Jammeh’s sinking ship

For Gambian President Yahya Jammeh time is fast running out and options are getting fewer. He has only hours to make up his mind to shape up or ship out as regional powers strategise to smoke him out of the safety and comfort of his Banjul palatial presidential palace.



Jammeh came to power following a 1994 coup d’état that ousted Dauda Jawara. Nigeria’s Lawan Gwadabe was then on secondment as Gambia’s chief of army staff. It was thought that it was his mentoring and Nigeria’s contagious record of military coups that bolstered what was then described as Gambia’s Boy Scout army to sack Jawara’s civilian regime.



But Jammeh has since grown in strength (and independent-mindedness) and mastered the art of despotism, stampeding dissent and emasculating every institution, including the military, on whose back he rode to Olympus.



However, his final bid to keep for himself everything he controlled for 22 years appears elusive, regardless of the unwavering allegiance of the country’s military and it’s leadership.



Already his political edifice is progressively crumbling as key officials abdicate and scamper to safety. Sheriff Bojang, a nice chatty man I once had a long conversation with in Guinea-Conakry, has since quitted his job as information minister and fled to neighbouring Senegal. And reports say more officials, including Foreign Minister Neneh MacDouall-Gaye are abandoning Jammeh to his fate in his sinking ship.



But Jammeh is not oblivious of history and how posterity rewards despots. He, sure, remembers how Laurent Gbagbo’s obstinacy earned him a bed-space in jail and in the dustbin of history. He knows he doesn’t stand a chance against regional powers after Thursday.



But, in the meantime, the waiting game continues as the world watches to see who, between Jammeh and ECOWAS leaders, blinks first. But what is certain is Jammeh’s presidency expires on Thursday and Adama Barrow’s begins soon after.



However, how Jammeh’s regime is sent off will definitely directly impact on Barrow’s inauguration. And with the heavy military build-up around the tiny country’s borders with Senegal, which incidentally leads the military intervention, and the Atlantic, it is delusional to expect a bloodless send-off.



Whatever the outcome, Jammeh brought it all on himself and country. He robbed everything of life to keep his endlessly insatiable ambition alive and now there’s nothing to save him from drowning.



Let him go down alone.