By Omar Bah
The deputy spokesperson of the ruling National People’s Party (NPP) Seedy Njie has revealed that the main opposition UDP leader Ousainu Darboe personally approached him in 2017 to join the party but he declined the invitation
Njie, who is also the deputy speaker of the National Assembly made these claims in a Standard interview reacting to Mr Darboe’s claims that Barrow’s alliance with APRC was key in his breakup with him.
Last week, the UDP leader told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) that President Adama Barrow’s alliance with the APRC party of former president Yahya Jammeh “was really the departing point” in his relations with him.
But Hon Njie said this is absolutely false because President Barrow and the UDP separated in 2019 while the alliance with the APRC happened in 2021. “That is about two and half years later. But what is funny is that in 2017, Mr Darboe, had engaged a good number of APRC officials including myself to join the UDP. Those who accepted joined but people like me refused,” Njie told The Standard.
He added that more other former APRC members including former ministers, National Assembly Members, and executive members have been persuaded to join the UDP. “Until now we have former APRC executive members serving as executive members of the UDP. So it is factually incorrect to associate or link the UDP’s split with Barrow to the coalition agreement between the APRC and the NPP, ” Njie said.
Hon Njie further explained that the separation happened before even the formation and registration of the NPP.
“So the alliance with APRC was based on President Barrow’s principles of all inclusive government, strategic national interests on the basis of peace, reconciliation, stability and national development as opposed to revenge, exclusion and violence.”
He further accused Darboe of ironically shunning APRC while sharing a table with No-To-Alliance who are directly supervised by Jammeh.
Allegations of voter registration fraud
Reacting to allegations that the NPP is mobilising minors and foreigners to be registered as voters, Mr Njie, called the allegations “baseless and politically motivated”.
He said President Adama Barrow had issued strict directives to all NPP officials to ensure they abide by the electoral laws.
“The NPP does not condone, support, or participate in the registration of minors or foreigners,” Njie said.
He warned that any member found engaging in such illegality will face immediate disciplinary action.
Njie challenged those making the allegations to give names, registration centres, time and date of any of such thing happened and take them to the IEC. “We will not allow our party’s name to be dragged through the mud for political convenience,” he said.
He accused the UDP of going round registration centres profiling people.
“They are basically doing the job of the Immigration Department. They decide who is a Gambian and who is not. This is totally unacceptable but it goes to show why genuine Gambians must never vote for them,” Njie said.
Njie added that despite all the tensions the UDP is trying to create, the NPP continue to advice its agents to abide by the law and remain peaceful at all times”.
“We are not doing this because we are cowards but as a matter of principle.”
He said the NPP has advised its agents to avoid intimidating or profiling people at registration centres.
“That is forbidden and against the principles the NPP stand for. We have asked our agents to take details of persons that they suspect to have illegally registered and bring it to the attention of the central committee,” he said.
Reacting to criticisms that he has been interfering with the process by bailing out people found wanting of trying to register illegally, Mr Njie said those criticising him should instead commend him for playing a peacemaker role in addressing several disputes including those involving some opposition figures.
“My message across all registration centres I visited was that of peace. This is why I was able to restore calm and operations resumed where they had stopped. I encouraged agents and party officials to strictly abide by the law governing the registration process and procedures. In that context, many disputes were resolved involving officials across parties and movements including the release of Hon Yahya Menteng Sanyang from police custody,” he explained.
