By Foday Singhateh
Last year, 740 million USD was sent by you, the Gambians of the Diaspora, towards the development of our nation.
Your generosity, enthusiasm, and dynamism represent more than the Gambian share of the national budget collected by the GRA and other national institutions. The non-Gambian portion of the state’s budget, therefore, comes from foreign sources. This raises fundamental questions about our independence, sovereignty, and freedom.
Your courage, strength, power, and love for our beautiful country must be recognized and encouraged.
The government has decided to deny voting rights to Gambians of the Diaspora.
This is both an insult and an opportunity. The government seeks to divide Gambians, following the old adage of a great French king: “Divide for better rule.”
This decision sheds light on a troubling reality: We clearly see that the government is under foreign domination, lacking an independent and autonomous budget with revenues inferior to the financial power of the diaspora. And yet, despite this, it has chosen to exclude the Gambian Diaspora from voting rights.
We must recognise these facts and take action to free our government from the chains that silence and constrain it under the pressures of foreign powers.
The government today is like a small, exhausted fish, lost and visionless, caught in the net of international financial dependency.
Is this what we fought for Our freedom?
For our independence?
For our sovereignty?
Together, as Gambians of the Diaspora, we must reclaim our destiny, our freedom, and our sovereignty – which is being stolen from us by the intervention of a few individuals acting under the influence of international powers.
The government is not free in its actions. It lacks its own independent budget, leaving it vulnerable to manipulations, distractions, and perhaps even irregularities that our morality and religion condemn.
Last year alone, We, the Gambians of the Diaspora, sent over 740 million USD back home. We can and must take action – calmly and peacefully – to restore our nation’s sovereignty, just as my father envisioned and as the PPP originally led us to achieve.
First, we must protect and preserve our strength, transforming it into a unifying force, just as others before us have done across the world.
Many of you remember that Her Majesty, the Queen of England, the most powerful figure of the British Empire at the time, entrusted my beloved late father with the mission of granting freedom and independence to our land, our nation, and all of you.
You are all the children of my father, and like him, you must believe in yourselves, in your ability to unite and act as one – strong, powerful, and unwavering in faith and the love of Allah.
Regardless of the government’s decision to exclude us from voting, our unity and collective strength will lead us to restore our nation’s sovereignty.
For what Allah has willed, no man can prevent.
During this sacred period of Ramadan, I place our future in the hands of the Almighty.
You all know how deeply I cherish my father, his political legacy, and his memory.
A few days ago, as I prayed in solitude, a voice within me whispered an idea that filled my heart—as a son of this nation, the son of my father, a historical peer of our people.
I listened to that voice and have decided to create a financial powerhouse for Gambians of the Diaspora – an international private merchant and investment bank outside The Gambia but within the Commonwealth to safeguard our annual USD 740 million, benefit from global financial systems, and protect our assets in hard currencies.
Stay strong. Stay united. Stay powerful.
Together, we are a force – guided by my father’s vision, by the strength of the Gambian Diaspora, and by our collective ability to mobilize our resources every year.
In just two years, we, the Gambian of the Diaspora, are able to raise 100 billion Dalasis (USD 1.5 billion), which can be leveraged legally into 1,000 billion Dalasis.
I say this to you today, on this blessed day of Ramadan: Allah loves us because we love Him and in His guidance, we will reclaim our independence, our sovereignty, and our freedom from an enslaved state – manipulated, dependent, and bound by foreign financial constraints.
What we seek, we shall achieve – through peace, love, and the will of Allah.
Those in power seek to separate us from our brothers and sisters at home.
But we will not be divided.
Instead, let us unite our resources so that we remain one with those back home – stronger together in the power of our unity.
Today, we see two Gambia(s):
· Gambians of the Diaspora, denied the right to vote but contributing USD 740 million annually.
· Gambians at home, with the right to vote but forced into silence – trapped in poverty, without economic opportunities, without jobs, without a vision for their children, sometimes even without money, without electricity, and with empty stomachs.
We must unite.
Together, we are stronger, more powerful, and more effective in the love of Allah and our motherland – stronger than those who seek to silence us, exclude us, and chain us once more, as in the painful past.
We are all Gambians:
· Gambians at home – struggling without economic opportunities, without jobs, and without money.
· Gambians of the Diaspora – silenced, stripped of our voting rights.
But together, we are one sovereign nation.
Let us break the chains imposed upon us – chains born of a painful and outdated past.
Freedom for Gambians.
Freedom for the Gambia.
Freedom for PPP members.
The author is the president of the PPP Diaspora and son of former Governor General, Farimang Singhateh
