Speaking in an interview with The Standard at his Pipeline home, the veteran opposition who is banned from standing in the 2016 elections due to legal fetters said: “I did not know the president was being renamed Sheikh Professor Dr Alhaji Yahya AJJ Jammeh Nasiru Deen Babili Mansa and why I was not invited to attend the renaming ceremony. I do not see any genuine reason for all those accolades to be added to his name. I went to Mecca at the same time with Yahya Jammeh in 2000 but I never added to my name the title Alhaji. Great leaders like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu received many honorary awards but never called themselves professor or doctor. I am called Lawyer Darboe because I worked for it with bachelors’ degree in law. I also did my bar to become a lawyer and did a master’s degree programme in legislative drafting, the first to do so in this country so I deserved the name. And what has he done to be given the title of Babil Mansa? It is certainly not for building a bridge at Janjangbureh which cannot even be called sea but a bolong. For him to deserve the title Babili Mansa let him go and build a bridge between Barra and Banjul then he will deserve the title. You cannot build a bridge across a small distance and insist on calling it sea…
“The late Imam Karamo Touray of Brikama and the likes of Ba-Kawsu Fofana, Al-Haiba Hydara and Baba Leigh were all arrested and detained by his regime. Jawara had been in power for thirty years and the Supreme Islamic Council was here but they never used to go on tour with him. What was the Supreme Islamic Council doing following the president on a tour of the country? I think the Supreme Islamic Council president should explain to us what they are doing now. I think Momodou Lamin Touray has to go back to Gunjur and think whether he is following the footsteps of his alleged teacher, the late Hatab Bojang. As the alleged successor to Hatab Bojang and a scholar from Gunjur which has produced great people like Ismaila Manjang and late Omar Bun Jeng I do not think he is following the footsteps of Hatab Bojang. It is high time the Supreme Islamic Council looked at its functions.”
Reacting to Darboe’s allegations, APRC national mobiliser and KMC Mayor Yankuba Colley stated: “It seems Ousainou Darboe does not know the difference between a sea and a bolong otherwise he would not have referred to the Janjangbureh bridge as a bolong. Ousainou and his people are those who were saying the revolution will only last for a few days, weeks, months and years but now it is twenty years old with a lot of development projects accomplished. We will bridge the Banjul-Barra crossing when the time comes because everything is stage by stage. When he talks about the arrest and detention of people he should know that this is a country governed by rule of law and nobody is above the law. If the people he talked about have not done anything then why were they arrested? Only blind people will fail to see the support President Jammeh has given to religion with mosques to be found at every kilometer of this country. President Jammeh sponsors hundreds of people on pilgrimage every year which no one had ever before done. I think Ousainou is just jealous.”
The Supreme Islamic Council president Lamin Touray in his riposte enunciated: “Our critics are enemies of Islam bent on driving a wedge between the council and the government. These are people who want to see the successful cooperation we have had with the government to promote the Islamic religion cease. By the might and grace of Allah, they shall not succeed in their mischief. Whatever Lawyer Darboe and anybody say about the Supreme Islamic Council, we submit our case to Allah to judge between us and them.”
]]>
