Dear Editor,
The Gambia is bleeding, and no one in power seems to hear the screams.
Young people are dying in their thousands. They are swallowed by the sea, crushed by poverty, betrayed by silence, and erased by indifference. Canoes capsize. Entire villages are plunged into mourning. Mothers bury sons who left home with hope and returned as names on a list, if they returned at all. Some never do.
Our waters, once symbols of life and sustenance, have become graveyards. Bodies drift where fish once swam freely, yet life goes on as if nothing is wrong. People eat from these waters while the truth rots beneath the surface. No alarms. No national reckoning. No collective outrage.
If ten people died this way in the United States or the United Kingdom, policies would shift overnight. Governments would fall over themselves to act. Investigations would be launched. Borders, maritime safety, employment, migration, and youth welfare would dominate headlines and parliamentary debates.
But in The Gambia, mass death has become routine.
What has gone so wrong with us?
We have normalised tragedy. We have institutionalised denial. We have allowed spin doctors in polished suits to downplay a national catastrophe while our youth vanish at an unprecedented and astronomical rate. These are not isolated incidents. These are not accidents. These are systemic deaths born of neglect, hopelessness, and a state that has abandoned its most valuable resource: its people.
What is the government doing?
Workshops. Conferences. Staged dialogues. Carefully worded statements. Endless meetings that produce nothing but per diems and photographs. While officials debate in air-conditioned halls, families are selling land to bury their dead. While reports are being drafted, canoes are capsizing. While excuses are being made, villages are being wiped out.
This is not governance. This is moral failure.
A nation that cannot protect its youth, that cannot acknowledge the scale of its loss, that refuses to confront the truth of why its children are fleeing and dying, is a nation in deep crisis. Development slogans cannot resurrect the dead. Public relations cannot mask grief. Silence cannot absolve guilt.
We are losing a generation, not to war, not to natural disaster, but to abandonment.The sea is not the enemy. Desperation is. Poverty is. Hopelessness is and above all, indifference is.
History will judge this moment harshly. It will ask who spoke and who stayed quiet. Who acted and who pretended. Who mourned genuinely and who hid behind bureaucracy.
The Gambia deserves better than this. Our youth deserved better than this. And until we stop treating mass death as background noise, until leadership rises to meet the gravity of this disaster, the waters will continue to claim what the nation failed to protect.
A sad state of affairs, indeed.
But sadness alone will not save us. Only truth, courage, and accountability will.
I weep for my country,The Gambia.
Melville Robertson Roberts
UK
When truth makes power uncomfortable
Dear editor,
The recent response by the Minister of Information, Mr Ismaila Ceesay, to comments
made by APP-Sobeyaa Party Leader Mr Essa Mbye Faal on Coffee Time with Peter Gomez reveals a government deeply unsettled by honest discussion of youth unemployment, irregular migration, and policy failure. What should have been a constructive engagement quickly descended into denial and, more troublingly, the suggestion that Gambian youths are themselves to blame for their economic marginalisation.
Mr Faal’s remarks were neither reckless nor inflammatory. They reflected realities widely acknowledged by economists, development institutions, and ordinary citizens: that youth unemployment in The Gambia is structural, not moral. To imply that young Gambians are “lazy” or unwilling to work is not only insulting; it is a profound misreading of how labour markets function in low-income economies with weak educational-employment linkages.
Across The Gambia, foreign nationals dominate key skilled sectors; construction, mechanical trades, fishing, and, in some cases, supervisory roles in hospitality. This is not evidence of Gambian indolence. It is the predictable outcome of decades of policy neglect: underfunded TVET institutions, informal and unregulated apprenticeship systems, lack of certification, and almost no access to startup capital for young people seeking to turn skills into livelihoods. These outcomes are shaped by governance choices, not youth attitudes.
The same pattern of denial appears in discussions around irregular migration. Research by international migration and development institutions consistently shows that young people do not risk the Sahara and the Mediterranean because they are ignorant or thrill-seeking. They do so because hope has been systematically eroded. When education fails to translate into employment, when effort does not guarantee dignity, and when the future feels permanently postponed, migration becomes a survival strategy rather than a rebellion.
Concerns raised by Mr Faal about the National Health Insurance Scheme also fall squarely within responsible policy critique. Universal health coverage cannot succeed in an economy dominated by informality and high unemployment without careful design, sustainable financing, and institutional trust. Pointing out these weaknesses is not sabotage; it is a public duty.
Against this backdrop, APP-Sobeyaa’s proposal for a $50 million annual youth investment revolving scheme deserves serious engagement. Similar models linking skills training, youth enterprise financing, and structured recovery mechanisms have been applied across Africa with measurable success. By combining TVET, job creation, entrepreneurship, and civic values, the proposal addresses youth exclusion comprehensively rather than rhetorically
APP-Sobeyaa is not interested in political theatrics. Our politics is guided by decency, respect for institutions, and evidence-based debate. However, when government officials substitute blame for policy and propaganda for accountability, silence is not an option. Persistent misrepresentation of the youth crisis invites a robust response, analytical, factual, and unflinching. The youth crisis in The Gambia demands humility and reform, not denial. Mr Essa Faal spoke responsibly and truthfully. Gambian youths deserve solutions grounded in policy, not scapegoats manufactured for political convenience.
Ousainou Bobb
National Spokesperson
