By Buba Gagigo
Demba Sabally, the first Deputy National President of the National People’s Party (NPP) and Minister of Agriculture, said that he and Maimuna Ceesay Darboe were both invited by the NPP Diaspora to attend their party’s Diaspora Congress.
“It is not like I did the invitation. The Diaspora made the invitation, and they invited everybody, including herself. And I was not the only one there. I was there with Kebba Madi Bojang who is the president of the National Youth Wing,” he said.
On whether he was sent by the president to attend the Congress in Sweden, he said;
“Everybody in this country, an adult in their right mind, will expect me as a cabinet minister to leave this country through Yundum Airport to go to as far as Sweden, be there for as long as I was there without an authorization? Just at my own will? Does that make sense to any adult Gambian? It should not. This was a live Congress that all of us were invited to, and I went to honour their invitation.
“Even if a Gambian chicken has a voter’s card and is supporting NPP, I will never go to social media to attack, regardless of what they say about me. I want to make it very clear that I went to witness. The Congress was organized by the Diaspora, I was invited just like everybody else, and I wasn’t there alone. The president of the Youth Wing was there. Was it accidental? I went to Sweden to witness an NPP Diaspora Congress, we witnessed it and validated it period. If somebody else has a different take, that’s their personal thing. If somebody thinks differently, that is their business, but I did not attack anybody,” he said.
In an audio recording circulated on the NPP executive forum, Maimuna Ceesay Darboe, a nominated member of the National Assembly and the diaspora secretary of the National People’s Party, recently said Demba Sabally, the Minister of Agriculture and the first Deputy National President of the National People’s Party, is the leader of a rebellious faction that has organized a congress for the diaspora members to select a new executive committee.