So far, these are the people named in this scandal on the Gambian side: Yaya
Jammeh, Amadou Samba, Ederisa Jobe, Mambouray Njie, and Maba Jobe, among
other staff at the Gambian Embassy in Nigeria.  We are going to deal with
each and everyone on this list that is judged guilty.  Yes, they can play
hide and seek but not for long.  Running to another country is not going to
grant them immunity either, because they are going to be extradited to
answer to their crimes, from Yaya Jammeh down.  If one also thinks they can
hide their loot from recovery, then they better prepare to spend the rest of
their natural life in jail.  Please read on.

Playing Hide And Seek! (Part one)

The Independent (Banjul)

EDITORIAL
May 19, 2003
Posted to the web May 19, 2003

Banjul

A game well known is gaining currency in The Gambia and its master dribblers
are those maintaining an ironclad grip on state power, determined that they
would not be held accountable tomorrow in spite of their naked culpability.
They are very methodical, very mindful and very consistent to cover up their
unholy tracks behind them and foil in advance any future attempts to give
them away as culpable of crimes they committed in the impermanent secrecy of
office.

Following the publication of Nigerian newspaper reports on the Oil Scandal
in our past three issues, two things have become glaringly evident.

Check out allAfrica's debate on the election in Nigeria.
Click here.




Firstly, somehow Nigerian governments, past and present, have gotten
entangled with the Gambia government of the day, in ways, which were
scandalous by all stretch of the imagination.

Secondly, having learned from the missteps of the AFPRC era, and even as
recently as the Crude Oil Scandal, Yahya Jammeh and co. are becoming adept
at covering up their tracks, so that, like their predecessors, they will
leave very little or no evidence that would give them over as guilty of
wrongdoing while in office.

That was why despite endemic corruption as known and witnessed in the old
order, some ex PPP ministers could still boast that the 1994 putschists have
not unearthed any solid evidence against them in enquiry commission
chairperson Bamfo's report. Senior PPP officials were very mindful not to
leave traces of their damage on the slab sheet that could have been readily
used against them as they fell from grace to grass.

That takes us back to our second point - why civil servants such as
ambassadors and permanent secretaries, as well as Gambian businesspersons
are being used to do the dirty work. Why they give themselves up so readily
as fronts for the real men of power whose interests are not always
synonymous with those of the nation.

It was expected that following the exposures of the Crude Oil scam of the
Jawara era, the Nigerian state would never again allow anything of the sort
to transpire between it and a Gambia government now and in the future. But
the recently reported saga and the one before it under Jammeh's name, show
that the Nigerian authorities cannot be relied upon to help us sanitise our
country from the ill of greed and the evil of corruption, which is as
rampant as we witnessed during the Jawara era.

Definitely, the Nigerian embassy and Yahya Jammeh's regime must come up with
a credible response or explanation for all these reports of such deals.

This should particularly be so, in the Afrocentric spirit of NEPAD's peer
oversight mechanism for African leaders and governments, and the planned
African Union convention against corruption, with Nigeria expected to lead
the way in improving Africa's international image through the
institutionalisation of good governance.

As for the machinations of Gambian politicians to do things and yet retain
the right to claim that their hands are clean, it is their civil servant
aides who must watch out. They may find themselves caught in a hole, they
had wittingly or unwittingly dug for themselves. African political leaders
such as the ones ruling our country today have their interests first and
foremost in their agendas and will go to extraordinary lengths to protect
them even at the expense of their most loyal servants. The latest crude oil
saga is a tale of such betrayal by the Gambian and Nigerian leaders who are
very careful to cover their tracks. We must recall 1997, when a
Jammeh-Rawlings scandal led us to details of how their aides were warned to
keep the names of their bosses out of it all in the event of a leakage.

We would only start seeing sanity returning when the governments in Banjul
and Abuja make honest efforts to come clean, and tell the truth, by
explaining to their people and the world what actually transpired.

Now that leading Nigerian and Gambian newspapers have carried reports
alleging wrongdoing, not to do so would leave their credibility destroyed in
the eyes of all and sundry.

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