A REJOINDER TO MY BROTHER BORA MBOGE: HISTORY NEEDS CITATIONS, NOT NOSTALGIA — AND JAWARA’S FIRST REPUBLIC REMAINS OUR GOLDEN AGE

By Musa Bassadi Jawara, Economist & Author

Let me start where honour demands.

I thank my elder brother Mr. Bora Mboge for taking the time to participate and contribute to the national debate. In a republic where many retired public servants have gone silent, Bora has spoken. That alone deserves commendation.

Permit me a personal memory. We were neighbours in Gloucester Street, Banjul. His wife Mam Garasseh and her mother were very close-knit, and Bora was right in the middle of that family tie — a pillar of dignity and quiet authority. My father Basad used to tell me Bora Mboge was named after the towering, formidable, sagacious and revered chief of Niamina Dankunku, Chieftain Sarja Mboge. Regardless of changing times, politics or otherwise, Bora is my brother, a Gambian of illustrious and impeccable standing, a man who embodied history and, I might add, must continue to add his voice to the debate!

Having said that, brother, your article left me searching.

*I. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?*

Mr. Mboge, I cannot add much in direct response because the article is missing the important part: citations, statistics and evidence.

In academia, an academic paper written by recalling historic narrative must be accompanied by sources, otherwise it attracts a failing grade. We are not in academia, but when you challenge figures — 7% growth 1964-1978, 21% revenue to GDP, 32% investment to GDP, D9.30 in 1994 to D74.29 today — you need counter-figures.

You recollected important events in Gambia’s journey: GPMB stations in various locations. That was when Gambia was at its best! On that we agree. Those stations were not bush tracks. They were the logistical spine of a produce economy that worked.

*II. YOU ASKED ABOUT ROADS, TELEVISION AND RESERVES — LET ME ANSWER*

Mr. Mboge, you mentioned television stations built by the junta and I ask: whose reserves and whose machines built them? The answer is Jawara’s PPP government.

You did not mention:

*1. The Kombo Coastal Roads Project:* Design completed, feasibility done, money already in place — European investment — just to commence. The coup hit on July 22, 1994. The junta cut the ribbon on a PPP blueprint.

*2. Foreign Reserves:* Over $90 million in foreign deposits in Citibank, New York on July 22, 1994. No sooner had the junta overthrown Jawara, they withdrew the money and distributed it among themselves for fear of having a short-lived tenure in power! The junta’s own spokesperson absconded and went on to live in the U.S. — evidenced by his own account and narrative. Is that prudence or plunder?

*3. The Janneh Commission and the TRRC:* Brother Bora, the revelations of the Janneh Commission; the TRRC revelations — what more do you want to hear? You cannot compare in the same sentence the PPP government under Jawara and what ended up as 22 years of institutionalized kleptocracy and murder.

*III. THE ALKALI COMMISSION — THE REPORT THE JUNTA BURIED*

Mr. Mboge, you are a good man; a reasonable man; a decent, experienced and honourable man.

But recalling that the population was half a million in 1970 has nothing to do with what the population explosion oversaw under military rule and beyond: banditry, criminality, ignorance, anarchy, subversion of the Constitution, murder, human rights abuse, extrajudicial killings, autocracy, dictatorship, mass murders nearing genocide, tribal and ethnic warfare being instigated.

Mr. Bora, the Alkali Commission Report on Jawara and the PPP government — set up by the junta itself to find Jawara guilty — has to date not seen daylight. Why? According to sources within the commission, it exonerated Jawara and his administration of all the lies billed against them. That by itself, Mr. Mboge, is a monumental revelation in national, regional and global history — a bi-focal fixation on Himalayan proportions!

Of course there were instances of corruption in isolated cases, person here and there — a societal disease that goes with human existence. But to have statecraft as an endemic, deep-rooted corruption ring and barbaric killer squad and anti-human survival machinery as the 22 years that followed the Jawara era — as evidenced in the TRRC — is to be intellectually dishonest to place both on the same moral pedestal.

You must consider and applaud the Jawara era as the golden age of the Gambian nation and its history beyond equivocation!

*IV. ON THE CIVIL SERVICE — IT WAS THE BEST*

You challenged my description of the Gambian civil service as “the best in Africa.” Brother, I stand by it — with citations.

Under Jawara, we had Eric Christensen, Francis L. Mboge, Dr. J.A. Langley. Under them, officials from Sierra Leone, Ghana, Liberia and Botswana were sent to Banjul to understudy our permanent secretary system, public financial management and budget discipline. The IMF and World Bank graduated us from balance-of-payments support precisely because our books were trusted. Sheriff Ceesay was rated alongside South Africa’s Botha and Ghana’s Kwesi Botchwey — not because we were sentimental, but because our macro numbers were clean.

To say it was “one of the better” is modesty. It was the best. And it was destroyed.

*V. ON GPMB, DEVALUATION AND RETRENCHMENT*

You rightly cite GPMB having D700 million in savings in 1978, sold for D20 million to Alimenta under ERP/SAP. Brother, who forced that fire sale? The IMF and World Bank conditionality — not Jawara’s prodigality. And even then, that D700 million existed because Jawara built it.

You mention retrenchment of 3,324 out of 14,224 civil servants and suppression of 700 vacancies. Painful, yes. But it was an IMF structural adjustment to correct external shocks — groundnut price collapse and global interest rate hikes — not theft. Contrast that with a junta that simply withdrew $90 million and shared it.

*VI. ON DEBT — PLEASE, DO NOT COMPARE GAMBIA TO AMERICA*

You touched on national debt. I cannot start writing about that here, because it will take several series in weeks of writing to address it. But the gist is in my article and that is good for now.

You mentioned U.S. debt — I will admonish you not to go there. Economists of credible repute can’t understand the complexities involved; it’s complicated. That’s the United States giving its own money to other states to borrow because of the complex economic, accounting and monetary complexities involved. It took me several years to study and understand the dynamics of U.S. debt stocks.

Please Mr. Mboge, don’t get into that. I’m sure you don’t know what is imbibed; you don’t have an inkling. You would not compare it to Gambian debt stocks — a country so tiny that its national budget is less than a U.S. community college’s budget!

Our debt is not reserve-currency debt. When America borrows, it borrows in dollars it prints. When Gambia borrows at 17% T-Bill to pay salaries and keeps lights off, it is intergenerational theft. From D15 billion sustainable in 1994 to D48.3 billion at Jammeh’s exit to D136.2 billion projected under Barrow today — $2.115 billion, 82.1% of GDP — and D3.10 billion interest in just six months of 2026 to stand still. That is not economics. That is a graveyard.

*VII. THE IMF EXCORIATION, THE COOKED BOOKS AND THE MANSIONS — RES IPSA LOQUITUR*

Brother Bora, the IMF itself shamed and excoriated The Gambia under President Jammeh for cooking the books at the Central Bank. Jammeh sent his armed military personnel to the Central Bank and withdrew from the national coffers for his own personal use, funding his murderous regime. This is not allegation; it is on record — IMF Article IV reports, Janneh Commission testimonies, TRRC evidence.

Jammeh purchased mansions in the U.S. in cash. One was returned to compensate his victims — over $2 million with diplomatic transfer evidence on file. Ask about the Kanilai mansions! Ask about the Mankamang Kunda and Fajara mansions of the incumbent President! Then go to Barajally, Jawara’s ancestral home — modest, unpainted, unguarded. The evidence and the issue of piety, sanity and decency is res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself!

*CONCLUSION*

Mr. Bora Mboge, you are my brother. We differed, but you have enriched the debate. You worked 20 years under Jawara and 13 under Jammeh, you voted PPP until 1992, then NCP as protest. Your voice carries history. Keep speaking.

But history without citations is nostalgia. Nostalgia without evidence cannot defeat arithmetic.

D9.30 to D74.29 is not an opinion. It is a verdict.

*Yes, the Jawara era had its challenges, with a myriad of issues — no golden age is without blemish. Yet it remains the golden age of Gambian nationhood, unmatched in piety, probity and promise — and it cannot, by any stretch of history or conscience, be compared to the criminal, murderous, lawless, militia-minded, medieval and jungle-minded regimes that succeeded him.*

*Musa Bassadi Jawara*

*Economist & Author*

*Bintou’s Point, Kerewan*

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