Nawetan:

Well, the symposium is over, and I am late at coming to this topic that caught my attention weeks ago. When I first heard about the banning of Nawetan football in the Provinces, it first gave me a chuckle, a feeling of nostalgia to Nawetan (an economci program that the soccer program was name after), and saddened that  the Government is not very serious in confronting the economic realities affecting our country.

Years ago Nawetan was a program of economic survival for most Gambians and the neighboring African countries. As a child my Father was a Farmer duirng the rainy season and a petty trader during the trade season. And at our compound we used to have folks--"Surga", they travelled from long distances to "nawetany" to regions far away from their homeland. The idea was these farmers, Surga, as they were called would come during the farming season, they would be given a piece of land to farm, three meals a day, seeds to plant and are usually accepted as part of the family. In return, the "Surga" would go  to the farm of his boss for three to four  days during the week, and the rest of his time at his farm. The systrm worked very well for everybody, and come during the trade season, the groundnuts are sold, the surga will head home to take care of his familiy, and people like my dad would take care of his family, and still  left with some  earnings to pursue other investment opportunities during the trade season. In addition, it was usually during these farming seasons that you have the most competitive wrestling matches. Farming and wrestling matches have always been part of the socio-economic fabric of these communities, and they never needed a government, or anybody else for that matter to tell them what to do.

From the above points, it is clear that human beings and Gambians in this case did not need a government to tell them how to survive. If a government creates the ideal environment, and make the idea of going to the farms economically viable, people will go to the farms because that is  what they have done for years. Let us even assume that yes, times have changed and most people have left these farms for the urban areas. Before you go out of your way to step on people's civil liberties, and sounding riduculous; you can easily come up with incentives: first, make sure their harvest are bought at the end of the farming season; give out agricultural loans to anybody who is willing to go back to the farms, and you can even take it further by coming up with other  attractive incentives.

Finally, I am sadden that President Jammeh does not have a serious response to our economic problem, and coming up with ths banning only reaffirmed my belief that the President is coming up with the same old, "Doing something about it"syndrome, like I indicated in a previous piece. Is there any serious person out there, that somehow  believe that banning Nawetan is going to end the slipping of the Dalasi? Mr.President, PLEASE!
Like Joe, I am also disappointed with OB, a person who has contributed a lot to the game of football.

Musa Jeng

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