Presidential adviser Momodou Sabally will not be making it to this year’s United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York as planned after the US embassy in Banjul denied him an entry visa to the United States.
Another high-profile visa denial, according to sources, revolved around the director-general of the Gambia’s public utilities regulator authority (PURA). Njogu Bah was also reportedly denied an entry visa to the US to attend the UNGA.
JollofNews has gathered that the US embassy’s visa denials affected a significant number of people from the Office of the Vice President that were lined up to accompany the country’s no. 2 to the UNGA in New York.
Sources said a long list of visa applications, filed for government officials and others for this year’s UNGA, have been rejected on various grounds.
One source informed JollofNews that Sabally and Bah were denied on premise of their adverse mentions in the Janneh Commission’s report, though neither of them nor the US Banjul embassy could be reached for comment.
“Around 25 individuals were refused a visa to attend the UNGA,” one source told JollofNews.
The size and quality of the Gambia’s UNGA delegations have remained matters of discourse in some quarters. While some accuse the government of always taking bloated delegations to the General Assembly at huge cost to the taxpayer, others continue to raise quality issues with the delegations.
