COUP IN
GAMBIA FIVE
At this moment of the stock taking of the 22nd July
debacle, I would like to furnish my readers with the
important information of the names of the GNA officers
on active service at the time and where the coup found
them on that special Friday. I will also be using
their ranks then although almost all of them have
since risen to higher ranks except those who were one
way or the other discharged in the initial stage.
There were also few of the junior officers whose
parent units or their where about that day were not in
my records.
In Yundum Barracks there were:
1. Major C. Davis, Second In Command, First Infantry
Battalion.
2. Captain M Badjie, Company Commander "C" Company.
3. Captain M. Sonko, Company Commander "B" Company.
4. Captain J Johnson, AHQ
5. Captain M. Baldeh,  AHQ
6. Captain Dibba, Band
7. Captain N. Cham, Engineering.
8. Lieutenant S. Gomez, Adjutant.
9. Lieutenant B. Barrow, M.T.
10. Lieutenant B. Saine, Intelligence unit
11. Lieutenant Y. Jammeh, M.P.
12. Second Lieutenant A. Kanteh, Platoon Commander]
13. Second Lieutenant A. Kinteh, Signals Unit.
14. Second Lieutenant E. Singhateh, Platoon Commander.
15. Second Lieutenant S. Haidara, Platoon Commander.

In Farafenni Barracks there were:
16 Captain Sam Gibba, Commander Second Infantry
Battalion
17 Captain Dennis Coker, Commander Training School.
18. Second Lieutenant Y. Touray, Platoon Commander.
19. Second Lieutenant S. Sabally, Platoon Commander.
20. Captain M. Bojang, Platoon Commander Kudang Camp
(under the Farafenni Unit)
In the Army Headquarters Banjul there were:
21. Major Baboucarr Jatta, AQ Branch.
22. Captain M.Cham, G. Branch
23 Captain Wilson, AQ Branch
24.Lieutenant E. Cambi, AQ Branch
25 Second Lieutenant M. Sowe, Accounts section.
26. Second Lieutenant Y Drammeh, ADC to General Dada.
At the State House there were:
27.Captain S. Sarr, Staff Officer
28.Captain M. Kassama, ADC to President Jawara.
At the Marine Unit, there were;
29.Major A. Saho, Commander Marine Unit
30. Lieutenant M.B. Sarr
31.Second Lieutenant Fofana
32, Second Lieutenant A. Sarr
On foreign training:
33. Major O. Faye, USA.
34. Captain L. Jarra, USA.
35. Lieutenant E. Jallow, USA.
36. Lieutenant Marong, Nigeria.
36 Second Lieutenant P. Singhateh, USA.
Others:
38 Major M. Njie (Doctor), on leave. Just arrived from
training in Nigeria.
39. Major A. Conteh, on leave in the USA.
40 Captain P. M. Ann, on leave, scheduled to attend a
course in Nigeria.
Other officers not in my records were:
41. Second Lieutenant C. Jallow.
42. Second Lieutenant V. Jatta
43. Second Lieutenant S. Mendy.
44. Second Lieutenant Masaneh Kinteh
Over all, these were the GNA officers in active
service at the time of the coup. However it is equally
important to note that despite their higher ranks, the
senior officers had literally little or no command
power in the presence of the Nigerians. The most
senior officers were majors. There were five: Majors
Davis, Saho, Faye, Conteh and Jatta.
The only senior officer who was fairly autonomous in
his command jurisdiction was Major. Antouman Saho.
There was no Nigerian trainer at his unit plus he
could deal with the defense department directly
without necessarily going through the rigid chain of
command. Anyway we all knew how the major got and
maintained that edge over his counterparts in the
midst of the intolerant Nigerian "Orgas". It was no
secret that the Marine Unit commander constantly
supplied the Nigerian heavy weights with fish and
liquor in abundance. Even in the short unsuccessful
time the embattled Colonel Gwadebeh spent in The
Gambia to take over from General Dada, Saho managed to
shower him with the excesses of his generosity.  I
could remember that the colonel was flown into the
Gambia in a private jet owned by one of his friends.
When the jet was leaving Major Saho loaded it with
huge crates full of all kinds of fish with a strong
pledge to the new commander of his absolute loyalty
and support.
That was the same way he had treated General Dada
until he was sure that the old commander was about to
lose the battle to stay in the country.
And Baboucarr Jatta would say that shortly after the
coup, to win Yaya's recognition, Major Antouman Saho
for weeks took it as his personal responsibility of
supplying Yaya with the best cola nuts in Banjul. Then
one day Yaya in his snappy moods saw the sycophant
walking into the state house with a basket full of
fresh nuts and ordered his aides to tell him to take
them back and never to bring him any gifts again. That
was very typical of Yaya-very erratic.
You see, it is hard to say but that's where the
Nigerians sapped their own program of rectifying the
enigmatic ills of the GNA right before our eyes. When
General Dada was appointed, he first made a
familiarization visit to The Gambia to make an
appreciation of the general situation in the GNA
especially with regards to those maladies that
warranted his urgent appointment. He therefore visited
Yundum Barracks where the entire administrative and
operational organs of the army were located then under
the supervision of the British training team. The
general, a colonel by then, in a rather unconventional
demeanor assembled all the GNA officers in the
barracks for a consultation meeting. He made it
crystal that he was out to help us in the shortest
time possible and that he wanted to know directly from
us what we thought was or were the problems of the
less-than-decade-old GNA.
The GNA was established in 1984, only eight years old.

The meeting was frank and very free, something totally
uncharacteristic of military tradition. The officers
among other things had complained in a consensus voice
the lack of promotion standards in the officer corps.
In the GNA, we had told him, the ordinary soldiers
were put through rigorous tests of all kinds in the
form of cadre courses before they were promoted, but
in the officer corps, the guidelines stopped at the
ridiculous Field Force criterion of promotion by
first-come-first-serve basis. That was to say that
officers were not promoted based on competence or
merit but on who first enlisted before the other. As a
result, the army naturally started to be choked by
what could be best termed as square pegs in round
holes where ranks and appointments were concerned
among the officers.
Dada had expressed shock and dismay over how an army
could properly function with no promotion standards in
place for its officers, particularly during peacetime.
He assured us that upon his assumption of office, his
first priority would be to rectify that unmilitary
flaw that he agreed was the root problem of the
establishment.
Upon his assumption of office, Dada for a while
demonstrated signs of sticking by his promise by
organizing a two-week training course for all the GNA
officers. The course was tutored and monitored by all
the five colonels and the numerous majors he brought
along from Nigeria. At the end of the course, topics
for analytical writing were given out to all the
officers to test their knowledge on the subjects
covered. We were to write about the military history
of The Gambia and its present state with reasonable
recommendations on how best to improve its future
condition.
Months later the results were out. The commander
reassembled the officers and even awarded trophies to
the first three officers identified as the best. Then
the next thing we heard was that the commander sent
the results to the ministry of defense but with an
advice the authorities that the GNA officer corps
could not be systematized based on the present
competency level of its personnel, because their
assessment showed that the relatively junior officers
were far more competent than the ones in the upper
echelon. And for them to put the right people in the
right place at that time would cause a serious
breakdown of morale among the senior officers. But
they promised the department that given a little more
time than the two years scheduled to finish their
program, they should be able to groom or mentor the
right persons from the higher ranks to eventually
succeed them when they left. Only God knew when they
would have completed that.
That was where Dada's top priority on GNA-officer-
promotion-policy ended, making the ideal room for the
Antouman Sahos to flourish above almost everybody. It
also bred a culture of disrespect from the lower ranks
to the upper ones giving rise to a mutinous
atmosphere, which finally exploded, into that
regrettable Friday, 22nd July 1994.
Having said that, I would want to briefly touch on two
issues mentioned by Dampha and Kujabi.
I could not proceed without saying a word or two over
Dampha's true statements on how Chongan and some of us
were relentless to avoid chaos by all means that day.
Chongan was fully prepared to fight and die for the
legal establishment but after considering the
disastrous ramifications of the senseless gun fighting
it would start in the small Gambia he decided to put
the peace and stability of the nation beyond
everything. He knew that the innocent families were
there, i.e., the wives, children, parents, friends and
also the sick the disabled and the weak. So Chongan
gave up the battle but with the heart of a lion that
is still proud of every action he took that day
against those criminals. Chongan understood what
family meant; the value of virtue was instilled in him
from infancy; home was a treasure he cherished and
above all he was free from that cynical disease that
often turned humans into blood thirsty predators.
In contrast, just like Dampha rightly said it, they
were spineless bandits who had nothing at the time of
moral or economic value in the nation to make them
perceive the disaster they were bent on causing in the
country. Nothing meant much to them.  They were
wife-less, did not understand what family love meant,
living in fragile homes desperately trying to pull
through at the brink of imminent disintegration,
destitution in the most abominable context, their
emotions fueled with hate associated with the
successful people they so obsessively envied-call it
jealousy at the neighborhood of absolute madness. But
time will teach them that the short cut to success is
by divinity always temporary. Well, were Sabally and
Haidara not classic testimonies to that reality? The
imbeciles will say no.
 And believe in me, the terror these devils had
intended to unleash in the country would have by
comparison reduced the Kukoi phenomenon to a child's
play. They thought terrorizing armless humans with
guns and bullets was heroic, too ignorant to
understand that children as young as six could be more
vicious or deadly when the conditions are created and
the weapons made available to them. Their mindsets are
more or less the same as those we today see in those
barbarians amputating innocent armless civilians,
women and children, in the bloody civil war in Sierra
Leone and Liberia.
Kujabi spoke of national defense strategy. This is
indeed very important. Anyway I will temporarily
shelve it until at about 2.00pm on the 22nd July in my
story. That was about the time I got the information
at Radio Gambia Studio that Sir Dawda had left in the
American ship and that the PPP government had been
finally overthrown.
So moving with my heavily armed escort toward Radio
Gambia was not quite a comforting feeling.  I was
still afraid of being caught up in some form of armed
confrontation with the TSG guards. I knew that armed
TSG personnel always guarded Radio Gambia.  But thank
god we found one guard there, the guard commander. He
was alone in the guardroom half-naked trying to pick
and choose from a variety of "jujus" crammed in a
traveling bag. The moment he saw us he raised his
hands up in total surrender. He pleaded with us not to
harm him saying that all his men were mobilized that
morning and driven to Denton Bridge to reinforce the
defensive position of the TSG troops there.
I asked him his name.
"Corporal Sonko", he said.
Another Sonko; but in the opposing end. Now think
about how ugly it would have been. Sonkos killing
Sonkos, Jammehs shooting at Jammehs, Jobes, Kantehs,
Camaras Njies, and all of us with the same family
names and in some cases from the same roots fighting
and killing each other like Singhateh wanted it to be.
It would have been gross.
I told Corporal Sonko not to fear anything and
explained to him why we were there. We only wanted
access to the radio transmission facility to make a
short announcement. He immediately volunteered to lead
us into the main yard.
As if they were monitoring us from the distance, the
Radio Gambia staff suddenly started streaming out of
the building in a rush to leave the place by their
cars. Mr. Bora Mboge, a senior broadcaster was the
only one I could recognize among the group. I spoke to
him about what we wanted. He told us to go into the
building where the manager could be found. Mr. Mboge
would not stop for a second to further clarify
anything. By their looks, they were certainly very
worried. For a moment I had the inclination that Bora
was merely deceiving us to get away.
But I could not blame them. In 1981, Radio Gambia was
a center of bitter fighting between the Senegalese
forces and Kukoi's combatants over the control of the
strategic spot. I think one of the well-known
broadcasters then, Femi Jeng was killed in that coup
attempt. Therefore to see Bora and others trying to
run away from all forms of trouble in another coup
problem was perfectly normal. I could have easily
stopped them by ordering the soldiers to stop anyone
from leaving the facility but I really did not think
that was necessary.
I was surprised to see that the manager inside was a
woman who chose to stay against the majority's desire
to leave.  She was soft-spoken and very cooperative.
When I informed her that we were there to make an
announcement about the on going coup, she calmly
stated her regret for that impossibility telling us
that their main transmission equipment at Bonto could
not function because it was not yet fueled that
morning. Without that machine turned on, the Bakau
unit was rendered useless. Anyway, she gave us the
telephone number of the man responsible for fueling
the station every morning. He was stuck in Banjul
without any means of coming over. It was obvious that
the road was closed. I tried the gentleman-he was
called Jaiteh-and he assured me that if a vehicle and
a risk-free passage was afforded for him he would be
pretty willing to go to Bonto and fix the problem. I
didn't know how to do that.
There was another gentleman working for the station
called Jawara who was with us all the time until the
coup operation ended. It was in the presence of this
man that I started making phone calls to all the
places I thought important to the crisis in hand.
Since there was no radio communication, I turned to
the telephone, which was tremendously helpful.
I called the state house guardroom and first got one
Lieutenant Sonko. He was the second in command of the
presidential guard after Captain Bajo. Unfortunately,
Mr. Sonko was not quite cooperative. I guess he must
have had the notion that it was about the whole GNA
without an exception in the whole mess. When I tried
to coax him to restrain their fire by all means, he
told me in an uncompromising language that they
already had their orders to resist and if that meant
fighting they would do it to the last man. Before I
could tell him how disastrous fighting would be in the
country, especially in that small Banjul, Sonko had
slammed the phone on my ears. That was very scary.
Now that it seemed there was going to be fighting, I
immediately called Farafenni Barracks. Captain Sam
Gibba was the commanding officer there. Captain Coker
was there too but in the training school. The troops
were actually under the command of Capt. Gibba. He was
already briefing his men when I got him on the line.
He had over a hundred men in his barracks and I wanted
him to take as many of them as possible and bring then
down to Yundum Barracks via the South Bank Highway. I
gave him a hasty but comprehensive briefing about what
was going on. Then I informed him about my fear of
fighting erupting in Banjul which without doubt would
put the lives and properties of every person in the
urban area at the mercy of the criminals and bandits.
The captain first gave me the flimsy excuse that his
unit vehicle had a technical breakdown. It was indeed
a very bad excuse in that crisis situation. I
recommended that he tried getting a vehicle in
Farafenni town by any means possible even if he had to
commandeer one or two to move the troops to Yundum.
I was hoping that in the event of any fighting we
could create a command post in Yundum to police the
urban area against banditry or terrorism. I told him
how Serekunda (my hometown) could be the worst target
for criminals. He hesitated for a while and then told
me to leave him alone.
"I am your senior", he went on, "so you cannot give me
orders as if you are my superior".
The captain went ballistics telling me that after all
he already had been given his troops'- movement orders
by Colonel Akoji who spoke to him from his house at
Kotu. According to the acting commander they were
supposed to come by the North Bank Highway and take
the ferry to Banjul.
I told him how bad that order was. In the event of
fighting, the Banjul-Barra crossing would not be
operational because no ferry operator in his right
mind would be staying on a job there when bullets were
flying all over the place. It was most likely that
they would waste their time all the way to Barra just
to realize that there was no means of crossing.  As
for Colonel Akoji, I pleaded with the captain to
disregard his orders because sitting at his house had
cut him off from everything that was realistically
happening.
He banged the phone after telling me to butt out of
his business.
And guess what? The Captain with all his troops were
stranded at Barra until the following day after the
coup was pronounced over and successful. There was no
ferry or boat to carry them over to Banjul. Second
Lieutenant Yankuba Touray was one of his platoon
commanders. He also spent the night at Barra on the
orders of the Nigerian acting commander Colonel Akoji.
Next, I tried Kudang Barracks where Captain Bojang was
the commander. Although his sub- unit was under the
command and control of Captain Sam Gibba, Bojang was
not given any orders. When I called him, it was like
talking to somebody who did not know what was going
on. I told him everything I knew and recommended the
same ideas I tried to sell to his company commander.
He also did not have a vehicle at his post and his men
were too few. He said he could only spare a section
minus-nine men to be more precise. However, he agreed
to join the first available GPTC bus with his nine
men. He arrived on Saturday afternoon, 23rd July..
When I called the state house again, Lieutenant L.T.
Tamba received it this time. He was more reasonable to
talk to than Sonko. He agreed with me about the deadly
consequence of starting a firefight in Banjul. But
since he was under command ha called Captain Bajo his
boss to talk to me. It was more of a monologue. I
spoke while he only listened. When I asked for his
opinion, he could not tell me anything. Instead he
told me to talk to the ADC to the president Captain M.
L. Kassama. He was at his office, co-located to that
of the president's.
The ADC was a very smart officer, very reasonable and
easy to talk to. He was interested in what was going
on at our end. I told him my encounter with the GNA
officers led by 2Lt. Edward Singhateh, Lt. Yaya Jammeh
and Capt. Momodou Lamin Sonko. I also gave him an
account of the their strength and the weapons in their
possession. However when I warned him about the danger
of engaging the soldiers in a fight, he echoed his
understanding of the risk.  He then informed me that
the authorities were trying to work out something with
the American. He had to suddenly leave me to attend to
the president's duties. I could hear the president's
voice in the background.
It was not more than ten minutes when we got the
information that Sabally and Haidara had taken the TSG
main barracks -Fajara Barracks- without any
resistance. Major T. Jawneh the man succeeded by
Captain Bajo as the commander of the presidential
guard was in charge.
Within the next hour or so, we received another
information saying that the president and his family
had left the state house to the American vessel, USS
Lamour County and that the soldiers had taken over the
country. It was about 2.00pm.
This brings me back to Kujabi's point on the
importance of strategic defense policy that was
definitely lacking in The Gambia. It was amazing that
between 9.00am and 2.00pm, in only five hours, a whole
government was overthrown just like that. Defense
policies are an annual matter. Governments that know
what they are doing take the trouble every year of
reviewing the security threat of their nations and
then come up with the latest preventive programs to
secure their nations. The programs are often designed
to prevent rather than manage or deal with security
problems. This is not just putting men in uniforms and
employing them in security establishments and
expecting them to protect the country and its people.
That robotic idea was too colonial when the
colonialists were treated like semi-gods, despite
their shortcomings and all the horrible things they
known for doing. The "toubab" was always right even if
he had to rape our wives in broad daylight. . Beside,
the colony was merely a temporary residence for those
who were sent to administer them. As a result, their
defense strategies, not particularly meant for the
general welfare of the whole land and its people,
turned out to be dangerously threatening to the
post-colonial governments. I think that was and is
still a problem in most independent African countries.
In the Gambia for instance, the British colonialist
did not just create the deplorable Field Force
liabilities and left them behind in the hands of those
who did not know what to with them, but in addition,
they built us an administrative infrastructure that
stood on very frangible pillars.
To have the entire life of the nation wired to a tiny
island like Banjul is at best a real recipe for
national calamity.
Banjul held all the important seats of government, not
mentioning the home and office of the president.
Defense strategists should have long since come up
with correcting this security risk. It should have
been a priority for the PPP government long time ago
especially after Kukoi in 1981.
My number one corrective method to this problem would
have been a radical decentralization plan. Instead of
focusing all our attention in Banjul and its
surrounding, government should have concentrated in
developing a modern city in the North Bank area. The
climate is good there, the land spacious making it
possible to build everything there from an airport,
seaport to schools, hospitals, sports facilities and
even a second state house. And it could be well
plnned. So that instead of having the enterprising
Badibunkas migrating to land-locked Banjul where
scientists have predicted that the sea erosion is
going to submerge the island in the next fifty years
or so, they should have been encouraged to stay and
accelerate the development progress of the new city.
A good development plan of five to ten years on that
side of the country would have transformed The Gambia
into one of the safest and most successful countries
in the sub-region. And for any mad man to overthrow
the government he would have been faced with the
mammoth task of taking both the North Bank and the
other end simultaneously. I could bet that if
president Jawara was able to find another safe
sanctuary in the nation other than in that American
vessel he would have preferred going there which would
have one way or the other foil the coup on the 22nd
July 1994. I don't think the soldiers would have even
dreamt about coup if that were possible.
Anyway I think we should all thank God for the
presence of the Americans that day. If they were not
in Banjul to provide safe passage for the president
and his family the situation may have been much
uglier.
It is also imperative that the Gambian people have a
full say in the security structure of the armed
forces. They should know who is there, how they are
governed what they need or what they do not; the kinds
of weapons they have and what they use or need them
for. They should have say on what takes place in the
barracks and have a free but fair hand to intervene
when the situation is showing signs of poor leadership
or discipline problem. The unnecessary barrier between
the civil population and the armed forces, another
negative colonial legacy, has to be obliterated. And I
must say this again; the government should constitute
a defense policy reviewing board that will look into
the latest security requirement of the nation. This
has to be documented for accurate implementation.
Otherwise we will continue to gamble our lives and
properties by living the security risk of having the
likes of Yaya and his dangerous gang surfacing on us
at any moment. And let us not be fooled they will
always be there and will always have those bunch of
civilian vampires ready to help them suck the blood of
the normal people.
Over thirty years old government, suddenly within five
hours or less the PPP was history. That…was definitely
not right.
Anyway my next move was to call my family and put
their minds at ease. To my surprise, they told me that
there was word going around that I was part of the
coup organizers and that I took over Radio Gambia. It
was all baloney. Up to that moment I was trying to
figure out how a coup could happen like that.
By 3.00pm. an NCO, Corporal Njie who was an
electrician in the Yundum workshop came to the studio
driving a pickup vehicle. He was from Fajara Barracks.
He was too excited to tell me any sensible thing. I
decided to join his stolen vehicle to see what was
going on for myself.
We started at Fajara Barracks. There was nothing much
going on there. No officer was on the ground. I told
the person at the fuel storeroom to send enough fuel
to Bonto so that Radio Gambia could start operating.
Shortly before we left for Yundum, Captain Sonko
arrived. He was more reasonable now, joking and
laughing in the exact way he was known to be. I later
learnt that Edward Singhateh drove him away from state
house. Singhateh also drove away Baboucarr Jatta
accusing him of being a puppet to the Nigerians who
had been using him to charge and punishes junior
officers. Many officers said that when they started
the wave of arrests of senior officers Jatta crossed
the border to Cassamance where he stayed until things
were relatively safe for him. He had always denied
that.
Captain Sonko joined our vehicle to Yundum Barracks.
It was in that barracks where I started to really
understand what happened.  We will go into that next
week.
On a final note let us however hope that these last
few months left for the presidential election in The
Gambia will be the last days of the Yaya era. With the
help of the almighty, may the Gambian people by this
time next year outlived this terrible government. It
would certainly be a period when people all over will
be looking forward to the desired rectification. We
will be freed from fear of our doors being knocked on
at night for a government-orchestrated abduction,
arrest or assault.  We will no longer be afraid of
killers smiling in our faces during the day and then
butchering us at night.
We will be able to take the children of Barrow, Saye,
and the other murdered soldiers in the hand to that
national ceremony where their fathers would be dug out
of toilet-pits and honored with twenty-one gun salutes
in a proper military burial with reveille played in
the graveyard.
We will be able to satisfy Koro Ceesay's family
members by ensuring that the monsters that killed and
burned the young man for no just reason are put in
chains and punished accordingly.
We will build that memorial structure to eternally
remind Gambia that in the year of our Lord 2000, on
the 10th and the 11th of April, the APRC government
that was here murdered 14 unarmed innocent young
Gambians and then doctored the law to get away with
it. But they have all suffered the consequence of
their evil deeds.
We will ensure that innocent people like Dumo, Jaiteh
and others incarcerated at Mile Two Prisons for
nothing will be free to live their normal lives again.
(I personally commend Dumo's wife for the loyal woman
she is). The criminals will pay for their crimes of
abusing power.
We will once again open the doors of the country
allowing all those on exile to go home and live their
normal lives without fear of being disturbed or
enslaved by the system.
Amen!


 Ebou Colly







__________________________________________________
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