By Alagie Manneh
Economist and commentator Nyang Njie has given a bleak assessment of President Barrow’s regime, saying “only ignorants” will buy into the notion that the president is working for The Gambia and Gambians, or that he has achieved any meaningful progress.
Speaking in a Facebook live video Tuesday in the wake of the dismissal of Cherno Marenah as solicitor general, Mr Njie, who first frowned at what he called “the decimation of the civil service” said it’s a shame Barrow and his ministers are describing as development, the paving of roads.
He called on all Gambians in the country to take to the streets and declare their displeasure at the status quo, and of the president, who failed to deliver as expected.
“The status quo was not to give us roads, hospitals, electricity. No, it was to give us the plans to start rebuilding our country, our security sector, civil service, and a better constitution but you [President Barrow] has forgotten about that and you are running helter-skelter politicking at taxpayers’ expense,” Mr Njie said.
The political pundit said Barrow has not been fair with The Gambia, which has given him “more than he could ever have in ten live times”.
“Do us better, and do us right. Doing us better means you stop hiring enablers who are known economic criminals and vandals. [Stop] hiring soldiers who used our weapons against us. Mr President, I am talking to you from my heart because I am angry, and a lot of my fellow Gambians are angry. And don’t believe the hype out there that people love you. Genuine Gambians are not with you in the manner and way that this country is moving. And it’s not political,” Mr Njie said.
Describing what development really means, he asserted: “Mr President, development is the bettering of results in our schools; development is providing dialysis machines for our people who are dying unnecessary death; development is when the human index of the country changes for the positive good. We don’t want roads; we want better primary health and preventive health. We want better education. We want an aware citizenry. We want a citizenry that is protected by able police and army. We want our civil servants to be incorruptible because they are well paid, well trained and well remunerated.
Mr President, you haven’t done none of those, so, don’t tell me you are working. It’s only people who are ignorant will believe that you are working by paving roads.”
Mr Njie said President Barrow has “failed woefully” with his objective, which was to spearhead the reform agenda of the so-called New Gambia.
“You have failed, and failed woefully in planning, executing and strategising that reform agenda. And now, you have got into a political mood to self-perpetuate. Mr President, you have put yourself before us, and for that, you are on a collision course with the interest of the greater good of Gambians,” he said.
He called on the educated class to stand up and speak out and sensitise Gambians to realise that citizenship comes with responsibility since Barrow has failed them like Jammeh.
He said: “We are more educated today than our forefathers but our forefathers had the courage and conviction to stand for what is right and denounce what is wrong. When will we have the balls to say that Gambians have suffered a stunted growth?
Civic action
He called for a massive civic action to put the country on a corrective course.
“We need to wake up and take the responsibility of citizenship seriously. The president is getting away with murder because all of us are complaining in silence, rather than having a massive civic action to tell the president the same way we lined up and vote you is the same way we can take you out if you don’t do what you ought to,” he said.
“But the overwhelming silent majority of this country,” Mr. Njie added, “is the problem of this country because we should not suffer in silence. We collectively know The Gambia is not moving, yet still, we want to suffer in silence. We are self-centred egomaniacs collectively as a people, and that is what we ought to change. Adama Barrow is not our problem, we are Adama Barrow’s problem because we are babysitting him, we are bootlicking him and enabling him, collectively. Either Gambians are happy getting their dignity robbed by people who know nothing about nation-building or we are happy being prostituted by economic gangsters who are not only robbing us but robbing future generations of Gambians.”
