Renown Gambian professor and doctorate accountant in the United States, Dr. Lamin Conteh has called out Gambia’s National Assembly members with lands snatched from the poor indigenous of New Yundum in the Western Division to respectfully return what fairly belongs to the people.

A moratorium on the sale of land for at least a reasonable period of time in The Gambia has been suggested by the learned U.S professor of  who appealed to the country’s political party leaders to be engaged in the discourse. 

An anecdote he gave was a personal encounter he once had with a Gambian that asked him sometime ago, if he wanted a land in Brufut. He rejected the offer owing to the fact that his own grandmother’s mother Mai Sanneh, a relative of the late Nyimansata Sanneh Bojang was from Brufut. 

It would be ugly to grab a piece of land from those people. Like the PDOIS  legislator’s show of empathy to the poor by rejecting the Barrow government’s “take from the poor and hand to the rich, or at least appearing rich in The Gambian standard, Conteh refused to grab a piece of Brufut.

Dr. Conteh was speaking in an exclusive with forGambia radio on Saturday, June 13^th 2020. He listed all the Gambian legislators currently in possession of the New Yundum allocations. He stated he has already spoken to some of the law makers.

Fatoumata (Ousainou) Touma Njie of Banjul was one of those who told the erudite accountant that she would not return hers. He added that Foni Kansala NAM, Amul Nyassi also maintained that he was not giving back the land. He did call more NAMS, some of whom responded to him in messages. He is hopeful that some of them may return the plots.

If you look at these land forfeiting and grabbing rampant in The Gambia today, the doctor went on, “where will we bury our departed souls in cemeteries; where will our children have play grounds?” We put it to him how African leaders and people in positions of power see office as a means to affluence. He could only reiterate our position, seeing what is exactly happening in The Gambia right now.

He praised four representatives of the PDOIS, Halifa Sallah, Sidia Jatta, Alhajie Sillah, and Suwaibou Touray) who rejected the land deals by a government that vowed to have campaigned to end misrule and taking advantage of the poor as did happen to the people of Brufut earlier in the 22-year rule of Yahya Jammeh.

There is an attempt by TAF Global’s Mustapha Njie to acquire another strip, this time in the venerable Doctor’s own Faraba area in Kombo East. His response to that was an appeal to the rightful owner of the plot to reject TAF’s advances.

He added that it was the then Kombo East legislator, Lamin Kiti Jabang in the first republic who insisted on his constituency’s exemption from the widely accepted norm that “Government owns all land in the Kombos.” That didn’t apply to Kombo East, he maintained.

The doctor appealed to all National Assembly members, irrespective of party affiliation to return the lands. He enumerated all of them, citing their constituencies and which parties they belong to. He didn’t spare even the nominated members or defectors. The house speaker, Mariam’s Denton’s name ditto.

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