A Good Read For President Barrow

(First Published in Kairo News September 14^th 2013, and Freedom Newspaper)

Yahya Jammeh, Please Listen

Dear President of the Land of Kunta Kinteh,

Every breathing creature desires a peace of mind. For this, we chase education, wealth, power,
health, fame, beautiful women, or even pomp and its fanfare. And Mr. President, the
Ozymandias in you isn’t any exception. Some foist high-handedness on a nation, claiming they
stir to help its people. If this is your bid, as has been tattooed on your Post-1994 rhetoric, an
increasing number of Gambian families mourning, groaning, or justly indignant of your actions
means you relinquish power now. If not, you’re not there to serve them. You’re there, perhaps, to pursue a quest. And shrouded in that quest might be a desire for self-glorification, if not a status morph.

 Mr. President, please be honest to yourself—are you really happy? Do you have a peace of
mind? It’s true you’ve brought some form of socio-economic change to the country. That’s not a
perk—nor is it a boon.  It’s a requirement for anyone basking in the comfort of that zone at
Quadrangle. I respect the axiom, “Give the devil its due.” But nineteen years of your wont and its Nebuchadnezzar-like propensity has harmed your people more than pleased them. Owing to the inveterate obstinacy parenthetical to your resolve, I reckon you won’t heed the gist of this article.

But that won’t stop me since a ‘hadith’ of the prophet asks us to correct a wrong with our hands first, next our tongue, then renounce it at heart if the first two fail. Bad anecdotes poke at a lot of African presidents. I know it dries your hemoglobin whenever anybody counsels you to quit power. I was a teenager when fate chiefly crowned thee. Now I’ve sprouted into manhood, charged with hot atoms of testosterone and wary of the speed of time. You promised to hand over power, didn’t you? Mining fossils from memory, you even announced that you were going to be there for only four years. The Daily Observer printed it and
subsequently sang a madrigal in a corrigendum because you later said you meant “For Years”,
not “Four Years”. Alliteration or alteration, time has spoken. This was around 1995 when I was
studying for middle school exams and we gathered around a small radio at a library for your
tirade of sketching a timetable and return to civilian rule. 

Also, Ebrima Ceesay of the Daily Observer heralded in an interview with you in your early days
about how seductive power could be. He tersely put it, “But if you taste the sweetness of
power.…” Ceesay’s interview can now be a parable in the country’s scriptures—or shall I say a
dirge to its morass? Mr. President, time flies, doesn’t it? The same memory chirps that you even
inserted a term limit into our constitution only to ravage it at a whim.
 The problem with you, Mr. President, is that you’re too steeped into the African
metaphysical—and with that, I mean the institution of marabouts and the instruments of the
preternatural. You’ve almost become Macbeth and his three witches. Perhaps your marabouts are prognosticating that “Yahya will never be vanquished until kanilai woods march to Nyambai
Forest!” Or perhaps, “No man ever savoring Benechin, Mbahal, or Domoda and later using the
toilet shall ever harm Yahya!” If the moral in these vignettes can’t usher you to wisdom, here’s
what the Qur’aan cautions: Pharoah elated himself in the land; Qaarun had an enormity of
fortune; The Aad and Thamuud, keen-sighted, carved out structures in the mountains, etc.
 Perhaps you’ll argue all the above figures were ungodly. Suleiman was a prophet. His kind of
authority and power hasn’t ever been matched. He ordered the wind to his prerogatives, enslaved Jinns, forced sovereign monarchs to acquiescence, and erected a palace suave with pearls. 

Mr. President, you’d never be like any of the above. But when Allaah’s time came, they seared into antiquity like they’ve never existed before. Just like the seers put it, “Man lives like he won’t
die—and dies like he hasn’t ever lived.” There will come a time when people will scarcely
mention Kanilai or Yahya Jammeh’s grave, just like no one did so a hundred years ago. See, Mr.
President, “We live by dying slowly every day. And die slowly by living every day”—just a
glimpse of my high school teacher’s favorite apothegm.

 Islam shuns the institution of marabouts and their esoteric art. Read Suuratul Baqara, verse 102. Our creator also loathes those who think they can inform of the future. Check Suuratul Sabaa’a, Verse 14 where He rebukes the Jinn. I have to spend some time in this part of the article on the institution of marabouts and black magic. This is because it looks like marabouts are ruling Gambia and its civil service. If your mind wasn’t eclipsed by these agencies of darkness, coupled with a personal fable, you wouldn’t have claimed a cure for HIV/AIDS. Gambia would have been pharmaceutically richer than Saudi Arabia is crude oil-endowed. Besides, you would have quit power long since and started your own hospital, a medical school, and a global trust fund.

Nothing would have accorded you a greater happiness—not even ruling The Gambia. You’d
have been celebrated as a rarity! Perhaps you don’t understand the side-effects of black magic. It also engenders charlatanry and utopian intellection. Almost every civil servant is routinely tutored by a marabout whom s/he thinks shepherds his fortune and goads his fate. This emanates from our credulity that there are ways to influence Allaah’s decrees. To get a job promotion, a successful visa interview, or even win a football match, people think they have to contract the services of a marabout. Nothing angers Allaah more! Perhaps, this is why you keep hiring and firing since both you and your victims are customers of the same sale. Most civil servants don’t understand the Qur’aan or care about it. Marabouts are their Qur’aan. Here’s a brief pedigree of marabouts and their black magic trade. I did mention Suleiman (Solomon) from the Qur’aan. He was the King of Babylon, exponentially bestowed and monolithically powerful.

Solomon’s courtship with providence under divine dispensations enabled him to enslave the
Jinn. We all know the story. Details of his ordeal with the Jinn weren’t chronicled by the
Qur’aan. But Solomon did seize a lot of evil books about black magic. Some scholars said he
dug a big hole and buried them to eradicate the evil practice in his kingdom to the chagrin of
Satan (Ibilis), the Chief Devil. When Solomon died, Satan set another wand of his deception to
motion. He asked the people, “Do you know why Solomon was so powerful and  unconquerable?” He advised them to dig under his throne where they found so many books.
 Thus, black magic flourished again to our day. Even America’s elite have retained vestiges of
dark occults. 

Ask about the Bohemian Grove Retreat which courts almost every rich and influential luminary of the United States and around the world today—from Hollywood magnates, to political viziers and grandees. I’m not speaking of Bavarian Freemasonry—nor am I treating the Bilderberg Group! Or if these are far-fetched, we all know of Yale’s ‘Skull and Bones’ and their rituals. So, occult subscription is as ubiquitous as is imaginable. It’s all about ransoming one’s soul to the devil for him to help you with power, wealth, fame, etc. The Qur’aan abhors it. Allaah knew man was going to be greedy and tempted by Satan. That’s why He told Ibilis when the latter refused to prostrate to our forbearer in Suuratul Al-Israa’e, Verse 64, “Make assaults on them with thy cavalry and thy infantry; mutually share with them wealth and children; and make promises to them.”

 Suuratul Saaffaat and Suuratul Jinn also mention how Jinns used to rise to the heavens to
eavesdrop on angels about to carry out Allaah’s missions on earth. These Jinns would later
communicate with marabouts until Allaah put a stop to it as described in Suuratul Jinn. This
shows Allaah doesn’t like the institution of marabouts although it’s very real. Mr. President,
Pharaoh had so many marabouts too. I know you can commission any marabout on earth because of clout. But their art is as dangerous as is ephemeral. Almost all presidents of West Africa have had marabouts. An intelligent mind would ask if this actually changed Allaah’s plan for them. Except few, a lot of them suffered coups or nasty ends.

 Mr. President, I know sometimes your mind journeys into the cabinets of history. Where’s
Samuel Doe, Laurent Gbagbo, Laurant Kabila, Mubutu, Langsana Conteh, Nino Viera, Capt.
Valentine Strasser, Charles Taylor—is the list ending soon? Are these names fairy tales in a
Disney series? It depends on what Allaah thinks of you for you to heed any honest warning. 
Otherwise if He’s displeased with you, no righteous advice will enter your heart—not even the
Qur’aan. And thus would you remain until a Bellona’s Bridegroom strikes. Please hand over
power before it’s too late. If not, perhaps one day, you’ll remember these words.

 Mr. President, each time you fire a civil servant or cabinet minister, please think of what their
families or relatives go through? Think of the interdependency rate in The Gambia. You’ve
almost hired and fired a total population of a village! Do you think of the people depending on
these victims for a daily bread? It’s okay to fire those that deserve firing. But Mr. President, you
can’t be right against all those with gashes bleeding from your axe. Gambia is a very poor
country. People need jobs that’s why they accept your offers. I heard some cabinet ministers later say, “I don’t even know why I was fired!”

One salary feeds so many relatives in The Gambia. Mr. President, even Allaah lets Satan and his
votaries disobey Him. As long as you’re in leadership, you’ll continue to meet adversaries.
Another problem is that you hate a whit of criticism—yet you want to stay in power. Criticism,
opposition, sabotage, etc. are part of the price of leadership. Now, I heard that people in The
Gambia can get in trouble for saying, “The country is hard!”

 You trust your marabouts too well, don’t you? Please continue. For your information, Allaah
listens directly to the cries of the oppressed and wronged. Mr. President, you’ve wronged so
many people! And the longer you stay in power, the more people you’ll wrong. This is why wise
men don’t covet power or authority. If this is wrong, remember how almost the entire country
rallied behind you in 1994? That was genuine love in those days. Now they cheer your
motorcade not out of love, but fear. Many of your rigid supporters are exiled, imprisoned,
disappeared, or dead. Who’d imagine years ago that Njogu Bah would end this way? How about Lang Tombong? You’ve disgraced so many of those who sacrificed for you. Where’s Baba Jobe, Fatoumata Jahumpa Ceesay, Sheriff Dibba, Daba Marena?

 You’ll never have a peace of mind as long as you stay in power, Mr. President. And worse, your
state of mind won’t be any different from Macbeth’s who keeps consulting his marabouts each
time he feels a premonition. And because of the marabouts’ foretelling, he killed his best friend. Obviously you’ve lost so many best friends, Mr. President—haven’t you?  Your tyranny hasn’t
been commensurate to Pharaoh’s. Yet, Allaah asked Moses to address him politely. That’s why
I’m not using angry diction. So, please listen—to polite words from a Gambian “who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate.”

Ends