It doesn’t make sense to renounce your allegiance to The Gambia for the USA through naturalisation here and think that Gambians will understand your help at home when you cannot help yourselves here. To the majority of Gambians at home, they all seem to prefer the way President Jammeh rules the country and therefore don’t want to hear any of our over-rated wisdom. Our arrogance to impose our alien views upon them is like insulting their intelligence especially when we have little or nothing to show them in qualifications and experiences for asserting such authoritative prerogatives. If you think of yourself as being that outstanding what in the world should prevent you from employing your ingenuity in the very countries you now call home?
Arguably, as an American holding a doctorate degree therefore, Dr Janneh should be able to find a respectable job in the USA and contribute his quota to the system that educated and sheltered him and his family. Otherwise, if too obsessed with the preoccupation of being a civil or human rights activist without any ultra-agenda, I recommend that he starts from right here in the USA where the political, economic and social disparity between the rich and the poor and the blacks and whites provides ample challenges for any genuine person to take head on. But to believe that the problem is only about The Gambia Government and President Jammeh is disingenuous and absolutely absurd. And to also hope that there could be any effects for political change in The Gambia by again printing and distributing mere propaganda T-shirts from a safe distance outside the country, edges on some form of hallucination. I may be wrong but I seriously believe that it was all about what happened in Burkina Faso that stirred the naïve excitement of instigating a similar political upheaval in The Gambia. Let us get this straight folks; Burkina Faso is not Gambia and Campaore is not Jammeh either.
When I heard about the sudden political turmoil in Burkina Faso and then took a quick flashback on recent similar upheavals resulting in devastating effects after uprooting stable governments without proper replacements, my first reaction was to pray and wish the country a peaceful settlement of the crisis no matter what the outcome. I can no longer celebrate such potential disasters after what Iraq, Libya and Tunisia turned into from such upheavals. Retrospectively, I will now swear to leave Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gaddafi in power than settle for what I see in Iraq and Libya respectively.
And after all, regardless of what people may think or say about Blaise Campaore, he was and still is my hero for what he did for that country in the past, outstanding from all, being the necessary stoppage of the late Thomas Sankara from transforming Burkina Faso into a brutal Marxist-Leninist state in 1987. At a time when the world had few years left to dismantle the unsustainable doctrine of socialism and communism, Sankara had decided to lay the foundation of a decadent system in the heart of the sub-region with a fanatical zeal reminiscent of Stalin, Kim Ill Sung, Pol Pot and those hardline communist rulers of the old school. As an admirer of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, Sankara had set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs) that acted like the gestapo in the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. How he would have reacted to the first waves of revolts in Poland in 1989, a period often referred to as the “Autumn of Nations” that continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania leading to the ultimate fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990, could be anyone’s wild guess. He would have been in total shock over the political future of Burkina Faso in the wake of the crumbling ideology of Marxism and Leninism. Thanks to Campaore for a good riddance.
After Sankara, Campaore ushered Burkina Faso into the community of modern African states, building a political and economic system modeled in the form and substance of a conventional market-oriented base. Of course like all progressive leaders he had certainly committed mistakes here and there but in general I believe that his good deeds far outweighed the bad ones. And I hope the Armed Forces of Burkina Faso will respect that and shield him and his legacy from any kind of retaliatory actions from short-sighted trouble makers who have very limited knowledge of history.
This is the kind of discussion expected from the likes of Dr Janneh as a former professor during such political uncertainties in Africa, or the world for that matter. But to hear that he was in Senegal with the intent of duplicating the trouble in Burkina Faso in The Gambia was at best irresponsible and at worse treasonable. In the same manner that Burkina Faso yesterday needed Campaore to save them from the disaster of forcing the country into becoming communist, I believe The Gambia today needs President Jammeh to save it from the overwhelming political turmoil of the world. The country enjoys perfect peace and prosperity and nothing should necessitate sabotaging it. We should all learn how to change our beliefs to suit the challenges in life especially when our attempts to defeat the challenges into what we believe continue to be elusive.
I keenly look forward to 2017 when President Jammeh will be inaugurating the Yelli Tenda and Bamba Tenda Bridge, one of the continental landmarks that will go down in history as one of the greatest achievements of a twenty-first century African president. There is no doubt in my mind that he will contest and win the 2016 national election by an overwhelming majority and will start a new project after the inauguration of the Trans-Gambian Bridge in 2017. Perhaps that will be the construction of the Barra–Banjul Tunnel which by estimate should take five years. Great Stuff!
I am therefore still humbled to always ask for your forgiveness for doubting your wisdom in the past. I AM SORRY A MILLION TIMES.
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