By Seedy Jobe
Dr. Alieu Gibba, a former senior lecturer at the University of The Gambia, has predicted that President Adama Barrow would secure a comfortable victory in the 2026 presidential elections if the opposition fails to form a united coalition.
In a statement posted on his official Facebook page on Wednesday, Dr. Gibba argued that the current political environment strongly favors the incumbent due to persistent divisions among opposition parties.
“From my own perspective, looking at the current political climate, without a united coalition, I can assure you 100% that President Adama Barrow will comfortably win the 2026 presidential elections. I also don’t foresee any possibility of having a united front due to leadership crises from political actors (that is, if I don’t lead, no one will be allowed to lead). From the looks of it, this will always be the case until the day before the presidential elections (December 04th).”
Dr. Gibba emphasized that no single political party has the capacity to win the elections on its own without support from other parties or independent candidates. “It is a known fact that no single party will emerge victorious in the upcoming elections without the support of other parties and/or independent candidates. This is the fact. If you deny this, then I assume that you don’t actually want to accept the reality or don’t understand the political dynamics of the country and that of Africa at large.”
According to Dr. Gibba, the fragmented nature of the opposition stems from competing leadership ambitions, with each party leader seeking to head any prospective coalition—an approach he says is influenced by lessons learned from the 2016 election.