(JollofNews) – The death has been announced of Landing Jallow-Sonko, a former cabinet minister and parliamentarian of the Gambia’s former ruling People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
Mr Sonko, who represented Upper Niumi constituency and held various senior government positions including minister of Local Government and Health, died on Monday in a Senegalese hospital, where he was receiving treatment for injuries he sustained in a road traffic collision in Gambia last week.
Some reports said he was involved in a hit and run accident on Pipeline Road, Kanifing Municipal Council, which left him with various degrees of injuries including a broken leg and neck.
He was admitted briefly at a local hospital in Gambia before he was flown to neighbouring Senegal for advance medical care.
Mr Sonko was a prominent politician. He joined the PPP in the early 1970s and served as parliamentary secretary. He later contested and won the 1977 elections for the Upper Nuimi seat, which he successfully defended until the overthrow of the PPP government by the military in 1994.
Fondly called, Landing Jallow, the late politician continued to play an active role in Gambian politics and was in 2006 elected executive chairman of the opposition National Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD).
After the failure of the opposition to form a united front against the ruling APRC party of President Yahya Jammeh in the general elections, Mr Jallow retreated quietly to his native Sitanunku Village, where he picked up farming.
