By Alagie Saidy Barrow
Yahya Jammeh was able to consolidate his powers by coopting religious leaders into supporting and defending his excesses. He used the stick of imprisoning religious leaders and the carrot of donating money to pliant religious leaders. Jammeh became so emboldened that he even decided when people could observe religious services and when they could not… As it is with many Gambians, tolerance is a virtue many preach but few actually accommodate. Jammeh was no exception as demonstrated in the speech below.
“Let me also make it very clear, here in this country, we will go by Suratul Kafiroun, we leave judgment to the Almighty Allah. Finally, I’ll also not allow people to divide Islam in The Gambia because also it is in the Quran. That we should not allow anybody to divide Islam or Muslims. Those who say that they’re waiting for . . . let me say that in Wolof. Those who said they’ll not pray because they’re waiting for a proclamation will not pray in this country. Let them go where their marabouts are and pray there. Tomorrow no one will pray here. This country belongs to me… Let the Alkalos chase away those imams from their mosques or else I’ll close the mosque myself. Minister of Interior, I gave you instructions; unless you want to be in my hotel (referring to Mile Two), let anyone pray tomorrow in The Gambia. Billai Wallie Tallie. . .”
Interestingly, Jammeh referred to a surah (“Suratul Kafiroun”) that ends, “To you be your way, and to me mine,” and said, “we leave judgment to the Almighty Allah.” However, in the very next sentence, he went on to say he would not allow anyone to divide Islam (never mind that there are more than seventy sects of Islam already)…
One of the most important contraptions for controlling people is through religious manipulation. In a country where religiosity is often conflated with morality, Jammeh found fertile ground to cultivate his religious pretentiousness in consolidating power. Soon after promoting himself to colonel and then retiring from the army…
…For Jammeh, aligning oneself with some deity helped him in convincing doubters that indeed the ruler was “chosen” by Allah and that the source of his power was Allah himself. The belief that Jammeh was chosen by God, or Allah, was a dangerous mindset that was further propagated by enthusiastic religious leaders, thereby permitting Jammeh to avoid being answerable to Gambians.
Those religious leaders who did not align themselves with Jammeh were sidelined. The intelligence agency, the NIA, had a whole unit dedicated solely to religious affairs, and agents spied on religious leaders, recording their sermons to report to Yahya Jammeh. Imam Baba Leigh, Imam Ba Kawsu Fofana, Imam Sawaneh, and a few others found themselves in the clutches of the NIA simply because they made statements that displeased Jammeh. Imam Ismaila Manjang was detained because he gave a sermon about the practice of visiting shrines and how the custom contravenes Islam. The adage “Old people are always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned in a proverb” comes to mind. Imam Manjang never mentioned Jammeh’s name, but he was still arrested and whisked away to the NIA, where he was tortured and held for several days without being charged with any crime. After the imam was released, his case was curiously transferred to the Drug Law Enforcement Agency, which conducted a search of his house and found nothing they were looking for…
In 2006, Jammeh got some occult practitioners to come to The Gambia to “cleanse” the country of “witches.” Government workers were forced to declare allegiance and fidelity to Jammeh by swearing before a shrine. While many government employees (both Muslims and Christians) ran away and didn’t swear before the shrine (which would have been an unforgivable sin in Islam), many simply complied. One exception was Mustapha Ceesay, a police officer at the time, who refused to swear by a shrine but was made to pay dearly for his refusal. The only resistance to this “cleansing” came from Halifa Sallah, an opposition political leader. If any of the religious leaders and elders had any problem with this gross violation of the Islamic and Christian religions, they apparently never expressed it loud enough to be heard.
Jammeh also organised beauty contests at the State House or in Kanilai and the merriment that was a hallmark of these beauty contests certainly didn’t conform to Islamic teaching, but the religious leaders seemed to have no issue with this too. I was told that one imam actually opened one of the beauty contests with a prayer.
…what we know for a fact was the case of Bishop Hannah Faal who told Jammeh a very uncomfortable truth and, shockingly, lived to tell the story. In a meeting of religious leaders with Jammeh, this brave soul (Bishop Hannah Faal) spoke up and said to Jammeh:
“I want to ask your permission to speak truthfully and plainly to you because I see you as a brother because we are all Gambians. I have not come here as the Chair of the Gambia Christian Council. In fact, many people told me not to come here today, and all of us not to come because people are so angry with you. Sir, please if you…. Can I continue please? Thank you. I seek your permission with deep respect. Because the nation has been going through a very painful time. I don’t know whether many people tell you, but you know they tell me that I should not tell you because I will be in trouble…”
By eliminating all his perceived enemies in the previous government, eliminating comrades he deemed obstacles within the AFPRC, delegating power to individuals of influence, embarking on major infrastructure development to endear himself to Gambians, projecting himself as a man of religion, and co-opting religious leaders, Yahya Jammeh was able to consolidate power over Gambians and gain control of every facet of sociopolitical and economic life in The Gambia. The result was twenty-two years of dictatorship.
