Lamin Manneh, UDP Deputy Secretary for
Foreign Affair and The Diaspora
It is distressing to behold the level of moral and intellectual corruption and dishonesty in some quarters of this Barrow government. On Wednesday, 5th March, 2025, the Ministry of Transport, Works and Infrastructure issued a statement accusing H.E. Ousainu Darboe of misrepresenting their malfeasance regarding the mortgaging, concessioning and sale of our strategic national assets. During his press conference of 4thMarch, 2025, H.E. Darboe said that concessioning out the construction and operation of a new deep-sea port in Sanyang, for thirty (30) years, during which time the concessionaire (Albayrak) would receive 80% of the income and The Gambia, 20%, is virtually tantamount to selling off the port. That statement was distorted by Ebrima Sillah’s Ministry to accuseH.E. Darboe of saying that the Ministry has sold off the Port. The audio and video recordings of H.E. Darboe’s statement are available on social media and on the Internet for anyone who cares to go verify for him/herself.
I guess we should shrug it off as Ebrima Sillah and his Ministry being at their shenanigans and spinning again. However, we cannot fail to call out public servants, upon whom we have bestowed the trust and honour to serve our country, when they indulge in acts and actions which are clearly bereft of moral rectitude. Instead of seeking to address the real hardships they have deliberately inflicted on Gambians and the Gambian economy, Minister Sillah and his team seek to deflect and misinterpret the words of an honourable man. Then again, we probably should not be surprised, considering who we are dealing with.
This is a ministry that has been actively overseeing the virtual alienation of the strategic assets of The Gambia. Sometimes, they act in connivance with the Ministry of Finance. They have significantly contributed to hiking the debt stock of the countrythrough overpriced and poorly executed road construction projects. A few salient examples will suffice to show the level of misuse of the country’s meagre resources by the Ministry of Works.
1. This is the Ministry that spent USD 150 million to build the 22-kilometre Bertyl Harding road, i.e. at a cost of USD 6.81 million per kilometre, instead of the standard USD 1 million per kilometre of highway.
2. The same ministry said it spent, unjustifiably, USD 50 million to build 50 kilometres of the sub-standard secondary OIC roads. Given the sub-standard quality of those roads, it could not have cost even USD 20 million to build the 50-kilometre stretch. To demonstrate the corruption, most of those roads are already in a state of advanced disrepair, less than two years after their completion. Why did the Ministry accept such poor-quality roads? What happened to the 10 to 20-year proper-road-construction bonds? Why didn’t the Ministry realise the bonds to have the roads repaired?
3. The Ministry of Works has also been complicit, with the Ministry of Finance, in mortgaging the Senegambia Bridge (or “recycling” it, as they call the arrangement) for 25 years at a paltry sum of USD 100 million, when, by their own figures, the bridge could have fetched at least USD 300 million over the same 25-year period. To compound matters, they said the proceeds of the mortgaging (USD 100 million) would be used to develop new infrastructure and that has not happened. We do not know what has happened to the first instalment of USD 15 million disbursed by Africa50. What we do know is that it has not been used for infrastructure development.
4. To add insult to injury, the aforesaid two ministries agreed that no competing bridge would be built within a 50-km radius of the Senegambia Bridge during the entirety of the mortgaging period. For good measures, they agreed to another clause which stipulates that no roads that compete the bridge will be built either during the aforesaid mortgaging period. In accepting such clauses, not only did they mortgage the bridge but blithely mortgaged part of our sovereignty to take discretionary decisions on our country’s development projects.
5. Similarly, the Ministry of works sunk USD 40 million intothe supposed rehabilitation and upgrading of the Banjul International Airport. At the end of the prescribedrehabilitation works, the airport seems to be worse off than before the works. Indeed, (a) the air-conditioning is dysfunctional, (b) the power supply is erratic as ever, (c) the fire-service equipment are problematic, to put it mildly, (d) the Gambia International Airways (GIA) is being deliberately stifled, to the benefit of an opaque and competing private enterprise, Niro, set up by God-knows-who, and (e) flights bound for Banjul International Airport are sometimes diverted to Senegal’s AIBD Airport owing to an unavailable runway.
6. This same Ministry of Works expropriated most of the property owners in Half-die in Banjul, at a very high cost, on the grounds that it planned to expand the Banjul Port facilities. Not only was that not done, but it now plans to use the purchased Half-die lands to illegitimately extend its mandate into real-estate development, as announced on Coffee Time by the Managing Director of the port.
7. Another case in point is the overpriced Banjul Roads Construction and Sanitation Project. An amount in excess of USD 40 million was claimed to have been invested in that project as well. Again, sub-standard roads were built in Banjul, parts of the city get flooded during the rainy season and raw untreated sewage is being dumped into the sea around Banjul.
These are some of the “achievements” of the Ministry of Works, which, by the way, is too incompetent and corrupt toproperly maintain the three ferries it inherited from the Jammeh era. In spite of the huge amounts that have disappeared down the ferry-maintenance and rehabilitation blackhole, only one of those three ferries is managing to sail the Banjul-Barra route. While we await the two solar-powered ferries that Minister Sillah has promised for 2025, (through a supposed ADB-financing arrangement, still according to Minister Sillah), it would be wise that a Ministry with such a track record, keep a low profile, clean up its acts and be circumspect in its pronouncements.
Instead, in its release of Wednesday 5th March, the Ministry of Works claimed to act with patriotism and in good faith. Where is your patriotism and good faith when you mortgage and concession out all of the country’s strategic assets, that others built? Where is your patriotism when you make us loose a potential USD 200 million on the mortgaging of the Senegambia Bridge? At today’s exchange rate, USD 200 is equivalent to 14.4 billion Gambian Dalasi. That loss is on you. As for the projected Sanyang Deep Sea Port, if all you can guarantee your beloved country is 20% of potential revenue accruing from the port, you should keep a low profile, not trumpet your patriotism.
The Ministry of Works, Transport and Infrastructure also boasted of paying dividends of D80 million to D190 million to the government between 2018 and 2021. Well, when the National Audit Office queried you for a missing D200 million from your books in one year and when in 2024 you deprived the state of 4 billion Dalasi in tax waivers to some business operators close to the corridors of power, not to talk of business and revenue lost by the Banjul Port to the Dakar Port, the Ministry should be mute about monies paid to government.
As for the argument that the Ministry was advised in its ill-conceived concessioning of the Sanyang Port by top-notch transaction advisers, please spare us. If for all these years, the Banjul Port and the Ministry of Transport, Works and Infrastructure were not able to train good transactional advisers, in anticipation of their concessioning activities, that is on them.
However, there are many Gambians within the country and without, who have solid transaction credentials. If you were patriotic enough and not blinked by feelings of inadequacy compared to the outside world, you would have discovered those qualified Gambians. Or is it because the qualified Gambians are less malleable? Maybe you should enlighten Gambians about what truly informed your decisions in these areas. We are waiting. Please do not give us a resounding silence.
The foregoing is meant to be food for thought in this holy month of fasting for both our Muslim and Christian compatriots. This is a month of introspection, course-correction and redoubling of efforts to do the right thing. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to The Gambia, especially you the members of government (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) who are so handsomely remunerated by the Gambians. Minister Sillah, you and your team would be well advised to undertake some introspection and course correction instead of indulging in attempts to spin falsehood and to deflect.
We will come back, in due course, to the shameful vote against our compatriots in the Diaspora, who, by the admission of the Barrow government itself, contributed in excess of USD 775 million dollars (55.8 billion Gambian Dalasi) to the Gambian economy in 2024. Yet you dare disenfranchise them, in blatant violation of the 1997 Constitution. That is not on Ebrima Sillah and his Ministry; instead, it is attributable to the entire Barrow government, the NPP NAMs and the other “representatives of the people” who voted with them. Amazing!
Lamin Manneh
UDP Deputy Secretary for
Foreign Affair and The Diaspora