Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: Orders from Above

By Baba Galleh Jallow

You see Dr. Jammeh, it is not that you have not given us answers as to why you have broken all your solemn promises to the Gambian people back in 1994 and 1995. It is that all your answers have been unacceptable justifications of your position as a self-styled neo-traditional ruler of The Gambia who draws his legitimacy from both constitutional instruments and the pre-colonial political culture of mansa kunda (kingship) that continues to plague our civic culture. It has been a policy of your government to categorically deny Gambians the right to disagree with you or to enjoy their freedom of association with alternative political parties or partake of the privileges of Gambian citizenship when it comes to free political expression, association, and assembly. Through an unconcealed regime of enforced silences and forced victories, you maintain a peace of the iron grid in The Gambia by jailing political opponents and journalists and by having anyone who as much as mentions change of government grabbed and either made to disappear or charged with treason or some other crime. But change is the ultimate law of life Dr. Jammeh, and change of government is as inevitable as tomorrow. Trying to permanently prevent change of government is like trying to run away from tomorrow. It is an exercise in futility because change will come one day; and when it does, it better comes through a regime of healthy discourse than through a regime of forced frog marches under the barrel of a gun. It is either the ballot or the bullet, as Malcolm X would say, and we would rather that it be the ballot, not the bullet. Leaders great and small who make it impossible for political change to come through the ballot often leave no alternative to the bullet, a situation that all of us should avoid, especially those of us in power.

Now Dr. Jammeh, please allow us to get rather personal for a brief moment by way of getting into our conversation on orders from above. I know you used to order your police to come arrest me. You didn’t know, of course, that I kind of actually enjoyed those arrests because I knew I was totally innocent. And because I knew that you were actually the guilty party. I hated the idea of being treated like a criminal; but I loved that one only feels like a criminal if one has actually committed the crime for which one is criminalized. And that as the wise man said, “walls do not a prison make.” Do you know that I thought of my funniest stories thanks largely to my innocent detention experiences? Great and learned characters like Dr. Homicus Medicus, Donkey Driver, Don Kenkey de la Panka, Bighead Chickenbrain, Loony the Fox, Smoothface Rattlemouth, G. I. Nyuhu,  Homo Solomal, John Yahavich, Puhus the Patriot, Yappat, and Gankal Jumus, among many others, are all drawn from my unjust but rewarding detention experiences. Even our latest friends Nak and Nyammeh Alador, to who we will come in due course, must seek their roots at NIA or Police headquarters in Banjul. This was why I at once detested and welcomed the idea of seeing unannounced NIA agents or officers of the Police Serious Crimes Unit officiously filing into the Observer or Independent offices and asking me to please come with them. I liked that some of the NIA agents wore small black, cowboy hats, as in old gangster movies, or in the manner of Franz Kafka. I also liked that the police, who always initially looked so serious and pretended that I had committed a very serious crime, ended up apologetic and blaming everything on orders from above. In short, Dr. Jammeh, by trying to prevent me from expressing my opinions in perfectly legitimate newspaper language, you tickled me into much angry laughter which I then shared with our readers as creative fictional nonfiction. Of course I am not going to thank you for that because while detained, I could not have my regular morning tappa lappa bread with beans or akara and my steaming cup of creamed tangana!

Anyway, Dr. Jammeh, did your police ever tell you they did not know why I was arrested? Of course they wouldn’t dare talk so to your powerful doctor. What am I thinking? Of course your police cannot ask any questions, especially questions of extremely crucial national importance such as an order to arrest a journalist. The Gambian police under you are made to believe that their job is to arrest when told, to release when told. To follow orders is what they are told they are paid for. They, of course, learn by example that who pays the piper calls the tune and whether it was an unhappy tune or not, they had to dance or face that other music. It is one of your amazing feats, Dr. Jammeh, that you have succeeded in making generally obedient robots of our police forces. Just go and arrest him. No Questions Asked. Command Executed. Robots Await Further Instructions. Beep Beep. This is a very sad situation that needs to be urgently corrected.

By the way, Dr. Jammeh; have you ever heard of orders from above? Did your police ever mention them to you? Well they did to me, several times. And they might have mentioned them to other curious detainees too. The police said these mysterious orders from above were always the reason I was arrested. Every time I was arrested, I made it a point to press them to please tell me what crime I had committed this time around? If they came up with any coherent answer at all, it was orders from above. In arresting me, they were merely acting upon orders from above, a crime that, to our collective puzzlement, was not listed in their books of police law. Of course, they always cited a story or editorial in the newspaper – or even an ad such as the one that declared “the boys are coming” - as the crime I committed against the laws of The Gambia. The boys in that particular offending ad must have evoked scenes of martial pandemonium; but it was merely an ad for a new paint product about to hit the Gambian market. But of course, the police always knew that the offending content could not possibly constitute a crime. In the end, they could not but admit that I was under arrest not because I had committed a crime, but because they were acting on orders from above. Apparently, orders from above now crowns the pyramid of Gambian laws and constitute the worst crime one can commit in Dr. Jammeh’s Gambia. Please tell us, Dr. Jammeh, what exactly are these orders from above? What do they look like? What is this easily irritable almighty above that habitually issues orders to arrest and detain perfectly innocent, law abiding and well meaning citizens? Why do these orders from above ask detainees which political group they belong to? Who are their foreign connections? Why do they always try to sabotage the good work HE is doing for the country? Why are they always selling the country to the enemies, as if the country were some commercial item up for sale and that could be sold by anybody with a pen and paper? In any case, it was always amusing to reflect upon these mysterious enemies ready to buy poor Gambia at the earliest opportunity.

You see, Dr. Jammeh, it is strange what absurdities are often conjured to justify the unjustifiable. For instance, on the only occasion that the NIA ever produced a warrant for my arrest, they were later to dismiss that same warrant with a snide remark that it was “just a warrant” and had nothing to do with the reason for my arrest. Early one fine morning, a group of five NIA agents led by Baba Saho walked into my office and handed me an arrest warrant. The warrant said that I was under arrest because I was “suspected of trafficking in arms, ammunition, and drugs and being in possession of dangerous documents.” When they hauled me off to NIA headquarters in Banjul, I was told that my arrest was in connection with a small front page story headlined “State House Wall Collapses” – which it actually did in a recent rainstorm in Banjul. When I reminded them that my arrest was in fact in connection with suspicion of drug and arms trafficking, Baba Saho waved his hand in the air and said dismissively, “that was just a warrant.” That episode and those words stick in my mind because they suggested a totally banal disregard for the laws and institutions of the Gambian state that was the employer of Saho and his fellow agents. Not surprisingly, our good brothers at the NIA were later to admit, yet again, that they were merely acting on orders from above.

It is our opinion Dr. Jammeh, that when you issue orders for the arbitrary arrest and incarceration of innocent persons in The Gambia, you do not feel guilty about it. What you do not appreciate is that the absence of guilt does not mean the absence of crime. What drives most human action is less the pleasant prospect of having a clear conscience after the fact, more the pursuit of some kind of personal interest. And since an interest has to be pursued, what ever means we choose to pursue it may easily, though not always legitimately, spark the clear blue skies of a clear conscience. This is because, Dr. Jammeh, a clear conscience may willfully be conjured to take the place of guilt. In other words, no one knows that they are ugly, or bad, or evil. We all look at the mirror and feel that we are really cool, even though some of us are really ugly. What with our large heads and red, log-like lips! Hitler could do what he did with a clear conscience because he did not feel like an evil man. He felt like a man with a mission that required that he act the way he did. Idi Amin claimed with a perfectly clear conscience that the crocodiles in the lagoon could understand his speech. And you are acting the way you do with a clear conscience because you feel that you are a man with a mission that requires that you act the way you do. But while you feel like you are acting with a clear conscience, what you repeatedly act without is the force of law - the constitutional law you are sworn to uphold and to protect as the duly elected President of the Republic of The Gambia.

Anyway, Dr. Jammeh, I do not wish to engage you in an acrimonious contest of wills here by asking you difficult questions about conscience that no one can answer. I know that with all the responsibilities of state and all the bustling state business concerns, you really do not deserve a slew of questions whose answers we suspect but can only really get from you. And so having outlined our general objections to orders from above, we beg to move forward with our discourse with the knowledge that we will come back to some of the issues we have raised so far. For now, let us look at the significance of your titles in national development.

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