Yahya Jammeh is partying while two-third of The Gambian population goes to bed hungry: responsible or irresponsible leadership?

Yahya Jammeh always claimed to love Gambia and he is ready to die for Gambia but the surprising thing about Jammeh is he is also always ready to waste the country’s meagre resources on a single day while  two-third of the population goes to bed hungry. At the time of writing this article Jammeh was celebrating his alleged birthday and he spent well over $2.8 million according to our sources. Jammeh took a unilateral decision to change the public working days in The Gambia from five (Monday to Friday), to four (Monday to Thursday) and above all increased the number of public holidays to accommodate his so-called birthday. Jammeh does all these while the average Gambian continue to die of hunger, malnutrition, lack of medication and constant electricity and water shortage in the country.

The IMF country representative Mr. Gaston Mpatswe has just published a report with serious warnings on the state of economy of The Gambia, according to the report, The Gambia government’s public debt had risen to 100 per cent of the country’s total GDP by end 2014. The domestic banks are now drained dry of the needed cash for private sector development due to The Gambia government’s continuous excessive borrowing and without government instituting corrective measures the country’s economy is heading for a total collapse sooner rather than later. However, Jammeh has no appetite in entertaining such report, but to continue to party and waste the little resources the Gambia is left with.

Gambians need to now realise that Jammeh cares only about himself and because with the country’s economy in such a state any responsible government or leader would not go and waste the public’s resources on a birthday.  The UK is million times richer than The Gambia and they are a donor to The Gambia, however, the new government has frozen the ministerial pay for the entire duration of the current parliament and this is exactly how a responsible government acts. A responsible government puts the plight of its citizenry first before anything but The Gambia government always does the opposite.