Gambia’s President Adama Barrow has asked former President Yahya Jammeh to stay quiet and pray for the sustenance of peace in The Gambia.
President Barrow hinted that all that Jammeh was saying about his supposed return to the country next month was bravado as, according to him, the former Gambian strongman was once on his knees, crying for help from West African leaders to impress on him [Barrow] to allow for the repatriation and burial of his mother’s corpse.
President Barrow also recalled painful moments in the country’s history when Jammeh denied entry into the country of the corpses of one-time youth minister Buba Baldeh, former parliamentarian Foday Makalo and the mastermind of the short-lived successful 1981 coup d’etat Kukoi Samba Sanyang.
“If indeed President Jammeh was to return to this country, he would not have squandered the opportunity provided by the death of his mother. Why couldn’t you [Jammeh] come back,” Barrow stated as he addressed supporters on Sunday.
President Barrow said Jammeh sought the intercession of the President of Equatorial Guinea to allow him repatriate his mother’s corpse for burial.
“At the time of the death [of Jammeh’s mother], I was in Togo together with the President of Equatorial Guinea [Obiang Nguema], where he [Jammeh] is residing. He called the President to lament that “my mother had passed away and we cannot even have people to wash her body for burial”.
He then told him [Nguema] that he would like him to talk to President Barrow to pardon him “because I want my mother’s corpse to be repatriated to Gambia. That President consulted ECOWAS leaders when he [Jammeh] passed that message to him. He [Nguema] spoke with the Ghanaian president, he also spoke with the Nigerien president. When he told those individuals, they told him “it wasn’t necessary for them to go to President Barrow as his elder brother Macky Sall is here and let’s go and explain the matter to him. They went and explained the matter to him.”
According to President Barrow, he did not waste any time to accept Jammeh’s request when it was brought to his attention. He continued: “At the meeting, he [Macky] told me that this is what is happening; Jammeh was begging and crying as he wanted his mother’s corpse to be repatriated.
Macky Sall asked me about my decision and I responded that Yahya Jammeh’s mother never offended me. She is a Gambian and whenever they want her body back, the government will play its role to the fullest. I agreed for her corpse to return.”
President Barrow, however, recalled how former President Jammeh denied some Gambians a decent burial in The Gambia after their death in exile.
“But a human being must be careful. We have the now, but the future also must come and what it will bring along with it is unknown to anybody,” President Barrow advised, adding, “People died in exile for the sake of their country…When he [Jammeh] was president, Buba Baldeh passed away, his body was brought up to the border and Jammeh said the corpse would not enter the country. Foday Makalo died and he said his body was not entering the country and Kukoi Samba Sanyang passed away and he said his corpse would not enter.
I could have exact revenge for all that he [Jammeh] did. So, tell Jammeh to keep quiet. What he should have done is to keep quiet and pray for the sustenance of the nation’s peace so that he can also benefit from it. I think that’s what he should do.”
