Exiled leader ‘plundered’ Gambia coffers
Gambia’s exiled leader Ya hy a Jam me hp lund er ed millions of dollars in his final weeks in power leaving state coffers “empty”, an aide to new President Adama Barrow said as West African troops prepared to secure his arrival.
Jammeh flew out of country on Saturday, ending 22 years at the helm of the small west African nation, and headed for Equatorial Guinea where he is expected to settle with his family.
A West African military force entered Gambia on Sunday — greeted by cheers from relieved residents — to provide security and allow Barrow, who has been in neighboring Senegal for more than a week, to return and take power.
But amid growing controversy over the assurances offered to Jammeh to guarantee his departure, Barrow aide Mai Fatty said the new administration had discovered that some $11 million had recently been stolen.
“The coffers are largely empty,” he said in the Senegalese capital Dakar.
“Over two weeks, more than 500 million dalasi ($11million) were withdrawn” by Jammeh, h es aid .“As we take over, the government of The Gambia is in financial distress.”
Following Barrow’s win in the Dec 1 election, Jammeh refused to step down, triggering weeks of uncertainty that almost ended in a full military intervention.
Jammeh slunk off in the early hours of Sunday on an unmarked plane. Barrow is eager to return “as soon as possible”, Mai Fatty said, warning however, that “the state of security in The Gambia is still fragile”.
On Sunday, “additional forces crossed into The Gambia to beef up the numbers already on the ground,” Barrow said, according to a statement read out by Mai Fatty.
The new administration wants the Economic Community of West African States forces to stay on. “We want their mandate to be extended,” Mai Fatty said.
The new administration’s first priority will be to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of people who have fled in recent weeks fearing a bloody end to the crisis.
Jammeh personally controlled certain sections of the security forces. He took power in a 1994 coup from the country’s only other president since independence from the United Kingdom, Dawda Jawara, making this Gambia’ s first democratic transition of power.