*Gambia on a roll – part two*


By Baba Galleh Jallow


Gambia on a roll. That’s how I called my recent critique of Elizabeth
Ohene’s omission of Gambia from her story on the fall of veteran leaders in
Africa 2017. The title was deliberate. I knew it would raise some eyebrows
in some quarters of Gambian public opinion, and for good reasons too. And
it was absolutely not to romanticize our momentous achievement in kicking a
dictator out of power by peaceful means and epic nationalism. One
appreciates the daunting challenges our country faces as we enter 2018. We
all know that it is not all smiles and roses in the Smiling Coast of West
Africa. The picture is bright and hopeful, but not as bright and hopeful as
we would wish it. But as I would try to demonstrate later in this piece,
Gambians have much to celebrate and be hopeful for in 2018 and beyond. But
first, why do some Gambians have good reason to doubt that Gambia is on a
roll?


At several crucial levels of existence Gambia is certainly not on so much
of a roll.  Psyche-blasting blackouts are a common pain many Gambians
endure on a daily basis, sometimes several times a day. The specter of
sudden blackouts snapping Gambians almost out of their minds is common, as
is the sharp sense of powerlessness that is a recurrent and immutable
effect of blackouts. A unique and ubiquitous feature of African life across
the continent, blackouts represent a form of psychological torture whose
dire consequences are yet to be fully understood. One has a strong feeling
that Africa’s sluggish pace is to a very large extent a consequence of her
governments’ failure to find creative solutions to the electricity deficit
problem. Apart from being generally bad for business, both public and
private, blackouts numb creativity and initiative, they delay the
completion of vital projects and transactions, they cause the destruction
of machinery and food, and they inspire a state of mental impotence that
renders people incapable of getting excited and therefore adequately
motivated to do their work, whatever that is. Blackouts are an urgent
emergency in the New Gambia that needs to be redressed with utmost urgency.
One has a feeling that if the solar energy option is seriously considered,
it might prove vital to the solution of our persistently chronic national
energy crisis. Blackouts are simply unhealthy for national development.
They hold us back and keep us down. They must be eliminated.


And then there our strange neighborhood streets. Driving on a street in
Churchill’s Town, London Corner, Tabokoto and other communities in the
Greater Banjul Area is like driving up and down mini mountains, driving in
and out of mini valleys, and tilting sideways and back as if one were
driving on the rugged sides of mini hills. In the rainy season of course,
both people and cars have to wade in large stretches of muddy hills and
through mud-filled valleys to get to their destinations. The time wasted,
the health risks involved, especially the breeding of mosquitoes, and the
stench of the pools require urgent action for redress. Sometimes, all it
takes is a little creativity and some modest funds to solve these seemingly
unsolvable problems that stick with us and oppress us from day to day, year
in, year out, for decades on end. How about a homegrown corps of road
engineers and street builders? How about engaging local builders and masons
and using cement and other locally available materials to build simple but
sturdy paved streets? How about a ten year project of street-building in
The Greater Banjul Area? We certainly have the youthful manpower to train
locally on the art and science of street building. And with firm commitment
to the project, we can garner funds to see it through.


Gambia is also not on a roll in the traffic and space management sectors.
Sometimes, especially around the time of religious festivals, it takes an
hour or more to drive from Westfield junction to Serekunda market, a
distance we can cover in about two minutes under normal circumstances. The
same traffic madness characterizes Westfield roundabout itself, the
Westfield-Churchill’s Town stretch, the Turntable area in Brusubi and many
other spaces around the Greater Banjul Area. The problem stems from the
fact that over the decades, our governments have not been able to adapt to
changing circumstances in the nation space, in this case a growing
population of both people and vehicles. More and more people live in the
Greater Banjul Area and more and more vehicles drive on our roads. Yet, the
spaces of activity for both humans and vehicles remain unexpanded. The
result is a personification of public disorder, not of the violent sort,
but of the sort manifested in a rough jumble of human activity without
planning or due attention. Everyone seems to be going everywhere at the
same time, and everyone exudes a sense of urgency rivaled by everyone else.
There is a certain diminishing of the human person caught in such disorder
and a concurrent privileging of individual aims and conveniences over the
collective goodwill. While Gambian culture ensures a certain restraint in
human interactions within these chaotic traffic conditions, they have a
negative cumulative effect that will increasingly diminish our humanity and
empathy, and cumulatively increase our propensity to be stressed out and
hostile to each other. Installing more traffic lights, expanding current
roads and/or building alternative road networks will help arrest this
increasingly damaging public disorder in our society.


And then there are several bad laws from the old Gambia still sitting in
our law books. Two prominent examples are the Public Order Act and the
newspaper registration law. It is unfortunate that people who want to
register a newspaper in the New Gambia have to abide by a law the old
regime used to stifle the voices and opinions of Gambians. To register a
newspaper, people are still required to post a very large bond and to
submit to the registrar’s office the lease to a landed property. While most
of the bad laws are expected to be expunged from our books during the
proposed constitutional review process, this newspaper registration law
needs to be annulled immediately. This will open up and enrich our media
landscape and allow Gambians interested in establishing newspapers and
participating constructively in the national discourse to do so without
unnecessary hassles. Repressing public opinion and controlling the national
narrative – two main reasons for this draconian media law – are no longer
relevant to our national trajectory. They must not be allowed to stifle our
national genius and stunt our collective creativity. I hope our able
Information and Justice Ministers will help cement public confidence in the
New Gambia by taking swift action to have the newspaper registration law
repealed sooner rather than later. Doing so will make Gambia a more hopeful
and much happier place in 2018 and beyond. And it will earn the government
more respect both locally and internationally.


In spite of all these daunting challenges among many others, I maintain
that Gambia was on a roll in 2017 and has entered 2018 on a roll. For one
thing, we peacefully kicked out a brutal dictator and we are in the process
of finding out how he squandered our national resources. We are also on the
verge of systematically finding out how and why he brutalized so many
Gambians and non-Gambians in the past twenty-two years. One clearly
witnesses a sense of purpose in the sittings of the Janneh Commission. One
notices a drastic change in the deliberations of our national assembly
where healthy debates occur on issues of national interest, a far cry from
the rubber stamp banality of a previous era. And one sees deliberate
planning and consultation in preparation for the launching of the Truth,
Reconciliation and Reparations Commission. Equally encouraging, there is
ample evidence that freedom of expression and of association are undeniable
realities in the New Gambia. Any and all efforts – deliberate or otherwise
- that have so far been made to stifle these two fundamental freedoms have
been called out by the Gambian public. Even the party of the dictator
freely campaigns across the country, advocates its programs, criticizes the
sitting government, and makes claims and promises as to what it will do and
not do if it ever comes back to power. So yes, on the score of tolerance
for differing opinions and freedom of association, we do have some ground
to cover, but we are on the right track and growing.


And then one cannot help but admire and feel proud of the caliber of
Gambian minds on social media. Facebook, at least what I see of it, is full
of posts by Gambians in areas that were not the stuff of open and public
Gambian discourse a few years ago. Yes, there are the political squabbles
and all the other unpleasant stuff posted by Gambians. At the same time,
one comes across a good number of posts touching on issues of the human
mind, on what it means to be human and on the virtues of pleasant human
interactions based on our own indigenous traditional norms and customs.
There are also very progressive engagements on issues of national
development of the sort discussed above, as well as critiques of public
policy and action that can only bode well for our country. All said, the
proliferation of intelligent ideas, thoughts and suggestions on Gambian
social media circles and our local press is genuine cause for optimism. We
are identifying our problems, and we are talking openly, sincerely and
intelligently about them. For this and this reason alone, we can afford to
be genuinely optimistic.


Society is always a work in progress. Nations and states are works in
progress. The difference between countries is not a difference of essence,
it is a difference marked by particular societies’ capacity to identify
their problems, talk intelligently about them, and devise solutions for
them. We cannot hope to rid ourselves of national problems because they too
evolve and emerge with time. But we can solve most of our current problems
with a little bit of creativity and determination. And we can continue to
identify, engage and resolve our emergent national problems as they arise.
Gambia 2018 should be about modestly but strongly maintaining our
collective “can do” attitude and taking the commensurate right actions to
raise our country to the next level. We can do this.


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