The Local Government Commission of Inquiry was not a small exercise. It was a three-year public inquisition into the councils that collect our rates, manage our markets, clean our streets and allocate our land.
It was constituted in February 2023 to investigate all eight councils from May 2018 to January 2023. It heard witnesses in public. It consumed over D150 millions of public funds, three times its approved D50 million budget.
Its Chairperson, Lawyer Jainaba Bah, submitted the final report to President Adama Barrow in May 2026. Local Government Minister Hamat Bah stood before the National Assembly in June and gave a clear commitment that the Report and the Government White Paper will be published before the end of August.
It is now end of October. No report. No White Paper. No costed implementation plan. Only silence.
The government now says through Information Minister Dr Ismaila Ceesay that it will still meet the six-month constitutional deadline – that is, by November. But that is not the point. The point is why a government that was quick to set up cameras and broadcast accusations against councils is now slow to publish findings.
Even more worrying are credible reports that while the public is denied the report, certain mayors and chairpersons are already receiving letters based on its findings. If true, this is weaponisation. You cannot privately punish people with a public inquiry report that the public has not seen. That is selective justice.
We disagree with personalisation, but we agree on principle that the Constitution demands transparency.
What did the hearings show? Even from public sittings, Gambians saw serious irregularities – procurement fraud, payroll abuses, land maladministration, weak financial controls. Those revelations demanded urgent reform. Instead, we have secrecy.
The President must publish the full Commission Report and White Paper this week, not in November. Gambians paid for it. Gambians own it.
No letter of indictment or administrative action should be issued to any council official before the report is public. Due process demands publication first.
The White Paper must not just accept or reject recommendations. It must have a costed implementation plan, legal reforms to the Local Government Act 2002, Local Government Finance and Audit Act 2004, and a timeline for a Local Government Training Institute and real decentralization including the proposed 20% Ward Development Committee budget control.
You cannot spend D150 millions of taxpayers’ money to investigate corruption and then hide the findings. That itself is corruption of process. Publish the White Paper. Now.
