By Ebrima Papa Colley (Gambiano)
With hundreds of Gambian women dying from child-birth related complications, especially in Brikama’s poorly-equipped Health Center, rising murder rates, including ECOMIG soldiers killing Gambians or physically assaulting them as to leave them in blood, extremely expensive cost of consumer goods unleashing extreme hell of a hardship on poor Gambians, the chief architect of all these suffered another shock of his life in this editor’s own hometown of Brikama on Thursday, September 23rd 2021.
The streets of Brikama looked like a bunch of kids organizing a “Kankurang” or “Zimba” show as the biggest region with hundreds of thousands of voters refused to line the streets to welcome the signatory to their hardship since casting ballots in the December of 2016.
President Barrow was coming from his so-called “Meet-the-People Tour” or sometimes “Meet-the-Farmers Tour,” depending on which political phraseology to draw excuses from in wasting, again, the impoverished nation’s meager resources that could have been spent on basic supplies at, again, the same Brikama Health center and other facilities that have now become death-traps for many expecting mothers.
Barrow’s low turn-out in the streets of Brikama
You could hear the Eye Africa commentator in the president’s convoy propagandizing that huge crowds are with the president along the streets of Brikama. We have always loved Eye Africa. But please, you could tell your commentator was lying through his teeth in Brikama about Barrow’s so-called big crowd. Please check the pictures and video we have published for yourself. They were shot by ordinary Brikama natives and passersby.
As we watched everything thousands of miles away, the Eye Africa camera crew following Africa’s worst president deliberately refused to pan the cameras. For simplicity, panning the camera isn’t zooming. It means slowly moving the camera from left to right for a wider viewer scope. Panning the camera would have caused more damage to Barrow because everyone will see the poor turn-out on a bigger fresco.
Eye Africa focused on just the narrow streets of Brikama where even fifty people will naturally look big on camera. Also, the Barrow lying team, as always, thought they could fool Gambians when they placed Jaliba Kuyateh along the street to attract an even bigger crowd. But people of West Coast knew better and still refused to come out.
But why bring Jaliba to boost your street political date with people who hate you because you have let their women die in seriously poor hospitals without gloves or blood banks? Old habits die hard, especially for an inveterate liar! Remember the Wally Seck lie the NPP told Gambians before their launching at the stadium? More than half the stadium left when they realized they were fooled!
The Eye Africa commentator didn’t seem to know Brikama well enough. He was lying that “another” huge crowd came out for Barrow when they arrived in Kalagi, earlier. Please we don’t know if the said commentator works for Eye Africa, but he was the one commentating on the channel during Barrow’s turn-out disaster. But he struggled relentlessly to paint it as a success story.
This alone is enough proof that this wasn’t any “Meet-the-People” or “Meet-the Farmers Tour” where the people or farmers’ needs or problems would be discussed by the president and other delegates in a fruitful interaction with the poor. Instead, it was used for stinking politics and campaigning. A good president would have visited the Brikama Health Center, interact with staff and patients, and addressed the killer problems. But has Adama Barrow ever done that?
We could see the streets of Brikama, where this editor grew up, walked on and along for decades! And here is what those same streets have for a heartless president:
We light not funeral piers for our dead
Nor do we ask for golden beds of lead
For our departing sisters in frightful labor
Before their demise; and without favor
From our thoughtless, callous president
Now vote-begging from a good resident
Piers, if any, would have lit the skies
Or yet smoked us blacker to sever ties
Of kin where young mothers perish
For selfish, venal, sadist Barrow to fetish
Over power and longevity in it—O men
And women of intellect; say not Amen!
Our streets we could see with pursed-lips
Hurling curses at a leader who keenly slips
Away from his responsibilities the while
His pockets full of our blood, and his file
This stealthy, corrupt and blood-stained
Vote him out—for Gambia needs retained!