By Musa Bah
The Gambia has always been very good at planning projects, development agendas, strategies, visions and so on. It is said that whenever plans and strategies are compared within the subregion, the Gambia’s are always deemed to be the best, be it in the area of education, health, poverty reduction, agriculture or any other. Our technocrats do an excellent job but the devil is always lurking in the implementation. We almost always score a ‘D’ on implementation.
Perhaps the causes of these woes are many and varied. One of the key things, in my opinion, is the absence of the political will. Also, there might be the perenial problems of corruption and nepotism. In-fighting between and among employees can cause these problems. What is the point of having a great plan, strategy or vision if it will not be implemented?
What are the solutions to these endemic problems? For a start, we must cultivate and nurture the political will to do the right thing. We must be prepared to invest political capital in our projects. We must find a monitoring mechanism to ensure that there is constant monitoring of progress. Luckily for us in your case, the political will is – should be – there as you are not going to contest for the next election. So, there is no such thing as doing [or not doing] certain things for fear of a political fall out. Invest in our strategies, plans, and visions.
For corruption, well, I have already written about that and I have said my little on it, the gist of it being that so long as we do not tackle corruption, our plans and initiatives will continue to fail. Thus, let us fight this bane wholly and completely. That is the way forward.
On nepotism, I think the way forward is through law reform. Let us enact laws which are intended to prevent nepotism, cronyism and all the retrogressive isms.
Have a good day Mr President.
