Economic Deep Dive: New SSC Report Unearths the Anatomy of Governance Collapse

Dr Ousman Gajigo

By Dr Ousman Gajigo

The Special Select Committee's report on the disposal of Jammeh's assets makes for sobering reading. It provides a gripping account of administrative incompetence, institutional dysfunction, and governance failures. Even accounting for the fact that the country was undergoing a difficult period of disentanglement from dictatorship, the scale of the wrongdoing is breathtaking in its scope and blatancy.

It would be one thing if the report had found isolated cases of individual misconduct or a single agency failing to discharge its duties properly. Instead, the dysfunction cuts across multiple institutions: the Ministry of Justice, the Registrar of Companies, the GT Board, the Department of Lands, and the GLMA, among others. This was a systemic failure.

Across these institutions, the report highlights malicious alteration of relevant records, absence of procedural frameworks, wilful disregard of lawful court orders, complete neglect of professional obligations, indifference to institutional mandates, the allowing of personal relationships to override professional duties, and a widespread lack of oversight. What is more, some of these wrongs were perpetrated by senior officials who are supposed to set the standard for appropriate conduct. Abubakarr Tambedou stands out in particular for his egregious behaviour, given that as Attorney General at the time, he was supposed to be the government's chief legal adviser.

The loss of national assets is immense, spanning livestock, wildlife, agricultural equipment, aircraft, bank account funds, financial assets, and land. It goes without saying that the financial value of these assets runs into the billions of dalasi. The corrosive effect on public trust in officials will linger for a long time. An entire decade that could have seen the country undergo genuine transition has been squandered, as this sorry excuse for a government sinks us deeper into a quagmire of incompetence and greed.

Following the Janneh Commission and the TRRC, a comprehensive accounting of wrongdoing has become an unfortunately familiar routine for Gambians. Unlike citizens of other countries, who can expect justice to follow such a report, we live in a different reality. Like the recommendations of the Janneh Commission before it, the Select Committee's recommendations are unlikely to receive the attention they deserve from the authorities -unless one is inclined toward willful amnesia. The best we can hope for is a pretense of criminal proceedings staged by the government, nothing more than a performance for public consumption, until attention is once again diverted by the next outrage.