How Amadou Samba’s Saga Signifies A Gambian Predicament

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November 15, 2014


    Amadou Janneh
BY: Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-in-Chief

When news of Gambian lawyer-turned businessman, Amadou A. Samba’s scuffle
inside an elevator with members of a private security firm at Dakar’s
luxurious Radisson Blue hotel broke Saturday, it ignited a campfire of
resentment, nervousness, excitement, and debate. Only Moments later, did
ominous images of Gambia’s high profile businessman began to fill Facebook
pages and within minutes, the hottest issue on Gambian social media was
Amadou Samba. For better or for worse, his story has trended, is trending
and will be trending for some time to come given that the matter is now a
subject of criminal inquiry before the Senegalese Police. As most matters
Gambian these days, the hysteria and badmouthing conspired to create a
combustible combination of acrimony and prejudice and at a deafening
crescendo for that matter.

Several of the businessman’s concerned friends and family members
frantically called The Gambia Echo expressing their anger and frustration
over this worrisome development, that an innocent and easy-going Amadou
Samba, who to many a Gambian epitomizes what the Americans call “a
self-made man”, an icon and a luminary in every sense of the word, was
inadvertently caught in a melee with so-called Gambian freedom fighters or
Internet revolutionaries who have vowed to unseat Gambia’s healer-leader,
Yaya Abdul Aziz Jamus Junkung Jammeh—Babili Mansa (Mandinka for the King
who builds bridges across The River Gambia) and arguably, an indisputable
alter ego of the lawyer-businessman.

Ever since this incident with the hoopla and brouhaha it generated, various
theories have emerged, inter alia, wild allegations of Samba’s complicity
with unnamed Guinean men to potentially identify and abduct, Sheikh Sidia
Bayo, a 32-year old French citizen of Gambian parentage and probably
disappear him for eternity. While some commentators suggested caution, some
expressed anger and some still celebrated that the forced altercation Mr.
Samba was subjected to, was a coup de theatre for The Gambia’s new Napoleon
Bonaparte in his effort to unseat the Gambian leader. Simply put, if you
can’t get him, they argue, get his friend to teach him a lesson, similar to
what in Mr. Samba’s own legal profession is called vicarious liability.

Beneath and beyond the Dakar-Radisson Blue façade however, we at The Gambia
Echo hold a different view. Despite the fact that Mr. Samba’s friend,
President Yaya Jammeh is an avowed arch rival to us and has blocked our
newspaper to Gambian readers for many years now, we think engaging Amadou
Samba in a fist fight, brawl, melee or whatever name you choose, based on
mere circumstantial evidence or suspicion from so-called counter
intelligence speculators, bereft of depth and breadth quite frankly, speak
to preposterous monstrosity. And why?

Notwithstanding its many complex networks of partisan politics and
seemingly cumbersome legal system, credit must be given where it is
merited. There is evidence aplenty that Dakar is a civilized city and
Senegal is a country that has ratified numerous international instruments
and conventions that respect the dignity and sanctity of human life with a
transparent legal system that upholds the sacred principles of due process
and the rule of law. Senegal is no ordinary country where citizens can be
arrested for merely holding contrary views to the status quo; it operates a
serious and viable democratic structure with an independent judiciary not
under the whips and caprices of a marauding monarch with kakistocratic
propensities.

Sheikh Sidia Bayo, the Ceremonial-Gambian-Head-of-state-in-waiting at a
cosy hotel room overlooking the Atlantic coastline from where he hopes to
topple Yaya Jammeh, knows all these impressive legal and democratic
credentials about Dakar and Senegal without which he could not have even
contemplated announcing his readiness to launch a military offensive
without risking arrest or disappearance. And lest we forget, well before
Bayo entered the political scene with clownish bravado, Senegal and Dakar
have hosted numerous African leaders as exiles and despite sustained
international pressure to extradite them, Senegal would not relent lest
they end up being summarily executed as obtains in most countries in the
West African sub region where constitutional due process remains Utopian.
Unlike Senegal, in most of the West African sub region, the judiciary
operates at midnight, an apt metaphor reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa
but still operational in the continent.

Our Findings—What Really Happened At The Radisson Blue, Saturday?

In tandem with journalistic ethics, ever since the scary news of Amadou
Samba’s brawl broke, The Gambia Echo has been digging deeper beyond the
headlines and today, we report with unassailable evidence on what allegedly
transpired at the Radisson Blue.

According to our most credible sources close to the investigations in
Dakar, both Amadou Samba and Sidia Bayo were guests of the hotel which
invalidates the claim that Samba was an intruder. Asked if Amadou Samba has
ever stayed in the hotel before, our source said “numerous times and over a
span of decades, the Radisson has been Samba’s choice.”

Unlike Samba, Sidia Bayo has been in the hotel for almost a month if not
more, The Echo gathered and whenever in Dakar, he hires private security
operatives as personal handlers since he vowed to unseat Yaya Jammeh
forcefully.

According to a senior investigator, moments before the melee unfolded, The
Gambia’s former Information Minister turned human rights campaigner against
Yaya Jammeh’s government, Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh, was seen at the hotel
and reportedly had a brief cordial encounter with Amadou Samba by the
vestibule of the magnificent building. “Mr. Sankareh, we have CCTV footage
of the entire drama and once the matter goes to court it will all be there
for the world to see”, our source claimed. “They shook hands and each went
about his own business while Dr. Janneh even respectfully addressed Samba
as his brother-in-law.” Only moments later, our competent source reveals,
Amadou Janneh was seen with Sidia Bayo who was apparently very nervous, a
nervousness that our source likens to infantile paranoia. Then without the
slightest provocation, no sooner had Amadou Samba been spotted heading
towards the elevator, than three professional Senegalese wrestlers also
involved in private security matters confronted Samba posing as agents of
Senegalese National Security. They told Samba that he was under arrest for
espionage and confronted him with a barrage of security related questions
leading Samba to believe for a moment that the trio-impostors were genuine
National Security agents. Bemused and speechless, a nervous Samba
reportedly invoked verses from the Holy Koran and told the impostors that
he was not a spy as alleged and had no interest in espionage as he was a
businessman on purely business related errands but they wouldn’t just let
him go. Instead, they seized his freedom, shook him ferociously, wrestled
him to the ground and held him by the waist and leg as he helplessly wailed
with pain while Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh allegedly rushed to the scene
taking the ominous still photos that later surfaced on Facebook. The Gambia
Echo has tried to get Dr. Janneh’s side of the saga to no avail.

However, as the wailing got louder, the hotel security rushed to the scene
and only after their intercession that Amadou Samba regained his freedom
with a lot of praise to Allah. “These thugs really wanted to kill me and
had I not called your attention, (he allegedly told the Radisson security
team), they were out to kill me.” Amid the commotion, my sources reveal,
Dr. Amadou Janneh was allegedly confronted by the hotel security who wanted
to confiscate his camera, but the former lifer (NOT death row inmate as
reported earlier) at The Gambia’s notorious Mile Two Central Prisons, who
himself was amnestied thanks to Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr. in 2012, quickly
melted from the scene never to be seen again. My sources maintain that the
CCTV footage covers the entire drama as it unfolds and pretty soon, it will
be public knowledge.

Reveal my competent sources, the police were immediately called to the
scene and when an armed team descended on the hotel, the so-called State
Security Agents-impostors were arrested bringing a closure to this
lawlessness where rank-and-file operators posed as state agents. As Amadou
Samba made a cautionary statement, the culprits were thrown in police cells
pending investigations. Samba has also reportedly hired a high-profile
Dakar advocate (lawyer) to “zealously pursue these scoundrels”, my sources
say.

As we went to press, sources close to the investigation say Dr. Amadou S.
Janneh is at large and Dakar police are in hot pursuit. While we cannot
verify this, news reaching The Echo just now report that Dr. Janneh has in
fact, been arrested in Karang and is being held in police custody amid
investigations into a potentially embarrassing story.

Echo Analysis

Thus Mutatis mutandis, how on earth could Mr. Bayo (a French tourist) have
his bodyguards from a private security firm assault Mr. Samba without the
slightest provocation (being a private citizen, under no national or
international warrant) in a hotel elevator, and wrestle him to the ground
in the first place? Where were the nearest Dakar Police Department whose
duty logic dictates, it is to keep the peace and effect arrest? Where were
the Dakar Gendarmerie whose policing competence is of highest repute even
in nearest Gambia during the defunct Senegambia Confederation? These and
similar questions continue to exercise our minds as we wrestle with this
unfortunate incident borne purely out of what an investigator called
“acting on bad intelligence”; whatever the oxymoron may mean.

In our view, even if Amadou Samba had entered the hotel with a dozen NIA
officers to abduct Bayo, common sense dictates that as a French-born
citizen, he would have called the French Embassy with closest proximity to
his hotel and alert Senegalese Security/police or have the hotel security
guys secure his alleged assailants pending the arrival of the competent
forces to bring his alleged/potential abductors to book. To us, that would
have make a FANTASTIC HEALINE but that has not just been the case. What we
have here is cheap propaganda, the proverbial storm in a tea cup, mere
hyperbole; a familiar scene in these cyber warfare where bandits and
political wannabes continuously masquerade as heroes and heroines, Princes
and Princesses of glory—and believe it or not, this is our Gambian
predicament. Everybody is an Alhagi yet none has performed the hajj!

Amadou Samba is a bonafide businessman whose prime goal is to maximise
profit and like most business persons across the spectrum, he too, has to
cautiously navigate the waters as it were to reach safer shores. As a
private businessman, Samba has the damn right to go anywhere as long as he
remains law-abiding. To the best of our investigative knowledge, we have
never heard Samba being under any international arrest warrant limiting his
freedom of movement and association.

Amid the chaos and lunacy, some had alleged that Amadou Samba presides over
The Gambia’s Judicial Service Commission and he may have advertently or
otherwise, been party to the August, 2012 executions. Seminal stupidity or
parochial narrowness? Amadou Samba is neither judge nor jury, he is not a
minister of Justice nor Solicitor General, the fellow is neither Head of
Department nor a Cabinet Minister and has no powers whatsoever to either
have prisoners executed nor their scheduled executions commuted.

And lest we forget, during the executions, it was our own sister—VP Isatou
Njie-Saidy, our firebrand politician, Lamin Waa Juwara, our jailed Attorney
General, Lamin Jobarteh and our jailed Secretary General, Njogu Lamin Bah
who among others took to the podium and zealously defended the executions
as sacrosanct manifestations of Gambian jurisprudential rendition and
therefore, legitimate.

Therefore, attacking Amadou Samba only because he is friends with Yaya
Jammeh is regrettable particularly in due consideration of the emerging
allegations that our own brother in the struggle, Dr. Amadou S. Janneh was
complicit in the so-called coup de theatre. It is because Amadou Janneh was
appointed Information Minister by Yaya Jammeh and it was during his tenure
that journalist Deyda Hydara was murdered by unknown bandits. Can we,
therefore, argue that because Dr. Janneh was Minister of Information at the
time of Deyda’s macabre murder, he was therefore, criminally liable and we
should be fisting and fighting Dr. Janneh? Absolutely not, but logically
yes only if we use their own barometer of judging Amadou Samba’s complicity
or vicarious liability as it were.

Stretched further, the most notorious bandits who may have committed the
worst crimes in The Gambia and fled are seen all of European capitals
especially, Paris where Mr. Bayo happens to live. How come he and his
fighters allow those criminals to continuously seek political asylum? Even
in Dakar, there are several elements who may have committed heinous crimes
and like the cowards they are, now try to use our Internet media to seek
protection. Some come as warriors only to get riches and flee the scene.

My fellow Gambians, I am neither prophet nor messiah, nor do have magic
solutions to our Gambian predicament but as a citizen like you, one who has
endured two decades of exile for no criminal wrongdoing but for love of
country like most of you, I would advise us not to be guided by emotions or
narrow nationalism, but law and order and continue to believe in the power
of due process, the rule of law and our Gambian culture of respect and
tolerance and unbreakable humanity which uniquely distinguishes us from
most others; that regardless of our limited territoriality, we command
respect among sovereign nations. Difficult and uncertain as things be seem
sometimes, let us continue to hold dear, the immortal words of the poet who
posits that “the future governs with a golden finger” and desist from acts
that may be counterproductive to all the sacrifices, each and all of us,
both home and in the Diaspora, have rendered over the years.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that great icon of the American Civil
Rights Movement, who paid the ultimate price to bring justice and equality
to the United States, once reminded his followers when bullets were flying
and innocent lives lost to racist White Anglo-Saxon Southern Protestants
(Wasps) thus: “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who
is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is
some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we
discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.”

Therefore, consistent with Dr. King’s philosophy, a centrepiece of our
messaging system in the Diaspora should be and must always be: love, our
human capacity to forgive, render the good and the best and fight to
suppress the “evil” in us. We hope this incident will be an eye-opener to
all of us actors and activists, human rights campaigners and political
rights crusaders to be always cautious with matters like this. Let us not
be oblivious of the indisputable fact that unlike many who stole Gambia
government wealth to the detriment of us all, Amadou Samba is a lawyer who
worked hard for his wealth with a track record of job creation through his
diverse investments. Today, thanks to his creative ingenuity, many a
Gambian family are able to put food on the table, send their children to
school and many, many more.

Finally, as writers and commentators we must always be guided and guarded
in all that we do for while the pen and radio have been great assets to
mankind, we have also seen evidence of their destructive path particularly
in Rwanda, in Burundi, in Congo, in Liberia and in Sierra Leone.

Editor’s Note: We had earlier reported that Dr. Amadou Janneh was a death
row inmate at the Gambia’s Mile Two Central Prisons. That is inaccurate.
Instead, he was a LIFER–SEVERING A LIFE SENTENCE. The error is deeply
regretted!

Source URL:
http://thegambiaecho.com/xp/how-amadou-sambas-saga-signifies-a-gambian-predicament/


Copyright ©2014 The Gambia Echo unless otherwise noted.



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