When the dust settles and Yahya Jammeh is removed from the scene, Gambians
will find themselves with a bankrupt shell of a nation with a devastated
bureaucracy that is functionally dead. The Gambia government as currently
constituted simply doesn't work. The basic framework the present government
inherited in 1994 had the same organizational flaws with the now added blight
of incompetence and terrible leadership. Whoever comes in this year would
also inherit an organizational labyrinth paralyzed by inefficiency and
rudderlessness that will never succeed in delivering the much needed services
for it's only clients, the Gambian people. Consequently the magnitude and
scope of change that would be required to recast our government to be
effective would be so big and difficult that it would demand the wisdom and
active participation of not only our elected leaders, but every one of us
determined to change for the better. I recently had occasion to chat with two
people with vastly different backgrounds. Both of them however worked for the
Gambia government. One was a twenty-five year veteran with graduate degrees
who served as a permanent secretary for years. The other was a trained
qualified teacher who ended up running a small school in the provinces. In
their unique ways both gentlemen left me with a very strong and unsettling
believe that our government is not only structured to fail, but had the
almost fatal addition of being incapable of self correcting even in the face
of obvious and endemic problems.
  I began with the permanent secretary by asking him what his role was within
the bureaucracy. He said the P.S was the ministries principal policy maker
who oversaw a core group of technocrats and administrators in formulating and
executing government policies. That got me into asking a seemingly simple but
profound question of how policy is made in the Gambia government. In a
nutshell he said the P. S would summon his senior staff within the ministry
and essentially brainstorm. They would ultimately formulate a policy with all
the technical details and hand it over to the minister who almost always goes
along with whatever is entailed in the paper. The minister then takes the
policy proposal to the Cabinet where it would be discussed as part of the
overall agenda of the nation within a specified period. Once the cabinet
approves it, the policy would be promulgated and the ministry with the
jurisdiction which is the one that formulated it in the first place would now
be charged with executing it. My first question was with an almost non
existent civic or other non governmental organizations lobbying on behalf of
the people specific policies are going to affect, do departments get the
kinds of input necessary to measure the value or effectiveness of policie
they formulate? I was told they may call in the principal nurse at RVH if
this a substantial health policy to get her input. But she too falls under
the same bureaucracy overseen by the P.S who is the principal formulator of
the policy. This is especially relevant in a governmental set up that does
not reward or even condone descent. As a result it is a save bet that the
nurse in the example would see his or her role as only being cooperation
because she is not independent or vested with any clout. She can't determine
her own budget. My conclusion is that ideas that go into making policy that
are by design not diverse and even if you have the world's smartest people
hunkering down in these offices to hammer out ideas, you will end up a
monolithic thought process that would not always work to best interest of the
nation. The President who has ultimate responsibility for policies of his
administration relies on the bureaucracy to formulate and execute ideas
within the broad framework of his agenda. But neither his office nor the
Cabinet that approves or decline proposals is equipped to fully examine them
as they make their way up the chain. There is no substantial policy office
that the President or the cabinet can rely on to score, evaluate and advice
on proposals or to measure their effectiveness once the President signs off
on it. Such an outfit if it ever exists can be at the forefront of policy
planning living the rest of the bureaucracy to focus much more on execution
leaving ample room and time to correct policies that have not worked as
foreseen. The President can hence have something of a balance between
planners and executioners making him more aware of the general direction of
his administration and helping recognize priorities. It would foster
innovation by stoking the creative minds of talented people into thinking and
exploring better ideas.  I believe the best ideas emanate from vigorous
debate amongst all participants in a transparent and professional manner. Our
current system rewards ineffectiveness and leaves a spectacular trail of one
bad idea after another.
     My encounter with my second friend leaves me heart broken about an
education bureaucracy with more than a half dozen directors that is presiding
over a near catastrophe especially for small isolated schools in the heart of
the provinces. My friend was the headmaster of a 200 pupil primary school
with 8 teachers half of whom need a lot of teaching themselves. With no
operating funds and nestled in an isolated dusty patch, running his school is
a daily nightmare of trying to persuade poor and destitute parents from
yanking their kids from school to help them in the fields they rely on to
stave off hunger. He must also contend with an aloof bureaucracy called a
regional education office with vehicles and staff who require him to pedal or
work a dozen miles every month to file a single page report about his school.
When he comes to the office, he is told to leave it with the first layer of
bureaucrats and then come back some other day to discuss the contents of his
report with the real officer in charge. Another 12 mile trek for the poor
headmaster to discuss an utterly useless report that brings his ramshackle
school and suffering kids zero relief. The government provides a few text
books and he is told they must be rented out to the kids for D20 in a village
where most people can hardly feed themselves. His sad conclusion is that more
than half of these poor kids would never make it past the primary grades
because they will not have the required number of qualified or motivated
teachers or the books to forge ahead. Like their parents they would succumb
to depravities of a hard village life coupled with an education bureaucracy
that would never succeed in creating a conducive learning environment. The
tragedy is the system would protect incredibly heartless and awful leaders
and consign another generation of Gambians to illiteracy and a vicious cycle
of poverty. The next government must reform the education bureaucracy so that
all these bogus and nonfunctioning administrative layers of countless
directors and regional offices are removed. They must increase and target the
funding to ensure that at least 80% of appropriations go directly into
classroom in the form well trained and well paid teachers, books and other
learning resources. That is the only way we can begin to help all of our
people. As it stands the 200 pupils of my friends school can't count on their
M.P, their local government and certainly not their central government. No
one cares about them.
        We must all roll up our sleeves and do what we can to reform our
institutions once a new government comes in. We can do it from anywhere in
the world by engaging the politicians, the budding civic society and our
respective communities. If we don't, we would be saddled with serious and
endemic problems that may overwhelm even a well meaning successor government.
We've got to quickly transition from very understandable and justifiable
anger and frustration to a sustained effort at actually working for change. I
am optimistic we can.
Karamba

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