Jobe, take your time. Don't hurt yourself trying to keep up with me. Catch
your breathe and come back anytime. Let us look at your 'justifications'
today.

I hope you realized that what you have back home is a failed agricultural
policy. Gambians are hungrier now than they were six years ago. And the
bottom-line is food in people's mouths. You claimed that rice production has
increased. How come the price of a bag of rice has not decreased? Economics
101. Supply and Demand. If Gambians are producing more rice, it means that
we need to import less rice, i.e. demand for imported rice decreases. Why is
that decrease in demand not reflected in the price of a bag of rice? Ah!! We
were busy making babies. If you figured out that problem, why did you not
fix it? The problem is not population growth. Farmers that are producing the
rice cannot even feed themselves let alone provide for the growing urban
population. You see, there is a  disconnect between your policies and
claimed 'successes' and the plight of Gambians. You are simply not doing
things that alleviate the poverty of the average Gambian. Whenever we make a
false step forward, you take us two tangible steps backwards. Are Gambians
not better off when they could purchase a bag of rice for less than 150
dalasis?

I am glad that you pointed out that most of the success in our agricultural
sector is attributable to natural causes. The rains have nothing to do with
Yaya. What Yaya had a hand in, was and still is, a dismal failure. We thank
God that He Blessed us with good rains the past few rainy seasons. What can
we show for God's Great Grace? Rice harvests that cannot feed farmers all
year round. Mountains of groundnuts Yaya could not help sell. Our farmers
are in a precarious position. They had always produced rice. It is just that
the rice they produce cannot feed them year round. Previously, they would
sell their other products (like groundnuts) and buy rice for the rest of the
year. Now they cannot do that. In the first place, they cannot sell their
groundnuts at competitive prices. If they are lucky and the promissory notes
of dubious groundnut buyers are honored, our farmers are still faced with
the problem of sky-rocketing prices of commodities in the country.

One of the first ill-advised and dubious deals of the AFPRC government when
they took over was to confiscate the rice of businessmen like Charbel Elhajj
and start selling their (AFPRC) own rice from Denton Bridge and other
locations. This was nothing but a dirty ploy AFPRC learnt from their
counterparts in Sierra Leone (Strasser et al). These bandits stole money
from Social Security to finance this dubious project. When it is all said
and done, all these monies will be accounted for. Did that policy have the
effect of reducing the price of rice? Absolutely not. This government cannot
do anything to reduce the price of rice. They are approaching the problem
from the wrong angle. The commitment and the political will is not there.
Yaya is more preoccupied about his bank accounts than about whether our
farmers have food to eat. Jobe, have you pondered on the idea whether it is
cheaper and more reliable to import than to produce rice in The Gambia? We
have a vision-less moron leading us and I refuse to give them ideas to move
the country forward. Just keep talking about irrigation and rains we cannot
bank on.

Moving to the groundnut sector, try touting APRC agriculture and economic
policies to the farmers that cannot sell their nuts. Try telling us about
the 'success' of your policies when we just  learnt that government coughed
up $12 million to compensate Alimenta for illegally booting them out of the
country, thanks to thugs like Baba Jobe. Try talking to those farmers that
still have Hilo promissory notes in their hands. What about groundnut
farmers that cannot feed their children two square meals a day and take them
to school and hospital because they have not seen a single 50 dalasis in the
past two months? As Hamjatta and Saul try to point to you, the reality on
the ground does not support your contention that Yaya is good for us. We are
POORER under his watch than we were six years ago. Price of rice (we need to
feed our families) has gone UP. Price of groundnuts (we need to sell in
order to buy rice) has gone DOWN. The Dalasi is weak compared to the
currencies we use in order to import our staple foods. In short, what God
has given us in terms of good rains, the Devil (Yaya) has taken away from
our farmers in terms of corruption and bad economic policies that will
DEVALUE the money in our pocket (if we are lucky to sell our groundnuts or
get a government job) and INCREASE the price of food.

As far as fisheries is concerned, the industry has also suffered under
Yaya's watch. It is a blatant lie to say that the industry "has never been
given the attention it deserved until now." Do the names NPE, SeaGull, Boto
Manjang, Tanje, Brufut, ColdStore, 'Ganaw Marche, both in Banjul and Bakau
ring a bell to you? Why this selective amnesia when it suits you? Do you
know how many millions of Dalasis the PPP government pumped into NPE via
Commercial Bank? Do you know the incentives the PPP government gave Okran to
bring fisheries from Ghana to Gambia? Do you know the number of trawlers we
had pre-1994? Did you compare the number of people employed in these
trawlers pre-1994 to the current figures? Go and ask real professionals in
the industry about the dismal state of this industry. All you were talking
about again were pending implementation of projects stolen from PPP. I hope
you do not expect the PPP people or the current Opposition to get loans from
Taiwan and implement these projects. Yaya stole power from them. If his
government does not implement these projects, who do you want to implement
them? Currently, we have less Gambians earning foreign exchange because they
are fishing in trawlers belonging to Senegalese and Nigerians and Ghanaians.
I will be interested to learn from you real figures about the foreign
exchange outfits like NPE are earning as a result of their export
activities. Maybe they can then repay their loan they got from the Gambian
people. Can you also supply figures showing that Gambia saved a significant
amount of foreign exchange because we no longer have to import a lot of
protein products? This is laughable. You want to tell us that because of
Yaya there are figures to show that we now consume less imported fish and
meat? To begin with, we were not even spending a significant amount of
foreign currency on imported protein-based food. We have always had a
healthy supply of fish. We exported fish even during the Jawara regime.
Remember?

As far as the energy sector is concerned, the facts on the ground speak for
themselves. It is already pitch-black. Putting wool over people's eyes will
have no effect in blinding people. The moron has made several promises and
failed. So long as he has his generator at the state house and there is
electricity in Kanilai, he does not care about the rest of the country. You
are darn right when you noticed that energy is very important in economic
development. Ask the hotels how much money they spend buying fuel for their
generators. Ask the Gambian families that lost their appliances and their
houses because of your despicable power supply. Again, your government does
not have the political will and the wherewithal to solve our energy problem.
So long as we have thugs like Yaya, Baba Jobe, Tarik Musa, Amadou Samba
lining up to fatten their bank accounts, our energy problem will not be
solved. The importation of heavy equipment like electricity generators is
Yaya's golden chance to receive bribes. I hope you understand that, because
if you do, you will realize how difficult it would be for us to get our
money's worth and get a final solution to this problem under Yaya's watch.

Finally I want to also take issue with your assertion that our economy has
been predominantly tax-based. As I understand it, what our governments
collect from taxation is lot less than what we receive in terms of loans and
grants. Just this year Famara Jatta revealed that a staggering 90% of the
financing of his poverty alleviation program was coming from loans and
grants; not from taxes. So I do not understand your claim. Granted, the
government makes a lot of money taxing fuel and farmers, but the money
received from taxation is less than the money we get from both internal
(treasury bills) and external loans and grants. Please give us the figures
on where the government gets the money to finance its projects; taxation,
loans and grants.

As far as the re-export trade is concerned, I would be interested to see
your exhaustive analysis. You just mentioned it in passing. I hope you are
not insinuating that it picked up during APRC. My reading is that since 1994
there are less vehicles plying between Gambia and Mauritania, Senegal,
Bissau, Conakry, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, Burkina, Ghana and even as far
as Nigeria. Please enlighten us when you tackle this vital sector of our
economy. Show us how Yaya improved this sector.
KB

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