Gambian president to keep feared secret police

GAMBIAN President Adama Barrow said on Saturday that every aspect of his tiny West African state would need an overhaul after ex-leader Yahya Jammeh’s 22-year rule, but that its dreaded secret police would remain.

Barrow faces an uphill task after taking over from Jammeh, who left behind a dysfunctional economy and emptied state coffers ahead of his departure.

Rights group blame the notorious National Intelligence Agency under his longtime con- trol for forced disappearances and torture.

Barrow said the NIA was “an institution that has to continue”, but that its name would be changed and training would be given to its operatives.

“The rule of the law, that will be the order of the day,” he said.

Barrow also addressed one of Jammeh’s most controversial declarations, from 2015, that Gambia was an “Islamic republic”. Barrow, in contrast, insisted the country – whose population is 90 percent Muslim, with the rest Christian and animist – was a republic, “not the Islamic republic”.

Civil servants would likely return to a five-day work week, breaking with Jammeh’s rule that Friday was a day off in line with his Islamic republic rules.

“My government is going to look at every avenue and there will be a complete overhaul of the system,” Barrow said, speaking at his first press conference since arriving back from Sen- egal on Thursday.

The president promised his cabinet would be named early this week so he could “get the ball rolling”, adding he would receive the first comprehensive information about the nation’s finances also today or Tuesday.

Jammeh has been accused by a Barrow aide of taking $11 million from the state coffers before leaving for exile in Equatorial Guinea, and diplomats have said the country was already in a precarious financial state.