I bet the Australian group (IEP) that ranked Gambia as such doesn’t have its founder Steve Killelea’s son walking in the streets of Serrekunda with even an Apple iPhone. See, this is the reason respected medical or professional journals usually require peer review. 

Who peer-reviewed Killelea and his group’s report? Did Killelea or any of his group members ever lived in The Gambia under Adama Barrow for two minutes? Mr. Killelea is an IT entrepreneur.

But there is more to the report than meets the eye. Remember the Australian company FAR Ltd., and the recent damning exposé on its furtive oil deals regarding Gambia’s A2 and A5 blocks which were initially billed above an 800-million-barrel prospectivity?

Well, these reports have piqued serious international attention where geoscientists and drilling experts chipped in. And boom goes the dynamite! Another Australian group suddenly emerges from the woodwork to rank Gambia for a peacefulness it can barely lecture anybody on? Some PR or window dressing gone wrong?

How about Banta Keita still a possible fictitious character as more drugs still show on our shores without consequences? How about the Belarus planes registered under Gambia when they have nothing to do with this tiny, impoverished yet corruption-infested country? 

How about those diplomatic passports traded to foreigners that seldom set foot in The Gambia? Or the case of Mansa Sumareh, a State House driver’s involvement in a $3,400 diplomatic passport procurement in 2022? 

If a driver could pull such a heist, what top government officials and their co-religionists could have been pulling since the advent of adamant Adama is anybody’s guess! Is this why we have been witnessing reports of millions missing?

Now we have the so-called Russian oil scandal with cover-up from alleged gov’t officials’ fingerprints. Senegal’s Pape Ale Niang, in 2021 reported similar cover-ups about huge drug deals in The Gambia bearing top gov’t operatives. 

Remember the drug-laden boat in The Gambia he reported, pomising to keep confidential names of some top gov’t culprits? But Niang’s revelations only attracted impulsive Ebrima G. Sankareh’s hot air with angry ad hominems.

Sankareh, a quizotic gov’t newsvoice called the Senegalese journalist, “errant reporter desperate to gain attention.” That “errant” reporter is now kaizer of Senegal’s RTS, triumphantly managing Gambia’s GRTS equivalent or a much larger counterpart. He bears more stellar a feat than behemoth Sankareh could only dream to posterity!

But lest you forget, it’s this same Orwellian Sankareh who rushed to subjudicially trumpet from his ‘you-know-where’ that Ousainou Bojang was a UDP member who even attended  the opposition party’s mass outcry prior. 

They are still dragging feet on Ousainou’s litigation. So, Sankareh, between your helium-driven ego and Pape Ale Niang’s deserved notoriety, who has really been more “erratic” and attention-craving? The stark difference is that Niang is a conscious, educated journalist—you are a ramshackle! 

With dizzying height of corruption, criminals, cartels, and all kinds of peddlers know that Gambia, today, is the best hub for trafficking clandestine operations—from grave descerators who exhume corpses to tons of cocaine maneuvers.

From mysterious murders, acquisition of diplomatic passport for exotic chicks, registration of companies that never exist or operate office(s) in the country, or registration of foreign planes that never belong to Gambia or any Gambian. Criminals always sniff for safe havens, a sixth sense they naturally grow.

And they, with laser beam albeit quite reptilian know which country is aptly fertile for the right move. Even child sex predators understand present Gambia is seismically corrupt. They can get away with just few bribes.

As for car drifters, this paper was contacted in July 2020 by some very patriotic police officers who wanted to maintain good traffic rules thanks to high rates of motor-vehicle related deaths in such a tiny country. They gave us data that ranked Gambia as number eight in the whole world when it came to road fatalities.

Guess what, one of the officers chased down some drifters (the Hagi Jawara-son types). He got on top of their car as they sped off. When he saw them heading to the highway with dare-devil speed, he jumped off and sustained serious injuries. What did the Barrow gov’t do? They transferred him to the provinces for trying to do his job in maintaining a “peaceful” Gambia! We don’t need to write more!”