By Momodou Malcolm Jallow
When Gambians voted out Yahya Jammeh in 2016, they believed they had finally turned a page on dictatorship. Adama Barrow promised a new era of democracy, accountability, and respect for the rule of law. Yet today, that promise lies in tatters.
The forced removal of Auditor General Modou Ceesay, frogmarched out of his office by police after rejecting a ministerial post he never sought, is more than a political scandal. It is a direct assault on the constitution, the rule of law, and the very institutions meant to protect Gambians from corruption and abuse of power.
The Gambian Constitution is clear: the auditor general can only be removed for inability, misbehaviour, or incompetence. The National Audit Office Act adds further safeguards, requiring either a medical board’s finding or a tribunal’s recommendation before removal.
None of these procedures were followed. Instead, the government tried to reassign the auditor general into the cabinet, a blatant violation of his independence and when he declined, security forces physically expelled him.
This is not only unlawful; it is dangerous.
The National Audit Office is the last line of defense against corruption in The Gambia. Its reports have exposed missing funds, irregular contracts, and abuses of public resources. By undermining this office, the Barrow administration is effectively dismantling the only watchdog with real teeth.
Without an independent auditor, citizens cannot know whether their taxes are being used for hospitals and schools or siphoned off into private pockets. Every dalasi lost to corruption is a stolen opportunity for development.
The symbolism is damning: if even the auditor general can be humiliated and dragged away for doing his job, what hope do ordinary civil servants have of resisting political pressure?
President Barrow rose to power on a wave of optimism, hailed as the man who would rebuild institutions after Jammeh’s repressive reign. Instead, his government has shown increasing intolerance of scrutiny clashing with the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, pressuring the electoral commission, and now crippling the audit office.
By turning the security forces against an independent official, Barrow has crossed a line. The images of police escorting the auditor general out of his office will be remembered as one of the darkest moments in The Gambia’s young democracy.
The costs of this overreach cannot be measured in headlines alone; they cut to the very heart of The Gambia’s fragile democratic experiment. By trampling constitutional safeguards, the government has shredded the country’s hard-won credibility as a beacon of democratic renewal in West Africa. The Gambia was once celebrated as the nation that forced out a dictator without bloodshed. Today, it risks becoming a cautionary tale of how swiftly optimism can curdle into disillusion.
Corruption, once held at bay by the fearless audits of Modou Ceesay’s office, now has a free hand. Every contract signed without oversight, every dalasi siphoned from the treasury, is another hospital left unbuilt, another school deprived of resources, another family condemned to poverty. What was once a mechanism for transparency has been deliberately weakened, opening the floodgates to unchecked graft.
The damage extends further still. Within the civil service, fear will spread like wildfire. If the auditor general himself can be dragged from his desk by police, what chance does a junior officer have of exposing wrongdoing? The message is unmistakable: loyalty to power, not loyalty to the law, will determine one’s survival.
And among ordinary Gambians, the betrayal will cut deepest. The same people who once celebrated the fall of Yahya Jammeh now watch with horror as President Barrow repeats the same mistakes, using the same methods of intimidation. The trust that bound citizens to their leaders is fraying, replaced by the bitter recognition that promises of reform were little more than illusions.
This is not just about one man’s job. It is about the survival of checks and balances in The Gambia. Civil society, the judiciary, parliament, and international partners must demand that the government reverse this unlawful removal, respect the auditor general’s independence, and restore constitutional order.
Democracy does not collapse overnight. It dies by a thousand cuts, each breach of the law justified as an exception. Gambians did not fight to end one-man rule only to see it re-emerge under a new president.
The forced removal of Modou Ceesay is not a bureaucratic reshuffle. It is a constitutional crisis and unless resisted, it may mark the beginning of The Gambia’s slide back into authoritarianism.
At stake is not just the fate of one office, but whether Gambians will continue to live under a democracy in substance or in name only.
