By Fatou Sillah
Gambia’s Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay, has assured the public that the country remains secure and stable, with crime rates showing a downward trend.
Speaking in an interview with West Coast Radio, Dr. Ceesay addressed public concerns regarding rising crime and violence. Responding to a listener’s question on the matter, he stated that available data indicates a stabilization in crime rates.
“What we have as a data is that crime rates have been stabilised, and they’ve gone down. Gambia, and I’m going to repeat this again, Peter, is peaceful and relatively secure and stable. Yes, there are challenges here and there so far as crime is concerned. But I don’t see a situation where every day we wake up to murders and killings, and we are not in that situation,” he said
While acknowledging recent reports of suicide cases, Dr. Ceesay cautioned against jumping to conclusions, describing suicide as a complex social phenomenon that must be examined in context.
“Recently, what we’ve seen as a trend is a few cases of suicide, but suicide is a social phenomenon. So sometimes let’s look at things in a wider context and not in a different perspective. If you look at it over one year, how many suicides, these things could have been spread over one year and people would not raise alarm. Because I think we had only three or four suicide cases within a very short period,” he said.
Ceesay explained that when assessing the data, they typically review it over a 12-month period. So by the end of that timeframe, they can determine whether there’s been any significant change compared to the previous year.
“From here to December, if we’ve not seen any increase in suicide cases. So what we do is at the end of the day, we look at year-on-year to say, OK, last year there were four suicide cases. This year, if it’s four, that has not been an increment. But what we’ve seen is that within a very short period, we’ve seen three or four suicide cases, It’s worrying the police and social welfare will take this very seriously,” he said.
Ceesay emphasized that suicide should not be viewed solely as a policing matter—it’s also a social issue that warrants attention from social welfare authorities. “In other countries, comprehensive studies are conducted to understand why suicide is happening. It could be linked to mental health, social stress, or a combination of many factors,” he explained.
He further noted, “Until we do a study to ascertain why there has been a surge, if there is a surge, I’m not sure even there is a surge, We’ll know that at the end of the year, if for example, when the year ends, and we realise that this year we’ve seen a 25, 30 percent increment in the number of suicide cases compared to last year, then we’ll say something is definitely that’s a social problem. And a social problem needs a scientific approach to understand why it is happening and to intervene.”