Exactly eight years since Yahya Jammeh fled the country following his unexpected election loss to Adama Barrow, the question of his return has not always stayed far off the main political discourse in The Gambia.
Jammeh widely seen as a mercurial dictator for 22 years, had ruled the smallest nation on mainland Africa since his 1994 military coup ousted the government of the late independence leader Dawda Jawara under whom he worked as a state guard.
”Let them not run…whether anybody likes it or not, by the grace of the Almighty Allah I’m coming. The threats of sending me to jail, let them wait until I arrive and we’ll know who’s going to jail” Jammeh said in his latest monologue released to supporters of what remains of his Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) party.
There has been internal rumblings within the APRC ever since a splinter led by current national assembly speaker Fabakary Tombong Jatta joined President Barrow’s National People’s Party (NPP) in the lead up to the 2021 presidential elections.
Jammeh while initially silent on the move, eventually spoke against his party joining forces with his political nemesis who he accused in his monologue of running the country to the ground with reckless abandon.
What emerged was a ‘No to Coalition’ APRC faction which identified with his position which put great store in maintaining him as their leader in absentia.
Jammeh’s latest audio is an attempt to assume complete control of this splinter which was riven with petty squabbles and weakened by regular defections to other political persuasions.
Like all political movements, his words are a way of asserting control, stamping his authority on its members and sending a not so coded message to Barrow and his government that ending his lonely exile is always part of the script albeit without a timeline.
Not that the return of the former military-turned civilian ruler from his exile base in Equatorial Guinea looks imminent or even possible in the medium and long term, but his monologue suggesting just that has thrown down the gauntlet on Barrow and his government.
Although eight years have passed since he went into exile, Jammeh returning in whatever shape or form is generally seen as a distant possibility – arguably – but this has not stopped Gambians from debating the subject.
While many with sanguine views favour a quiet return for him devoid of all semblances of political life, skeptics of this persuasion believe Jammeh’s presence in the country could pose challenges as the nation still struggles to exorcise from itself and put behind it the last remaining demons of a difficult past under him.
Jammeh’s name is next to serious allegations of egregious human rights violations including unexplained murders, tortures, forced disappearances, rape and the balkanisation of Gambian society, all of which he and his former urchins have denied.
Obliquely referring to these accusations, Jammeh himself described them as ‘a bunch of nonsense’ by his successor who presides over a government which is the laughingstock of the world.
‘You are making the country suffer when in the past Gambians were proud and were respected wherever they went. Today they are the laughingstock. All sorts of crime are committed in The Gambia, with nobody ever been prosecuted and convicted, armed robbers, rapists, killers” he said.
He said the Gambian health system used to be the envy of other countries but under Barrow’s administration even details on the WHO website represent an indictment of the tragedies in hospitals and other medical facilities countrywide.
Speaking about those medical centres, Jammeh said ”they have become mortuaries and it saddens me to know that women who go there to deliver end up dead with their babies..and it is a lie” to suggest that the situation is not different from the past when he was in power.
He was also critical of his successor’s handling of the plight of farmers and the alleged neglect of the education system which saw over 50, 000 pupils drop out of school in 2021.
”It’s not funny, it’s sad and pathetic. They claimed that they bought a ferry, brand new ferry, less than three months in power, now it’s seven years, they cannot even maintain the ferries that were there and those were bought by my government” he said.
Throwing the gauntlet to Barrow, the exiled former leader added almost menacingly: “Inshallah a day of our rendezvous is coming and it will be a day of accountability. So whatever you are relying on, count on that, the day that the Almighty Allah has designated me to come, I will come, and let me find you there, dont run away. In fact if you run anywhere I’ll get you. Dont run away, stay there and arrest me and put me in jail”.
Referring to Ecowas’ role in his ouster and possible part in the process to hold him accountable for alleged crimes, Jammeh said: ”Let me be clear, I will not tolerate any sort of blackmail”.
WN/as/APA