The Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice yesterday formally submitted a letter to the Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Justice requesting information on the sale of the assets of former president Yahya Jammeh, seized and disposed by the state.
According to a statement shared with The Standard, the request was submitted in line with the Access to Information (ATI) Act 2021, and it is specially asking for public information generated through and by the defunct Janneh Commission, now in custody of the Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Justice.
“Our request for information follows the report by investigative journalists at The Republic published on April 30, 2025, which exposed decisions and actions that in our view tantamount to abuse of office, corruption, conflict of interest and self-enrichment. The disposal of these assets has caused economic loss to the country, communities, entities, and individuals,” the EFSCRJ said.
It continued to note that by law, the government has a duty to provide the full and accurate information on the sale of these assets to Gambians who have a right to know as provided under Section 7 of the Access to Information Act.
“Furthermore, Section 6(1) states that, “Every public body shall create, keep, organise and maintain its information in a manner which facilitates access to information, as provided in this Act”.
The right to information is guaranteed under Section 11, which provides that, “every person has a right to access information from a public body”, it said.
“Since the Janneh Commission submitted its final report on 29th March 2019, The Gambia Government has failed to fully disclose the full information on the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission. Despite the enactment of the ATI law in 2021, the Government continues to fail to fully disclose the way and manner these assets were sold or managed”, the centreargued.
It concluded:“In light of the foregoing, we are requesting from the ministry the following information; a list of all Yahya Jammeh’s assets in all forms identified by the government either through the Janneh Commission, TRRC or other government agencies; reports and minutes of the ministerial committee set up to oversee or decide on issues regarding these assets or properties; valuation reports of landed properties and others, report of the auction and sales of these assets including, the list of buyers; the amounts each asset or property was bought for, the total amount of proceeds or revenue collected in the sale of the assets and the status of the rest of the assets/properties that were neither bought nor sold.”
