former commander of the GNA
It was quite engaging to listen to the entire Coffee Time morning program with Peter Gomez on Friday, September 6, 2024, where Mr Cherno Njie—the mastermind behind the December 30, 2014, armed attack aimed at toppling the APRC government in The Gambia—attempted to explain, among other things, the rationale for the armed insurrection.
Despite his articulate delivery, I found his statements lacking in honesty. This further fuels my skepticism towards presidential aspirants and their campaign promises, as they often seem deceitful.
He downplayed the significant role played by Gambians in the diaspora, who were vocal in raising awareness about the Jammeh regime’s misrule and labeled them as mere attention seekers, while portraying his clandestine efforts as more effective in achieving the same goal.
The commitment of Gambians in the diaspora to exposing Jammeh’s maladministration began around 2000, when a few activists launched online news platforms—most notably the Gambia-L server. These platforms provided a safe space for discussion and gained wide readership both outside and within The Gambia. Over the next decade, other platforms like Freedom Newspaper and Radio, started by the late Pa Nderry Mbai in North Carolina, emerged as powerful voices against Jammeh’s regime. Interestingly, Cherno Njie’s name was never mentioned in the struggle during those early years, though more people joined the movement as time went on.
Before discussing what I believe motivated Cherno Njie to start acting independently in the struggle around 2012, let me briefly explain how most of us were introduced to him. He was presented as a Gambian-American millionaire based in Texas, eager to invest significant resources to help overthrow Yahya Jammeh’s APRC government and to ensure the establishment of a more democratic system in the country. Njie leveraged his wealth to gain influence, reaching out to various political parties and their leaders in The Gambia, as well as anyone he deemed useful to his cause.
He fostered relationships with Gambian political leaders, some of whom convened in North Carolina before the 2011 general elections to see how to strategize among themselves to defeat the APRC government at the ballot box. Mr. Njie actually attended that meeting and contributed generously to the political leaders present.
Yet, in his interview last week, he literally characterized those leaders as lacking the vision necessary to transform the political landscape of the country. I interpreted this as a way of suggesting to Gambians that he still holds the best ideas or policies to achieve the elusive and much-needed change for The Gambia.
However, along the way it appeared Cherno Njie abandoned all peaceful means and shifted his focus to violent alternatives. He therefore aimed to sponsor volunteers, arm them, launch an attack on the country, overthrow Jammeh, assume power as head of state, impose his own government, and implement the changes he envisioned.
Was Cherno’s break from his political allies fueled by a sense of being sidelined by those who sought to diminish his influence within the political parties he was attempting to gain recognition from through his financial support? Did this push him to strike out on his own and abandoning the ballot box in favor of building his own fighting force to finish the job on his terms? Or was it impatience—an unwillingness to wait for his colleagues who, in his eyes, were moving too slowly in a struggle that seemed unwinnable through peaceful means, especially as others were rushing to embrace the path of violence?
It seemed that Cherno was locked in a race with several other Gambians who advocated for violent methods, including Seedia Bayo, a Gambian-French diaspora figure. Mr Bayo, who boasted of having served in the French army, made bold declarations from Senegal, claiming he was on the verge of launching an invasion of The Gambia with a military force under his command. His grand ambitions equally included toppling the APRC government, declaring himself president, installing his handpicked administration, and driving the change he believed the country desperately needed.
However, Cherno may continue to downplay the influence of the online anti-Jammeh movement in the diaspora, dismissing them as mere attention-seekers when all indicators suggest that he was indeed influenced by their efforts compelling him to actively join the struggle over a decade after it started.
Returning to what I believe motivated his involvement, I can confidently argue that it was the so-called attention-seekers who rallied every activist opposing the Jammeh government, including Mr Cherno Njie and some, if not all, of his associates involved in the ill-fated December 30, 2014 coup. There is no doubt that Mr Cherno Njie actually emerged in the public arena around 2012, after over a decade of the diaspora’s campaign to overthrow the Jammeh government. His appearance coincided or was precipitated by the infamous execution of nine death row inmates at Mile Two Central Prison on August 23, 2012, an event that, in my view, clearly revealed his impulsive approach to addressing critical political issues.
To demonstrate their impact on passive activists, a group of so-called attention seekers staged an emotional drama prior to the 2014 attack. In that drama, a female activist pretended to be a young girl named Aisha, supposedly speaking from Brikama town in The Gambia’s West Coast Region. The late Pa Nderry Mbai, owner of Freedom Radio, interviewed this “Aisha” live, and many listeners tuned in that day and the recording was periodically aired for almost a month. Aisha claimed that President Jammeh had deceived her into applying for a protocol officer job and invited her to an interview in his home village, Kanilai. However, upon arrival, Jammeh allegedly kidnapped and locked her in a private room, where she said she was repeatedly raped over weeks and months. She described horrific sexual abuse perfumed on her and claimed that Jammeh kept her under constant surveillance by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), who followed her wherever she went, with some agents permanently stationed around her parents’ compound to ensure she couldn’t leave the country or speak to anyone about her ordeal.
Many listeners were persuaded by the broadcast and became convinced of Jammeh’s guilt in the heinous crime. One of the late combatant’s sisters (whose name I have chosen not to disclose) revealed that after hearing Aisha’s radio interview, her brother resolved that day to do whatever it took to overthrow Jammeh by force, even if it meant risking his life”. Coincidentally, Cherno Njie was desperately searching for emotional fighters like him and was ultimately provided the arms, ammunition, and cash to fulfill his objective. Tragically, the young Gambian-American was killed in the early hours of the operation on December 30, 2014 and was later revealed that the entire Aisha story had been fabricated solely to tarnish Jammeh’s reputation and manipulate those in the diaspora willing to risk their lives for such adventures.
The same so-called attention seeking dissidents likely influenced Cherno Njie’s reckless operation tactics, as they consistently broadcasted through various media outlets, including the Freedom Radio, that the entire Gambia Armed Forces (GAF) were fed up with Jammeh’s regime claiming that its members only needed a leader, weapons, and funding to topple the APRC government. Cherno Njie naively swallowed this narrative without question and began recruiting soldiers from the GAF for his mission. He purchased far more weapons and combat gear than necessary for his skeletal combatants, relying heavily on the enemy forces—those he intended to fight—thinking they would join him once the attack began in the country. This was an unheard of tactic in the history of warfare.
Hence, while Cherno believed the soldiers he had recruited were waiting eagerly for the commencement of the operation, those very men were on the contrary in constant contact with the Jammeh government and the National Intelligence Agency, updating them on every move taken and said from America. After the operation failed, some of Cherno’s hired conspirators naively threatened the soldiers they thought they had recruited and failed them, demanding they finish the job or face public exposure of their names, ranks, and units. It was indeed laughable.
The million-dollar question for Mr. Njie is: What were his plans the day after Jammeh was ousted if the operation had succeeded? Did he truly believe that after living in the USA for over four decades, and without any prior involvement in Gambian politics, he could easily lead an armed insurrection, overthrow Jammeh, assume the presidency, and then be accepted to rule and implement necessary reforms without any resistance?
Mr Njie’s belief that violence was the only way to remove the Jammeh government, rather than through democratic means, is fundamentally flawed. His analogy, attributing Jammeh’s departure solely to the military intervention by Ecowas, overlooks key facts.
During discussions at the UN in my presence, military intervention in The Gambia was debated. The new UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, opposed any form of invasion, with the Security Council passing a resolution to avoid war due to its unintended consequences on innocent civilians. Guterres believed international sanctions would have been enough to compel Jammeh to step down. However, Ecowas representative at the UN Mohamed Ibn Chambas and Senegalese President Macky Sall, both having personal grievances with Jammeh, and secretly backed by Jammeh’s foreign ambassadors pushed for the Ecomig military intervention in the country.
Eight years after the deployment of Ecomig, many Gambians who once supported the mission now question the need for its continued presence in the country, with some even viewing it as a tool of oppression and a deliberate negligence of the GAF under the Barrow administration. This situation raises concerns about what could have happened if Macky Sall, Mohamed Ibn Chambas and indeed Cherno Njie had succeeded in triggering a full-scale war, which could have led to prolonged conflict and destabilization, similar to other African nations typically like in today’s Libya. It is therefore absurd to continue clinging rigidly to the idea that violence is a justifiable solution to political problems, no matter how it is framed. If attempting it and failing miserably doesn’t reveal its danger and folly to Mr.Njie, I don’t know what will.
