(JollofNews) – African leaders will encourage Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh to respect his country’s constitution in a visit scheduled for Wednesday, Nigeria’s foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama has told RFI. Onyeama said that leaders from the Ecowas regional bloc have not ruled out sending troops if Jammeh does not step aside when Gambia’s President-elect Adama Barrow is expected to be sworn into office on 19 January.
“We want the process to be peaceful, the negotiations also to be conducted in an environment of peace and security,” said Onyeama. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Ghana’s former president John Mahama and Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Bai Koroma are expected to visit Banjul on Wednesday.
“It’s really [about] emphasising following the constitution, in an environment of peace and security,” said Onyeama during a telephone interview on Tuesday morning. Leaders from the Ecowas regional bloc had previously visited Gambia in December and held separate meetings with both Jammeh and Barrow.
Jammeh initially accepted defeat following the 1 December polls after being beaten by Barrow, according to results announced by the electoral commission. However, he later rejected the results and has brought a case before the country’s Supreme Court contesting the election.
An official from Ecowas has previously said that Senegal is ready to send troops to intervene in Gambia if Jammeh, who has ruled the country since 1994, refuses to step down. “We’re not ruling anything out,” said Onyeama, when asked about the possibility of military intervention.
“These are all options that are on table and will all be considered on their merit and nothing has been ruled out,” according to Onyeama, who did not exclude the possibility of Nigerian soldiers being sent to Gambia. He said any use of force in Gambia would be “done within the framework of international law”.
Gambia’s communications minister was the latest high-profile official to leave Jammeh’s government on Monday. Sheriff Bojang, who acted as Jammeh’s spokesperson, said in a statement that he acknowledged Barrow as president-elect and it was “never too late to do the right thing”. Gambian state television said Bojang had been sacked, according to other reports.
“It just goes to show the heightened level of tension in the country,” said Onyeama, “we are not really privy to the dynamics within the cabinet,” he added.
Gambia’s Supreme Court was expected on Wednesday to hear complaints filed by Jammeh contesting the election results. However, Nigerian judge Emmanuel Fagbenle is the court’s only sitting judge and the Nigerian judiciary will not be sending any other judges on secondment.
“No other Nigerian judges will be sent because there’s no agreement for Nigerian judges to be sent in January,” said Onyeama, describing an agreement between the countries whereby Nigerian judges spend two months working within the Gambian judiciary. “So the timelines for those – when those can happen – are clearly specified and January is not within that timeframe,” he said.
“The constitution has to be followed and as long as that is done, then we have no issues,” said Onyeama, talking about Jammeh’s legal challenge to the election results. “There are rules, there are deadlines and timelines provided within the constitution. We just believe that those should be fully compiled with,” he said.
Source: RFI
Traitors behave just like how Sheriff Bojang and others do.
Yahya expect that many of their tribesmen will abandon you, but remain steadfast and reaffirm your position “backward never forward ever. God is ever powerful and Inshallah they will all regret their acts. As the wollof saying goes “Sosseh du sosal ken” they are devillish and only want to see your downfall but they will never live to see that. Note that with their treacherous plans in their defections none will ever survive to see your downfall. It is now clear to you that with all what they were saying in niceties and praise singing they were undermining you just to see your downfall but God the all knowing and everpowerful is and will continue to.protect you from their evil machination. INSHALLAH.
LONGLIVE YAHYA A.J.J. JAMMEH
LONGLIVE THE GAMBIA
Please fellow gambians let’s joing our hands working together to be always one nation one heart loving each other and no matter what differnces our tribes are, let’s us all make sure that we ‘re all good citizens working together for the intrest of our beloved country.
You are just an XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX primitive. We know the types of dreams native Gambians dream. No real native Gambian will incite ethnic war in the Gambia other than its half-minded primitives. Gambians thought they were living together in harmony but in reality that has never been true, for the fact that there are creepy sections among it societies with secret destructive agendas to destroy the country. I think some real native Gambians have acquired something on their own by travelling, trade, farming and education and never been paid a single government bututut unlike some revealingly savage tribesmen of the country. You Xs can’t censor the evident cannibalism of your horrible tribe-sick-people.
XXXXXXXX, is infected by jammeh tribal sentimen, and they are many of them but soon will help to disinfects them.
Are we today on the verge of a new round of foreign intervention? A sober debate over military intervention might benefit from a brief look back into history. After nearly two centuries of bloodshed, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the nearly continuous series of wars involving the Holy Roman Empire, France, Spain, Sweden, the United Netherlands and several European city-states. Crucial to the treaty was the notion of sovereignty: states could no longer legitimately meddle in the internal affairs of other states.
We are seriously concerned over the trend towards the normalization of military intervention into situations designated as humanitarian crises. The world must not be allowed to return to the situation before 1940, when international law was little more than ink on paper. The discontent of (parts of) a population in a given country cannot be used as an excuse to destabilize, attack or occupy weaker countries, thereby undermining the international legal order.
Humanitarian interventions are often defended under the premise that all else has been tried and failed. In reality, it is usually the Western powers that undermine a negotiated settlement, or fail to give negotiations a reasonable chance. This was the case in Kuwait (1990), in Somalia (1993) and in the former Jugoslavia (1996-1999). It also holds true over the past decade. The South African president did not complain without reason to the UN Security Council, arguing that the African Union had been pushed aside in the search for a negotiated settlement in Libya. Moreover, the West continues to fuel conflict by arming, training and financing one (or more) of the conflicting parties.
We cannot accept that the West compensates for its waning global power by using humanitarian military interventions as a cover for pursuing geo strategic interests. We can no longer look on passively as powerful economic interest groups set out to conquer the world “in our name.” We stand against the politics of intervention, even when it wraps itself in the cloak of humanitarianism. A wolf remains a wolf, even when dressed in sheep’s clothing. (Ludo De Brabander, 2012)
The question one may asked might be
How many shall die?
How many shall made it to the refugee camps?
How many shall lose there business?
How many shall be homeless?
How many shall be raped?
How many shall commit suicide?
How many shall be separated from their families and loves ones?
How many shall migrate?
How many shall live in hunger?
how many shall take the gun to retaliate?
How many pregnancy shall be aborted?
How many shall be crying both day and night?
And how many of our resources shall be looted?
J.ONE,
Records of atrocities of Jammeh’s rule till today, have suitable answers to all your questions.
How have died in the Nia torture hideouts?
How many have died in the mediterenean sea and how may are already refuged?
How many have lost their businesses or job through reprisal?
How many have become homeless to be lodged in Kaninlai?
How many have been raped already?
How many shall commit suicide…suicide like? Like Koro’s?
How many daughters and sons are yet to know what happen to their fathers, dead or alive?
How many have already migrated?
How many are hungered by Jammeh looting of their properties?
How many are victimised by the same guns meant to protect them and their properties?
Who knows how many have been aborted living the abominable live of the Gambia’s terror regime..
Lord of his mercy! who of the Gambia and in the Gambia have not seen enough grief and tears during the past twenty two years of it brutal regime?
Looting……Isn’t it the order of the day under the Jammeh despotism?