When reviewing the recently released audit reports, it is easy to get lost in the details of the vast number of individual corrupt acts. However, this pile of documented wrongdoings amounts to more than just a collection of corrupt acts. Typically, corruption is understood as a collection of individual malpractices — i.e. the actions of a rotten few, however damaging and numerous they may be.
But that is not the case in the Adama Barrow regime. What we have here is a systemic crisis where the sum of individual wrongdoings is less than the whole. In other words, the rot in this government runs so deep and is so entrenched that the documented acts in the audit reports surely leave out a significant number of other corrupt acts. These audit reports should be considered merely as a sample of what has been going on.
The level and depth of corruption span individuals at all levels, as well as processes and procedures. It appears so entrenched that high-level individuals who do nothing wrong are likely the exceptions. Top-level officials who ask “what’s in it for me?” are considered normal rather than those who work for the national interest. In other words, patriotic officials are shunned, if not kicked out entirely.
This is why it becomes critically important to choose carefully when December 2026 arrives. Changing individuals in power is not enough. Changing political parties in power is not enough. Understanding the systemic failure is vital. The ability to institute a new system to prevent a repeat is critical.
Other aspects of these recently released audit reports are their timing and lack of proper sequencing. The audit reports for 2021, 2022, and 2023 were unlikely to have been carried out simultaneously. So I’m left wondering why we are receiving these reports now and all at once. Their release is a classic case of a document dump. Why would three years’ worth of reports be released simultaneously?
To do justice to any of these reports, they need to be assessed separately and properly digested. Over time, the public can determine whether recommendations made by the NAO and other bodies are being implemented. But that is something one would expect from a serious government.
One cannot help but see the connection between these damning reports and the recent removal of Auditor General Modou Ceesay. When systemic corruption becomes this deep, attempts at deflection become both blatant and desperate. Any individual or institution that raises accountability concerns is seen as a threat. And who expects Barrow’s purported Auditor General, Cherno Amadou Sowe, to provide helpful summaries to the public on these damning audit reports? Or to provide detailed responses to the press about these newly released reports? I will be happy to be proven wrong.
In one of his self-serving comments concerning the unfair advantages his company had been given in the cement market, Hamidou Jah claimed that his company was paying the government substantial taxes, unlike the small-scale importers that the government forced out of business for his benefit.
As I pointed out at the time, that claim was factually incorrect. Those small-scale importers were also paying taxes, and there was no evidence to show that the tax paid by Jah Oil was greater than the tax collected from those small-scale importers collectively.
Moreover, government intervention in any particular market sector or segment should not be driven by short-term considerations of tax collection. Rather, it should be based on long-term socio-economic development of the country. In some situations, it may actually make sense for the government to forgo tax revenue in the short term to enable expansion of the tax base for greater revenue collection in the future.
It turns out that Mr Jah’s company has been the beneficiary of a duty waiver for which it was ineligible. Specifically, the 2023 audit report shows that Jah Oil inappropriately received a duty waiver of approximately D29 million. This is an example of state capture, where the government prioritizes the interests of a few connected businesses over the national interest.
This is corruption, and it goes all the way to the top. It is also a lack of patriotism.
When it comes to state capture in the Adama Barrow regime, several names often come up, with GACH consistently among the list. GACH is a company partly owned by Abubakary Jawara, a close associate of President Adama Barrow. This is the same company that Barrow’s government attempted to grant access to part of Salagi Forest for the storage of its basalt. Had it not been for public protest by Gambians, Adama Barrow’s government would have had no qualms about using part of our few remaining protected forest reserves for the private benefit of a single political patron.
It is unsurprising that GACH features in the recently released audit reports. Specifically, GACH was required to deposit $100,000 (approximately D7 million) with the Geological Department. However, the company failed to do so and has not faced any consequences for this failure. Additionally, the government incurred financial losses due to the non-adjustment of mineral prices. The value of this loss to the governmet was not however quantified.
As I mentioned above, the audit report only scratched the surface of the depth of corruption in this regime. In the case of GACH, the losses incurred by the government far exceed the non-adjustment of prices or the failure to deposit $100,000.
The country has been losing money for years due to GACH’s preferential access. Specifically, there was a poorly conceived and negotiated agreement between the government and the company to market minerals that had already been mined by another company. As reported by Malagen in 2020, GACH exported hundreds of containers of ore that had already been mined. The real problems here are self-evident: (a) The agreement detailing this arrangement between the company and the government was not published; (b) The selection of GACH to undertake the marketing of mined ore was an opaque process;(c) GACH did not pay taxes during the period featured in the Malagen report.
In the years to come, Adama Barrow’s government will likely serve as a textbook example of state capture and corruption.
