Adama Barrow’s presidential adviser, Dou Sano, in an audio could be heard boasting of fresh, untouched, air-free loads of money in a bag in a voter and loyalist-buying spree in Dippa Kunda. But that money, in Sano’s own words, would be dished after the formation of Adama Barrow’s own party. We interviewed UDP’s Serrekunda West legislator last July who told us that Gambia’s president is being misled by two uneducated advisers, in the persons of Dou Sano and Lamin Cham.
Only in Africa or Gambia, perhaps, will you see such a level of ignorance and desperate move to buy loyalty from an impoverished nation whose hospitals lack gloves or even blood banks. The Gambia had to beg for blood from neighboring countries recently in the wake of an acute shortage. As we write this, teachers’ salaries were late again recently. And no single teacher makes a fortune in The Gambia. So, paying a teacher salary isn’t splitting the atom. Just think of a fraction of a salary that is already meager. Yet, our government couldn’t pay them.
Recently, we put to the E.U Ambassador in The Gambia, H.E Attila Lajos about the level of corruption and misappropriation of public funds by government officials who think it imperative to live large at the sad expense of extremely impoverished and helpless Gambians. We directed the conversation and the national symposium to that area because of acts akin to Dou Sanno’s Dippa Kunda theatrical—all under the aegis of president Adama Barrow.
The E.U Amssador, without too much repetition, clearly told us about the organization’s €130 million remittance to the Gambia government, which sometimes comes in smaller installments bi-monthly. The ambassador was quick to reiterate that such cash comes from European taxpayer money and should never be taken for granted.
Dou Sanno is doing just that—taking the money for granted! The E.U dole-outs being dangled in front of would-be voters is as serious as a heart attack to those Europeans who struggle to pay bills somewhere in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Belgium, etc., only for Dou Sano to play Bill Gates in his new-found financial glory! But not even Bill Gates does this, or speaks like this. Nor would Trump or Steve Jobs if alive.
One may say, but Sanno’s money may not be E.U. Really? If E.U pulls out its support, Barrow’s Government will be guaranteed a ramshackle in just a matter of seconds. Reports reaching forGambia earlier say today’s richest purchasing power at the Brikama market is the ECOMIG soldiers when they load their trucks for “Nduga.” While the average Gambian struggles to buy daily grocery in its basics, their guests display a vaunt of fecundity.
Barrow makes two million Dalasis a year. His entire earnings from that for the last two years cannot fill a bag that can be displayed to a hungry crowd. Where are our national assembly members? Where are our opposition leaders? Is this just a film?
But such fecundity has its fountain siphoning from the cold and fret of taxpayers, also with other bills to pay, including grocery in Europe. Isn’t this why it’s so difficult to help Africans, especially Gambians? Dou Sanno’s Dippa Kunda stage-show is a classical for all opposition parties in The Gambia to nail the Barrow administration on. It is not forGambia that should direct the national discourse back home.
