The
incumbent president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, is as addressed as
His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Doctor Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus
Junkung Jammeh Naasiru Deen.
In addition to his fondness for titles
is his undying love for power! Twenty-two years on, The Gambian
president currently seeks re-election in the December 1 presidential
election, and says he’s “only answerable to God.”
So far, Jammeh has spent four terms in
office at the rate of five years per term, having stood for election and
winning to become president of his tiny West African country in 1996.
The AFP reports that Jammeh seized power
in a 1994 coup and has maintained it ever since with a mixture of
severity, mysticism and iron-clad self-belief.
“No matter what people say about me, I
am not moved… I don’t listen to anybody because I know what is
important,” he said while depositing his candidacy for this week’s
presidential election.
Governing, he said, “is between me and God Almighty.”
Governing, he said, “is between me and God Almighty.”
A deeply devout Muslim, Jammeh, 51, and
husband of four wives, grew up in the western village of Kanilai in
1965, the year that The Gambia, a long east-west sliver of land bordered
by Senegal, gained independence from Britain.
Never seen without his Koran, sceptre
and prayer beads, Jammeh’s billowing white robes are rumoured to hide a
bulletproof vest, the legacy of several coup attempts by his own guards.
He has promised to bury critics “nine
feet deep” and told the UN Secretary-General to “go to hell” after Ban
Ki-moon called for an investigation into an activist’s death in custody.
But in another moment, he urged his
supporters to restrain themselves from violence and allow Thursday’s
election to go ahead peacefully.
Jammeh controls several businesses in
the country and has in the past seized them without warning,
discouraging foreign investment.
The state of the economy has pushed many
young Gambians to take the “Back Way”, or migrant route across the
Sahara to Libya, where they board boats bound for Italy.
Credit: punchng
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