By Mustapha K Darboe
Sometimes, things that happen here are too complex to make sense of. But history, often, illuminates the path to truth or lies. Or shall I say, when you do not recognize your environment, go home.
So, let’s go home to the Old Gambia which in fact is the New Gambia, with a little dash of makeup.
A man we would come to know as Rui Jabbi Gassama, a fictitious name, showed up from nowhere with an elaborate story that put former CDS Lang Tombong at the heart of a coup in 2006. He even created meetings at some restaurants in Bissau, meetings that never happened.
The whole elegant story lived in the mind of a Rui with an impressive, fertile imagination. On his testimony, Lang served life. Only the script writer was the NIA and the Police. We would come to know this before the TRRC.
Rui raked, according to testimonies, $10,000.
If that were the first or last, I would not be worried. An Ensa Badgie needed to go to jail, or so wished Yahya Jammeh. Good for him, he had the NIA and Gambia Police Force. A Soriba Conde serving time in Mile 2 as a petty thief just fell from the skies.
With some elaborate story that puts him in the imaginary payroll of Ensa Badgie. In other words, he claimed to have been sharing his loot with Badgie in exchange for his protection. Badgie went to prison for it.
We are not new to creating a case in the Gambia perfected with fictitious characters and designed to jail someone. Often, it is designed by an agent who plays an inside job. Gets a bunch of gullible folks into a thing, like a controlled demolition, get in and arrest them.
Someone just recorded an audio that has some nice ingredients. A “coup” that even the announcers don’t seem to believe happened.
The rest, as they say, is history! A system hellbent on ‘regime security’ is a criminal one… We will be foolish to not have learned that from our past!
