WHAT HUMANBEING WITH A RIGHT MIND WOULD SEIZE MODERN AGRIC EQUIPMENT FROM POOR AFRICAN FARMERS TO REPLACE THEM WITH DONKEYS? WAS THIS LOW IQ OR JUST SELF-HATE AND WICKEDNESS?
Did the agricultural supplies including over 200 tractors and two pest control air tractors poor Gambian farmers were benefiting from belong to Jammeh or poor Gambians?
Gambians love to hire foreign artists, pay huge sums of money to them, and crawl on ice or fire to attend shows where they would compete in extravaganza—in most cases, throw money at artists just to be recognised in society when the country is one of the poorest, not just in Africa, but the world at large. But here is something Gambians need to worry about right now—not anytime next year or five years from now. We mean right now! The Gambia We Want Show came with extremely important points in their program we came across and thought it necessary to disseminate. Three fine gentlemen, Dr. Manneh, Larey Ceesay, and Lamino were the interlocutors. The show was uploaded Friday, May 16th 2025.
Dr. Manneh mentioned that the world body FAO (Food and Agricultural Organisation), this year, foresees a possible locust invasion for Gambia’s region. When this editor was a little boy around 1990, millions of locusts descended on Gambia. Locusts look like grasshoppers, bigger, and sometimes yellow and devour anything that is green when they arrive.
The Jawara government, to its credit had to appeal to the government of Italy or some Western country for help. We could see white pilots flying the planes low all over the country, sometimes in very low altitude where we could see their faces and helmets not too far from palm trees in Brikama. We used to watch them in wonder as kids! We really thank the three men in this ECO TV program and hope that they continue to enlighten us.
Please click the link below to watch the full show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNGBz7TSY6M
We highlight key points we think very pertinent to food sufficiency or insufficiency if these creatures hit or not: Perhaps for the sake of easy communication, people refer to these machinery as “Jammeh assets.” We at forGambia believe that they belong to The Gambia, not Jammeh. We don’t believe Jammeh bought over 200 tractors and two air tractors for himself or for pleasure. Please read these few highlights of the show:
- FAO states locust invasion possible this year in 2025
- Air tractors can’t be hired in the sub-region due to current shortage
- The ones Gambia had were sold off with the aircraft that belonged to Jammeh. They were sold to some guy in Mali.
- “That person came to the airport and removed the engines from those aircraft, took those to Mali first and then they came back for the aircraft themselves…they didn’t trust the engine laying around” [in The Gambia]. That’s how valuable these machines were!
- “If we get hit by locust this year as the FAO said is possible, we could suffer a massive crop loss. And we had those machines here but due to looting of the Jammeh assets, the country now stands at a loss.” Manneh continued, “The minister of agriculture should worry about these instead of arresting Mayor Rohey Malick Lowe or Essa Mbaye Faal. He should be thinking of arresting locust invasion.”
- Jammeh, “with all his idiosyncrasies,” according to Manneh, trained two Gambian pilots and a flight engineer to operate those planes. Manneh stated Jammeh used to pay engineers from the United States to operate those air tractors—thus the need to train the two Gambian pilots in order to offset that foreign cost.
- Jammeh also spent over fifty-thousand Pound Sterling for additional equipment for each of the two planes (over 100,000 Pounds) as they arrived without them. Gambia continues to lose!
