Ousman,

Indeed it is usually the intellectuals who service these wayward despots, first with their minds then with the social authority that their official positions bestows upon them amongst a population of illiterates. 

Dr. Walter Ofonagoro, a first-class mathematician, and an inundating spittle-launcher was summoned from his American university base to become spot man not only for Shehu Sagari, but even an imbecile like Sani Abacha. Wole Soyinka says the doctor's mathematical intellect is of the decadent and prurient type. 

Gambia's intellectuals must be reminded that it is their work that accords the regime its first level of legitimacy. They foot the bills; sign the ledgers, cook the books; they know the tricks involved in callously depleting the national treasury; how to pay salaries to ghosts; how not to seperate Yahya's money from Gambia's; how to debug budget speeches; and how to return stolen millions to the people. Why, here is an entire ruling elite foolishly infatuated with pajeros and other out of place luxury items that swallow all foreign exchange!

When Yahya Jammeh breathes down the spine of every Gambian man, many from our ranks will help him get inside the trousers of other men they consider lesser masculine. Here masculinity is defined solely on terms of economic prowess. It is a way of compensating intellectual and spiritual emptiness with material crassness. Those who have a job, or are able to survive thanks to some enterprise are clearly not expected to answer to the archaic call, Pol Pot style, for a return to the ricefields. No Nawetan, the king said!

Ous, my brother we have a long way to go.
Cheers,
Momodou Sidibeh

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