Even though poll after poll has shown that a majority of Gambians want the Ecomig troops stationed in The Gambia since 2017 to leave, APRC deputy party leader and consular officer at The Gambia Embassy in South Africa, Ousman ‘Rambo’ Jatta, has advised President Adama Barrow not to withdraw them from the country.
Speaking in a WhatsApp message released earlier in the week, the strident politician said it is because of the presence of the foreign troops that The Gambia has been spared “certain commotions”.
He said the country is facing security threats and that “not everything is fine in that tiny country”. The Gambia, he warned, “is sitting on a ticking time bomb” and that if it explodes, it will be reminiscent of the atomic blast that scorched the Japanese city of Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War.
Mr Jatta’s alarmist warnings followed the leaking of a series of audios featuring former president Yahya Jammeh, notorious Jungler hit man Sana Manjang and a former soldier claiming to have carried out the burning of the APRC party headquarters in Kanifing in 2016 as well as vehicles at GNPC pump stations in Abuko and Bakau.
Mr Jatta said Manjang alluded to the return of Jammeh in his audio and that exiled former soldier Omar ‘Baitullah’ Sanneh (currently detained in Senegal) also stated that Jammeh would be at State House upon his return even though there is no democratic pathway for that to happen. He said the intimations are therefore a forcible seizure of power.
Reactivate NIA
Mr Jatta also advised the president to rejig his security apparatus and “reactivate” the disbanded National Intelligence Agency, saying “they will not [now] torture people but will gather sensitive information”. He claimed the discredited spy agency “does not lie” or “issue fake reports”.
Mr Jatta rebuffed the allegations by the APRC bureau arsonist that current Speaker and former House Majority Leader Fabakary Tombong Jatta and former Kanifing municipality mayor Yankuba Colley were in on the complot to burn the bureau.
“He is a liar, coming from nowhere to spew rubbish. Fabakary Tombong Jatta will not shoot at his peace with a gun. In fact the IGP and the Minister for the Interior should arrest this guy and charge him with arson. He confessed openly and under no duress,” Rambo said.
Nothing to fear in 2026, but…
Mr Jatta exhorted President Barrow to keep on doing the good work he has been doing and said unlike the Doubting Thomases, he does not see any troubles for the president should he contest the presidential election in 2026.
“President Barrow is doing well and surely God will repay him. He is building a good legacy. But I urge him to put his party’s house in order. The party [NPP] is in disarray. The NPP is the only party where executive members release audios on the social media insulting each other. That is baffling.”
Mr Jatta justified proffering these advices to the president saying their two parties are still in an alliance and that Barrow is still the captain of the ship they are all sailing in and that if it sinks they will drown together.
He said anyone who thinks that it’s over between the APRC and the NPP is a “dunderhead”.
