From http://www.observer.gm

Editorial
The challenge of our new oil wealth
By DO
Feb 16, 2004, 13:47



President Jammeh’s Friday revelation that The Gambia has huge reserves of
petroleum and other mineral resources, waiting exploitation, is indeed the
most promising piece of news for Gambians since July 1964 when then Prime
Minister Dawda Jawara told Gambians the date for Independence from British
rule.

Jawara’s broadcast heralded the end of colonial rule in our country;
Jammeh’s televised message Friday may as well herald the end of poverty on
Gambian soil.
Petroleum is the world’s most important resource. It is the water that
nourishes the world’s economy. Our petroleum could give us billions of
dollars to help us fix our roads and power supply, give tap water to even
the remotest villages, build schools and universities and pay workers
decent wages.

Above, all our petro-dalasis can give jobs to Gambians and curb the brain
drain that has fleeced us of some of our best brains. Our new oil wealth
can get more friends and correspondingly greater goodwill, respect and
clout. When the oil starts to flow our country will gain a new strategic
importance.

The oil offers us a recipe for success and greatness. But these are all
hypothetical. All these success and dreams should be qualified with ‘ifs’.
We cannot agree more with President Jammeh. However breathtakingly sweet
our future looks, we have a big challenge Gambia.

How do we protect our peace and stability against unscrupulous outsiders
coming into the country to eat all our petroleum pie? Above all, how do we
protect our society from the ills and vices that inhere in such new found
wealth such as political instability and machination, profiteering, armed
robbery and prostitution?

Now that the oil is here how do we make it to benefit all of us and not
only those at the top of Government? How do we make sure that there will be
enough qualified Gambians (petroleum engineers, for example) to man the
positions in the oil industry so that we would not have to rely on
foreigners only? Would our public servants be steadfast and honest enough
to make sure that every butut from the oil wealth is well spent? The
answers to these and other questions pose a big challenge to us all.

Luckily for us, examples abound in Africa where oil -rich states do not
have enough fuel for their filling stations. This is a curse which we must
not allow to afflict us. While we congratulate the Government, particularly
President Jammeh for having followed up on the oil issue so vigorously, we
urge our leaders to have the steadfastness, vision and honesty to make sure
that The Gambia floats in its oil wealth and not sink in it.

© Copyright 2003 by Observer Company

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