Kebba,
The problem I sometimes have with you is perception that whenever people
make any reference to Jawara or his government people want to attack him or
hate him. You cannot be more wrong in my case. My primary motive has never
been to discredit his government in its entirety but to use it to buttress a
point. To say that Jawara did a lot for the country would be an
understatement. He has done his best for the country and it would be
dishonest of me not to acknowledge that. However, he has also seriously
failed this country. As far as I am concerned Jawara outstayed his
usefulness by almost 15 years. In my own opinion he ought to have gone in
the mid 70s. His vision for the country started fading away not very long
after Gambia became a republic.
When I accuse some of you of being narrow minded in that you only want to
see things from a very narrow perspective and within the confines of our
recent history, it is not meant to negatively criticize your lot for the
sake of criticism. I have nothing against the old man but do have some
serious problems with some of his policies. For example when I commend
Jammeh for building the numerous schools, I am thinking of days gone by when
we could not offer 1,000 high school places for our children. When I talk of
the past regime’s lack of vision, I am thinking of how they totally failed
to take advantage of what our river can offer us. For God’s sake our country
was not named after it for nothing. The river is very navigable and rich in
resources. The British took very good advantage of its navigability for
hundreds of years and when they left they handed it back to us with some
means of using it for our development. But what did Jawara do? He builds us
15 concrete wharfs throughout the length and breadth of the country, sells
off the few ships that we had, takes the tug boats that formed the backbone
of our transport system to Denton bridge were they all sank one by one. To
add salt to injury, he went on a shopping spree buying the Mansa killas and
Mansa Killabas. Have you ever wondered how big a mistake this was?
Another thing that you fail to realize or refuse to accept is that I don’t
give credit to Jammeh for creating anything from nothing. All I do is
highlight the areas where he has made tremendous improvements knowing full
well that they were long overdue. Jawara’s contribution to the development
of institutions such as Gamtel, Yundum College, GPA, School of Public health
etc, while worthy of commendation, does not mean that he created them in
their entirety. He simply made improvements to them like Jammeh is doing
now. Jammeh is building countless schools, clinic, hospitals etc, but he did
not create these institutions. I don’t praise Jammeh when he does things
that I believe are good for the country. It is his job to spearhead the
development the country as that is what he is being paid for. However, I
will applaud and commend him when he does so.
Like I have said many times before, my idea of development, governance etc
is that they are continuous processes and not abrupt events. They have to be
worked at continuously. That is why I appreciate every little thing he does
in that direction. He is making significant improvements to many sectors of
our lives and country that can help us at least offer some prerequisites for
outside investment that will not only benefit the investor, but will benefit
all of us. Jammeh did not scrap everything that Jawara initiated but instead
built on his strong policies while initiating others. One advantage he has
going for him is his youth and his determination to see through his
initiatives. He takes charge of his projects and manages them well!
Another thing that Jammeh has is a vision to develop the country and his
determination to forge ahead regardless of what those opposed to him say.
This decisiveness and determination to see through his plans was clearly
manifested when he announced the APRC’s plans for the establishment of GRTS.
Unlike Jawara, he did not dither for years about what to do about radio
Kombo. When he said that he was not interested in a phased development of
GRTS but a complete overhaul of the national radio and the introduction of a
nationwide TV service, I thought he was barmy. This view of mine was
buttressed further when Gamtel was given that task and also literally forced
to extend our telephone network throughout the country even though many of
us thought that the return on investment in the rural areas was unlikely and
that it might impact negatively on our revenues. Years down the line we now
know better. Gambia is perhaps the only developing country that can boast of
the availability of telephone services through out the country. You are
assured of having access to a telephone to anywhere in the world within 10
Kms of anywhere you drop by parachute in the Gambia. In addition to that
Gamtel’s fixed line customer base has more than doubled and our GSM customer
base more than trebled during the 7 years that the APRC has been in power.
The negative impact on our viability, profitability or quality of service
that we render did not materialize either. From the late 80s to date
Gamtel’s quality of service has always been in the top three in Africa and
our revenue and profitability has increased steadily. This could not have
happened however without the visionary leadership of Dr. Bakary Njie, who
was recently awarded an honourary doctorate degree in Telecommunication
Management by the selection committee of of The Institute of Professional
Financial Managers on the 22nd September 2001.
Have a good day, Gassa.
_________________________________________________________________
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