When I read this, my immediate reaction was repulsion at what I regard –on first thought, to be an ostensible racist statement. The operative word is “on first thought.” Because when I pulled back and did a mental survey of where the Gambia is – close to fifty years since the colonial Governor made his prediction, it shamed me to admit that the old colonial hand –regardless of what his true motivation(s) is/are in making this statement, may actually turn out to be right after all. (But perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising considering Governor Paul did have an unusually profound understanding of Gambians. It was he who also noted to the same American reporter the very insightful observation that “you cannot live in Gambia if you don’t have a sense of humor.” So it’s fair to say Governor John Paul knew Gambians.)

The fact is, on the trajectory we are, it would take us a hundred years to sort out the mess we’ve slowly stuck ourselves in. The truth is, on the surface, the Gambia is the same old tiny Nano-state with an easy-going populace that is perplexingly contented with the barest of endowments that god has blessed them with. But look closer, or listen keener and you’ll see and hear something that is very different and –frightening! Gambians have never been more divided or hateful towards each other as we are currently. And even as one is astounded at the depth we have already fallen to, our self-anointed owner who finds this state of affairs useful, continues to tear us asunder through his policies, words, and actions. He continues to do anything that will set one largely miserable group of Gambians on another largely miserable group of Gambians just to divert attention from the crass criminality that is his reign. And it’s working like a charm!

Like the very erudite Foday Samateh posited some time ago, there is “something still rotten” about present day Gambia. Make that “very rotten.” That because, the Gambia’s current story is a tale of one country, two nations, that are separate and unequal. Lest you haven’t noticed, do a double-take and ponder this: in Gambia today, there is no right, there is no wrong; everything depends on who has said or done what! Mull this over.

Nothing illustrates this shameful state of affairs more than the on-going persecution of one Mr. Gumbo Touray of the University of The Gambia. (I do not know, have never met, and have never even heard of this Mr. Touray until months into the scandal he blew the whistle on. Initially, I actually thought there must be some sort of typo when I read of his name because I’ve never heard of anyone name “Gumbo” up to this point in my life. The name conjures up images of New Orleans and African hostages, and so on. But I’m assured by someone that Gumbo is the gentleman’s real name, which is beside the point.) Anyhow, as I understand it, Mr. Touary, a life-long educationist, has committed the High Crime of submitting a “false report” to The Big Man about a public official in the person of one Professor Muhammad Kah, Gambia University Vice Chancellor. The funny thing is, two separate public institutions –outside of Mr. Touray’s control and influence, tasked with investigating the whole affair, have publicly buttressed and seconded almost all the serious allegations Touray has made against Professor Kah. One of the reports actually uncovered facts that Touray did not dwell on. Not to mention the deluge of testimonials from staff – both current and past, as well as countless students echoing the same sentiments Mr. Touray expressed in his “false report.” What is false about someone saying something that actually happened as he said it did, and testified to by independent others?

Essentially, Mr. Touray has been exonerated by virtually every Stakeholder group in this shameful saga except for the all-important Big Man who literally now personifies the Gambian State. In short, the only literate Gambians who read the investigative reports on this scandal and find Touray’s allegations false are The Big Man and his colorful non-PhD PhD Secretary General Njogu Bah. Otherwise, in both the formal, and the anecdotal, Touray wins handily in terms of people willing to bear him witness. How powerful is this Gumbo Touray fellow that he can make people and public institutions he has no control or influence over repeat the same things he is saying about another Gambian?

Yet, Mr. Gumbo Touray, the man who is clearly motivated by the need to bring exemplary leadership and probity to the Gambia’s embryonic and struggling university wanna-be, continues to be held in legal quicksand, for daring to say publicly what so many of his colleagues and students have apparently been grumbling about silently for a long time. But then Touray inhabits the unenviable one of the two contemporary Gambias.

Another inhabitant of Gumbo Touray’s Gambia, and a man whose case highlights the duplicity and fraudulent use of the judicial machinery to tar, impugn, jail, and destroy Gambians who have run afoul of our imperial Big Man, is the former head of the civil service, Mr. Ousman Jammeh. He, like so many other naïve, hypocritical, and or opportunistic educated Gambians who close their eyes to The Big Man’s naked criminality until he gets to them personally, got his comeuppance base on “the report H.E. received.” Apparently H.E. decides what report to believe and which not – regardless of the facts contained therein. Here is what I gathered on the report on Ouman Jammeh’s case:

The Gambia government set up a Commission to look after some real estate seized from some private interests, and tasked Mr. Serign Cham, then Permanent Secretary at the Finance Ministry to Chair the Commission. The intent is to sell the plots for government. (Serign is the nephew of a good friend of mine AK Jobe, and my junior by several years at St. Augustine’s High. I like the gentleman – so this is not about him.) Anyhow, to cut it short, The Big Man was not happy with how Serign handled his duties as Commission Chair, and quickly fired him. Per the “report H.E. received,” Serign was paid for months after his firing – emoluments totaling Ninety Thousand Dalasi. The money was deposited into Serign’s bank account. I’m told Serign never drew a cent from those deposits. In short, the Gambia government didn’t lose a single Butut. So, where does Ousman Jammeh come in here?

Now, this is where our Big Man’s wonderful genius takes over. You see, the office responsible for maintaining public employee records and pay information is the Personnel Management Office (PMO). But like every other Ministry, the PMO rolls up under the Office of the Secretary General. So it goes – per our Big Man, if the PMO should have stopped paying Serign Cham as a public employee months after he ceased to be one and it didn’t, then that is the responsibility of the Secretary General because the buck stops with him – not the head of PMO, not the government Treasurer, not the Finance Secretary. And it matters not whether government lost a Butut or not. So Ousman Jammeh was quickly arrested, arraigned, and charged within a matter of days – for allowing Serign Cham to be paid money deposited directly into Serign’s bank account that the latter never drew!

And it gets worse for Ousman Jammeh. You see, it turns out, one of his closest friends is former cabinet member, and serial wheeler-dealer Sillah Bai Sallah. Sillah Bai talked Ousman Jammeh into doing a “tentative” mea culpa (to plead guilty – he believes in dereliction of duty,) in order to make the powers-that-be favorably disposed to shoo the case away because of Ousman’s concurrence with his accusers that he was in fact derelict in his duties. The mea culpa is supposed to buy Sillah Bai the time to talk to the persecutors to drop the case – failing which, the judge is to allow Ousman Jammeh to withdraw his Plea and allow the case to proceed to full trial.

They sold this idea to Ousman Jammeh’s lawyer, who proposed this funny arrangement to the judge – one of the notorious Judge-for-hire at the Big Man’s beck and call. The judge accepted the arrangement with alacrity. Now, if Ousman Jammeh had enough sense, the eagerness with which his mea culpa was received by one of The Big Man’s notorious hatchet judges should have made him do a re-think. Especially considering that same judge refused to grant him bail, and insisted on keeping him jailed in remand. Alas, he did not. He placed his fate in Sillah Bai’s promise to talk to VP Isatou Njie, funny PhD Secretary General Njogu Bah, and The Big Man himself. Sillah Bai was sure he can prevail on the all-important trio to make the case go away.

As it turned out, Sillah Bai succeeded in meeting the two underlings, but was snubbed by The Big Man. Naturally, the hatchet judge, who like his many colleagues, survives by keeping his ears to the ground to read The Big Man’s intent where a plain directive is not forthcoming, quickly developed full-blown amnesia the minute he learnt that The Big Man had snubbed Sillah Bai. Changing a Plea – a tentative Plea? He’s never heard of such nonsense, and it won’t happen in his court! He flat out refused to allow Ousman Jammeh to change his Plea and moved immediately to sentence the man to three years in prison.

Long story short, Ousman Jammeh went from being Number One civil servant in the Gambia to Hard Time prisoner in the space of a week. It’s noteworthy that even his enemies are not accusing him of stealing a Butut. So what is he in prison for again? “The report H.E. received” was not about Ousman Jammeh, but that report has been used to jail him. “The reports H.E. received” seem to state that one Professor Muhammad Kah is in fact as crooked, nepotic and dictatorial as one Mr. Gumbo Touray suggested he is. Yet, instead of prosecuting Kah, it’s his main accuser who is being hounded for saying the same things two State-institution reports are saying about Kah!

Two Gambians; two set of reports; very different approaches to their cases by The Big Man; two predictable outcomes. And these are not isolated cases, but part of the very disturbing New Normal in Gambian public life. We shall expound on these two Gambias in Education, in Employment, in Commerce, in the Military, in New Speak (like in Winston Smith’s Animal Farm world,) etc. Any Gambian who is not worried by the hatred and bitterness that the discrimination against one set of Gambians by the other is engendering, is out of his or her mind. The potential for very ugly reprisal or retribution with the certainty of change, seem to be tending towards the inevitable. It’s simply frightening …

I recently finished reading the string of commentaries on the University of The Gambia (UTG) saga – belatedly. For what it’s worth, I agree with Dr. Saine, Sonko and Jeng wholeheartedly. I’m particularly struck by some of the rationalizations put out by some contributors – but especially the one from Dr. Ebrima Sall, UTG Board Member. I couldn’t stop laughing at the irony of the points Dr. Sall advanced as yardsticks in a university’s quest to becoming relevant, and an institution of substance. Dr. Sall listed every quality desirable in a university administrator, and a university’s standard governance style that his friend Dr. Kah does NOT have, nor govern UTG in – from frugality in how the university’s meager resources are spent, to transparency in how the university’s affairs are conducted. Like a senior adviser to then Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton did long ago by giving her boss’ detractors an apt description of her man’s problems by voicing her fatigue with “all these Bimbo eruptions,” Dr. Ebrima Sall has unwittingly succeeded in highlighting Dr. Kah’s glaring inadequacy in so many important areas of modern university administration. And therein lays the gist of Dr. Muhammad Kah’s problems.

You see, even if one dismisses HALF of all the allegations against Vice Chancellor Muhammad Kah as exaggeration, the other half remaining are damning enough to cost him his job – under any dispensation where facts matter. But this is present day Gambia, where the Big Man is bigger than the State, and crime and punishment all depend on the relationship one has with this single individual Big Man. So for now, Dr. Kah can thump his nose at all of us nobodies who want him to resign (I join those that call for his ouster.)

But if history is anything to go by, he is now working on borrowed time. His current protector WILL turn on him, and humiliate him in ways he could never have imagined. And The Big Man will use the same report he is now dismissing as the basis for his action. And what took him so long? Well, X and Y lied to him (remember H.E. has never made a mistake in his life. It’s never his fault.) Can’t say, you haven’t been warned.

And for those urging people to restrain from dilating on this issue because of concerns about sub-judice, doesn’t there have to be an expectation of a fair dispensation of justice first? Since when has justice been a standard in a political case in which The Big Man shows interest in today’s Gambia? Given what we know for a fact in terms of how the judiciary is being misused in this era, what would be the basis for optimism for justice in this case? Because this is a political case. This is precisely why I wonder if some of us Gambians are now willingly going along with the propagandized version of Gambian public life that has very little to do with reality. It’s a given that the government ‘s sympathizers, and apologist will want to maintain the lie that things are normal in Gambia. It is the duty and responsibility of the rest of us to blow the cover off of this façade so that the world community will see the government for what it is. Gumbo Touray’s only chance is for ordinary people to champion his cause and keep it in the limelight. If for nothing else, it exposes the sham that is the Gambian judicial system for all to see. Otherwise, he’ll be railroaded like so many others before him! And the only viable option for him would be to get on all fours to beg for his freedom – thus earning The Big Man another bogus opportunity to gloat about “pardoning” a man who should never have been charged, much less imprisoned, in the first place.