COUP IN
GAMBIA FOUR
I want to briefly look at Kebba Jobe's statement on my
last piece before proceeding to the next segment of my
story. Kebba wrote:
"On the alleged cold-blooded murder of some members of
our security forces,
The only tangible explanations given so far have been
the official version
and Ebou Colly's recent report. Now the question is
which version is true?
Why has Ebou Colly's version surfacing almost 6 years
later? Could any of
you have imagined that the picture he painted about
this fateful day and
the following day could have really taken place in the
Gambia of all places?"
Actually it seemed as if Dampha took most of the words
I had in mind for Jobe's statement directly from my
mouth. So I thank you Mr. Dampha very much for telling
Jobe the facts. Without doubt I was going to ask Jobe
where he was during that massacre to have missed the
fact that several family members of the affected
victims came forward to deny his government's
"tangible explanation" that the soldiers were killed
in a firefight. Gibril Saye's father walked to the
Daily Observer's office to explain that his son was
nowhere near a firefight at the stated time of
fighting. Lieutenant (Nyancho) Manneh's wife openly
refused to formally mourn his husband because as far
as the facts were, her husband was in bed with her at
the time of the so-called fighting. Lieutenant Bah's
parents in Bakau explained to the world the details of
how their child was arrested from his house  hours
after the stated firefight.
My friend you may be right to ask why it took Colly
6years to tell this story, but to ignore the
challenging versions to the official one given by the
Jammeh government on that event tantamount to
evasiveness.  For it was not six years, not six
months, six weeks or six days, but less than six hours
after the massacre, that affected Gambian families
started telling their version of what happened which
of course totally contradicted the official one. Were
you not aware of any of those family members' protest
or you just decided not to include them in your
selection of "tangible explanations"?  The only thing
that would make sense to me would be perhaps if you
could say that you were not in the country then. And
if that is the case, that you were actually not in the
country at the time, then I am afraid to say that we
in the opposition in the G-L are dealing with a rather
snaky character here. What kind of a person would be
so confident in the way you projected your self by
stating that sweeping generalization without having a
clue on the subject matter? In cases like yours I am
just left baffled beyond reasoning. By the way, before
I forget, tell me honestly Mr. Jobe, you were pulling
our legs about madam's weeping on the massacre,
weren't you? Responding in the affirmative will again
make more sense to me than otherwise.
 Mr. Jobe, the trouble is that so many people who
could have helped in putting things in their right
perspective had chosen at the time to ignore the facts
or were blinded by self preservation, individual
interests, or still perhaps by fear and shock. But Mr.
Jobe you know how small The Gambia is and how
incidents like this, despite their intended secrecy
could spread rapidly from one mouth to another until
the whole truth comes to the open. Anyway I think you
have made a brilliant try in casting some doubt in the
minds of some of my readers despite the twisted
argument you presented. I can't believe that for the
past six years since the government came up with their
"tangible explanation" that this is the first time you
ever heard about a contradicting version.  As a matter
of fact my story simply elaborated on the gruesome
details but the opposing views were there to every
statement forwarded about the phony coup plot from day
one.
But Jobe let's say that it was after all a fair battle
between your forces and that of the victims in which
everyone in the latter group was killed while all your
men survived without a scratch on their bodies. What's
the point in dumping their bodies in toilet pits
instead of letting their families recover the corpses
and burying them in regular graveyards. Or was there a
more "tangible explanation" you could share with us
from the government's side about what they did with
those mangled bodies? There is another point that we
could zoom under the microscope in Sabally's first
statement at radio Gambia the morning after the
killing of Barrow and Faal. It might help a bit in our
reasoning pattern here. Did you know that the only
persons Sabally mentioned that day as the men killed
were Barrow and Faal? Did you ever ask why he did not
mention the rest?  It's a simple answer my friend,
because up to that moment, only those two were killed.
Hello! Are you with me?
I was going to further ask you how you again missed
the comprehensive story I wrote about this massacre
last year when Almamo Manneh and Dumbuya were killed;
but then I quickly figured that the name Kebba Jobe
did not exist in the List then.  That would have at
least reduced it to less than 5 instead of the 6-
year-waiting period you tried to castigate me for. .
Anyway let me try to answer that question of what took
me so long- 6 years. I have been collecting every
piece of information about the coup in The Gambia
since July 22nd 1994 for one special purpose, to tell
it. If you were to find out from my fellow officers
they would have told you that I was one person who
constantly told them that this story, by one way or
the other, must be heard by everybody reachable in the
future. I even made mention of my present efforts to
publish my memoirs in the form of a book which I am
still working on.  Anyway I only hope ten years from
now, if my book is published it would not fail Jobe's
historical test of time in Yaya's political
phenomenon. And the one satisfying thing about this
entire thing is that I am one singular soldier blessed
with the ability and means of telling the truth. You
may not, but as for me, I believe in life beyond the
grave. So I think up there wherever they are, the
souls of Barrow, Faal, Saye, Manneh, Bah and others
are appreciative of my efforts in letting the world
know. When sanity returned to The Gambia some day
soon, perhaps you will be there to see their bodies
exhumed in separate pieces of bones. I am strongly
convinced that if it had not been for these great
souls we the detainees may have never left the jail
alive. It was because of these men's protests and open
disagreement to the regime's desire to harm us that we
were saved in the end. They actually died for us. We
were marked for execution on Captain Valentine
Strasser's advice.  This is serious, Strasser the then
military leader in Sierra Leone had advised the
council members to do to us what he did to his
detainees in Freetown-shoot us all. And they had
almost done so, thanks to those soldiers who showed
them that the evil idea was unacceptable. Jobe, you
don't know what in this world you are toying with. But
let's just remember that no condition is permanent
except change it self.
God I wish you are the person people think you are. A
lot of people think you are Sarjor Jallow. I really
don't know about that. But let's say you are not, how
would you feel about Sarjor falling victim of your own
crimes tomorrow? Will you be able to live with that?
People without conscience or lack the faith in god
shall never see what I am driving at here.
If your curiosity however gets into you that bad to
where you want to obsessively know everything about
this massacre from Baboucarr Jatta in particular, I
got some tips for you. Find a good steak restaurant
and invite the voracious army boss to dinner with
enough meat and bread to feed half a dozen men and
then probe him for any secret of the AFPRC/APRC
government. He would spill his guts on every drop of
saliva that flows from his mouth. The Senegalese
military officers were fully aware of this secret
weakness about the gluttonous chief-of staff and had
used it on several occasions to collect classified
information from the buffoon. Yaya himself knows about
this in his main man, but as a Jola and a minimal
threat to him anything goes with Jatta.
Anyway Mr. Jobe you know why I can relate to your
views or personality?  You remind me of people who
have long since died and while alive never wavered
from their conviction that NAZI Germany never
persecuted any Jews and that Adolf Hitler was the
greatest leader in the world.  So you may carry on,
god is watching.
Back to the events of 22nd July 1994, I was on my
journey from the marine unit in Banjul via Bond Road
to Yundum Barracks after Major Antouman Saho would not
buy my hasty tactical blueprint. It was about 10.00 am
and the first sign I read to indicate that things had
totally gone wrong was the eerie manner in which the
Banjul-Kombo highway was virtually deserted at that
time.  Not a single  thing was in motion on the road
except my car. It was an absolute sign of trouble
ahead. I was in goose pimples from head to toe not
knowing what the heck was ahead.
Then I arrived at Denton Bridge. There I realized why
the road was so quiet. The TSG had closed the bridge
in the same way they did two years ago when they
successfully stopped the demonstrating ECOMOG soldiers
from entering Banjul. It looked like they were in two
defensive positions. A detachment had dug in under the
supervision of Major Swareh (a captain at the time) at
the foot of the bridge on the Kombo end facing the
advancing GNA troops who were about two hundred meters
away. The second detachment was positioned at what was
very close to the center of the bridge, under Major
Chongan's command.
I had to park my car at the foot of the bridge on the
Banjul end and ran to Major Chongan without even
taking the keys or closing the door.
The major was in total rage with the GNA. His words
were sharp and uncompromising. He put it to me that
their tolerance for the army's misbehavior had been
exhausted and that the bridge was closed with a final
warning to any GNA personnel to risk being shot if
anyone attempted to cross it, especially with arms.
Despite his inferior weapons, I could sense that he
was prepared to battle it out with the soldiers.
At that moment I did not know that a short while
before my arrival the major had already fired warning
shots to the soldiers at the other end to show them
that he meant business.
Anyway I was able to reason with him to allow me to go
and talk to the soldiers before any fighting was
started. The men around him did not trust me.He later
confessed to me that they had recommended that he
allowed them to arrest me if I tried to cross the
bridge. But I appealed to Major Chongan telling him
the odds in winning a battle against the GNA with the
light weapons they had at their disposal.
My appearance, i.e. the number two office uniform I
was wearing might have helped in convincing him that I
was not part of anything close to the GNA coup
operation. Soldiers ready for combat would usually
wear battle-dressed uniforms (BDU). I was in full
office uniform that day.
I warned him to go back to Banjul and try to get the
weapons at the marine unit. "I was there", I told him,
"but I couldn't convince Major Saho to get them out".
Beside, they knew that I was determined to cross the
bridge, come what may.
When I took off with all those weapons pointed at my
back, I prayed to god aloud to help me survive the
crazy situation.
Chongan, I later understand, immediately returned to
Banjul and was able to go to the Marine Unit with the
Nigerian military adviser, Kebba Ceesay, Director
General then NSS and now in the same position as D.G.
NIA and Lamin Kabba Bajo the commander of the
presidential guard at the time. According to Chongan,
Saho refused to see them when they sought to meet him.
It took about a good two hundred meters or more of
running before I reached the soldiers on the other
side. I also learnt from them that the only thing that
saved me from being shot when they saw me galloping
towards them was that some soldiers recognized me,
plus I was not carrying any weapon. But after
Chongan's warning shot and then suddenly they saw
someone running towards them, they thought it was an
assault from the TSG and had almost opened fire on me.
Anyway to be very frank, I was never prepared for what
I saw when the soldiers started emerging from their
hideouts in the mangroves. I was shock to see officers
and not ordinary soldiers as I expected. There were
Captain Momodou Lamin Sonko, officer commanding "Bravo
Company", Lieutenant Yaya Jammeh officer commanding
the military police unit and Second Lieutenant Edward
Singhateh platoon commander "Charlie Company".
I asked them what was going on and Captain Sonko
responded, yelling at me that it was a coup operation
and whether I liked it or not I must join them or die.
While verbally threatening me, Sonko kept on hitting
me with his 9mm pistol on my chest. I was afraid it
was going to explode and kill me. 9mm pistols are
taboos to me because a good chunk of the bullet that
hit me in 1988 is still lodged in my thighbone.
Doctors had long since given up trying to remove it
and I have now learnt to live with it. They are messy
and very deadly.
I was worried but I could still think straight. I told
Sonko that I could not join in a coup that I couldn't
understand its head or tail. Then I slammed him with
my own threat too. I told him that the American troops
in Banjul, twice their size in strength having all
sorts of modern weapons including amphibious tanks
were waiting for them. I told them that they would all
be wiped out if they tried anything stupid.
There Sonko lowered his weapon for the first time and
turned to look at Yaya who was carrying more "jujus"
than ammunition. He also loosened up in what I thought
was a marked change of heart. Both Sonko and Yaya now
turned to Singhateh to hear from him.
 Amazingly throughout that encounter at the bridge,
Yaya never said a word. But find the clown lately in
his periodical state of delusion and he would tell you
a lie so big about what he said or did that day that
you would think that he alone toppled the government
without anyone's help.
Yet everything was Singhateh. Singhateh fired back to
me saying that they did not care about the Americans.
Their mission was to overthrow the PPP government and
if the Americans decided to interfere on the
government's side they would all die fighting them to
the last man.
Singhateh's bold remark and defiant position told me
an important thing-that he was actually in charge and
he was not prepared to give it up.. I could not reason
out what was going on but I at least knew who the main
person was. So I focused on him.
I told him how unnecessary it was to start a war with
the Americans when all they needed to do was to go
back perhaps to Radio Gambia and announce to the
country that their problem was not with the Americans
but the PPP government. In that case the Americans who
were preparing for an exercise until they were
informed that their would-be-training partners were
actually bent on to assaulting them would leave the
ground back to their boat.
Sonko tried to yell at me again but Singhateh yell
back at him to shut up. The captain obeyed instantly.
That brings me to principle number two of a coup
situation. EXPECT THE COMMAND STRUCTURE TO TURN UPSIDE
DOWN. By all indication the second lieutenant was in
charge of both the first lieutenant and the captain.
It was pitiful.
Singhateh started negotiating. He wanted me to go back
and inform the TSG personnel to stop firing and get
out of their way or else they would open fire on them.

If they had opened fire on the TSG, something I later
realized Singhateh to have the capability of doing,
then I am afraid the country would have never
recovered from that crisis. And I don't think those
sadists cared much about the preservation of the
country's peace and stability that day.
I agreed to go back. Sonko insisted that I must take
along a weapon. I refused to take one. One of the
reasons why I survived coming from that end without
being shot at was because I was not carrying arms;
therefore going back there armed would be totally
suicidal.
Singhateh agreed to my request to go back unarmed.
It was all frightening. In the first place I could not
imagine what happened at Yundum Barracks that morning.
Most of the soldiers I spotted around were members of
"C" company. Captain Badjie (now a colonel) was the de
facto and de jure commander. Captain Sonko was the
company commander of "B' company. Yaya was the
commander of the MP unit, the main company responsible
for enforcing law and order within the military
establishment. Yet there they were, Captain Badgie was
nowhere to be seen. What happened to the men under
Sonko and Yaya was anybody's guess. What about the
Nigerian battalion commander, Colonel Audu or the
deputy commander Major Davis and all those Nigerians
in the Barracks?  The Nigerian acting army commander
Colonel Akoji had also disappeared with all the other
Gambian senior officers working with him at the
headquarters. I later learnt that most of those
officers were locked up together with Colonel Akoji at
his house in Kotu.  Baboucarr Jatta was  number one
among the lot.
Anyway the frightening thing about the whole situation
was that Edward Singhateh a second lieutenant was in
total command of "C" company with two other company
commanders of different units following his command to
the letter.
In the end, my only thought was to get out of that
wacky situation alive where by their looks everyone
seemed to be under the influence of some kind of
drugs. Yundum Barracks was then a high-narcotics-
consuming center.
But I kept on hammering it to them that the reason why
the country was still in order was because everybody
thought the GNA was on exercise. So if they were
foolish enough to start shooting and killing people,
it would automatically invite the criminals into an
explosive wave of crime that they would regret ever
started. The Americans will also be forced to defend
themselves with everything they had if from nowhere
they noticed their personnel on exercise expectation
being shot at by the GNA.
I think that, in effect, saved the day from the
irresponsible, murderous and suicidal orders Singhateh
would have given. When I later met him that afternoon
he bitterly expressed his dissatisfaction to me for
telling them that the Americans were poised to
intervene. He said he had asked Major MacClain  as to
why the Americans wanted to intervene but the military
attaché denied any American involvement. Singhateh was
upset that no fighting occurred for some lives to be
wasted before victory. It would have been totally
different from what he expected and might have been
the first to die or the only one for that matter. Some
soldiers were already mapping out looting operation.
Some of them were arrested in Brikama taking money
from Mauritanian shopkeepers at gunpoint.  Almost all
of them were robbing people of their cars. Now fancy
if the killing and dying had started until the
criminals actively joined in the chaos.
Anyhow that issue about the Americans intervening
played a great part in my arrest and detention also.
Because on the 6th of September 1994 at around 2.00am,
am saying two months after our arrest and detention,
the council members woke us up in our detention beds
at Mile Two prisons for an orgy of torture. I will
come to that horrible day later but while the beating,
kicking and hitting with rifle butts were taking
place, Singhateh for a moment stopped at my cell to
give me every kind of verbal abuse he could think
about. And every insult he uttered was punctuated with
calling me a liar for telling them at the bridge that
the Americans had intended to stop them. I dared not
say a word, because with all the distance between us,
about six to ten feet away, I could sense the heavy
smell of alcohol from his breath. As drunk as he was
with a klasnikov in hand, I knew better. I think from
my cell he went to Captain Sonko's where he slapped
him so viciously that for three days his hands were
marked on the captain's face. That story will come at
the right time.
However after I started moving back to the TSG
positions at the bridge with a deadline of 20 minutes
from Singhateh to allow them to cross to Banjul or
risk being fired at, I turned back and saw the
soldiers advancing right behind me. To be honest I
thought I was going to die. Any shot fired by mistake
or intent would have triggered volleys of shells from
both ends. But thank god there was no firing at all.
However by the time I reached the bridge, Chongan had
left for the marine unit for the arms I told him
about. That made it easy to talk to his men who were
under the command of Major Swareh (a captain then).
The TSG personnel were very few, just about a section.
It was easy to make them understand that it was better
to talk the problem out rather than fight it out.
Sonko still insisted that I should join them on their
march to Banjul. There was no way I could join them on
their way to Banjul.
Singhateh then accepted my earlier proposal to go to
radio Gambia and announce that the GNA was on a coup
operation against the PPP government and that they had
nothing to do with the Americans. It was a mission I
readily took keeping me away from their adventure. I
was however to be escorted by some soldiers. Six of
them volunteered.  We took the mini-bus that brought
the TSG to the bridge that morning.
I spent the rest of the operation period at Radio
Gambia with these six soldiers who were totally lost
in what they were lured to do. They helped me a lot in
understanding what had happened at Yundum Barracks
that morning.  They also told me what happened to the
Nigerian and other Gambian officers, the actual
leaders of the coup and many more missing things.
Next time, I will take it up from here. But next
weekend may be too busy for me. So if you don't see
part FIVE, expect it the following week. But it is
possible that I may find the time to write it anyway.
On a final note, I must commend Hamjatta on his piece
A Dissent on Affirmative Action and Feminism.  But I
could not have said it better than Makaveli did. Keep
it up. You are fantastic.


Ebou Colly














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