually accorded that special status in 2006/7.
“That was the focal objective of his loyal supporters who had believed that Jammeh deserved better than to permanently live in exile. Nevertheless, at the most critical moment when their efforts were almost gaining traction, Jammeh came out to denounce the negotiators and the negotiation for being done without his endorsement. Since then, the APRC as one body was fractured into two with the most significant elements still supporting the NPP government without the blessing of Jammeh,” he explained.
Mr Nyang said the APRC members now working for the government of President Barrow have little or nothing to do with Jammeh and his intentions, if he has any, to come back and rule this nation again.
“Sara alluded to the findings of the TRRC with the emphasis to have Jammeh prosecuted for atrocities he had committed against Gambians. But he needs to know that because of the contaminated choreography of the commission, The Gambia’s judiciary is indeed going to find the implementation of the TRRC recommendation highly problematic. It was not a court of law and those interrogated were not provided with any legal support to defend their innocence but were mostly paid or pressured into testifying,” he noted.
