Discourse with Dr. Jammeh: On Your Numerous Titles

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Dear Dr. Jammeh, now that the Holy Month of Fasting is over, I propose that we get on with our conversation. I propose that we start by revisiting the issue of your numerous titles. However, I do not think that we need to waste our precious time on matters of mere doctoral importance. All one has to do to be a doctor is work hard, gets lots of money, and be prepared to invest in a healthy fund of conditional generosity. No, I am not saying that you actually told St. Mary’s University that you were being generous to them so they could confer upon you an honorary doctorate of laws! No! Of course, our learned colleagues at St. Mary’s University, Halifax were merely demonstrating their gratitude to a kind patron. It is lawful to confer the honorary doctorate of laws upon any individual, especially for their generous contributions to the university’s well being – one way or another. And since it is lawful to do so without the threat of costly legal wrangling, you are the very privileged recipient of that honor. And since you have a clear conscience about being called Doctor, we shall not dwell upon it any longer. Of course, we must expect that it pops up a couple of times again during the course of our current conversation.

But with all due respect Dr. Jammeh, while we can forget all about doctor, I would like us to just call a spade a spade when it comes to your other titles; Sheikh for instance; or Nasiru Deen. Or Babili Mansa? What is the significance of the string of titles that stand with Doctor in your name Dr. Jammeh? I really have a clear conscience about asking you this question. And since all doctors are equal but some doctors are more equal than others, I beg you to ignore the ignorance that makes me certain that you know exactly what your titles signify. Let State House issue a statement from the President’s Office to educate us on the significant contributions that the titles Sheikh Alhaji Professor and Nasiru Deen are making towards our national development and towards the successful realization and actualization of your very own Vision 2020. While we are urgently curious to know what this Vision 2020 really looks like, we will postpone that curiosity for a moment and just be content with a little explication of the substance of your titles. Really Dr. Jammeh, just humor us this one time and say a few words on why it is in the ultimate national interest of The Gambia that you be routinely addressed as His Excellency the President Sheikh Alhaji Professor Doctor Yahya AJJ Jammeh Nasiru Deen. I am insisting on this question because I know that you do see some aspects of what you see as the national interest being actively promoted by the oft repeated pronouncements of your titles. You wouldn’t have anyone call you all these names were they not, in your mind, of crucial significance to your mission to transform The Gambia into the Hollywood of West Africa. It has to serve some particularly important purpose to the success of your declared goal of turning the Gambia into a World Superpower by the year 2020. A noble goal indeed, Doctor, but one whose significance may not easily be grasped by us ordinary mortals. So please humor us with some explanation.

We are not for one moment suggesting that your titles are not of crucial importance. They are TO YOU; and that’s important because it helps define whom and what the president of our country is. You see Dr. Jammeh, we know that titles do contribute something to efforts at national development. However, the negative nature of their contribution requires that we seriously consider dropping the titles from the name of our president. We believe that His Excellency the President Dr. Yahya Jammeh is all that you need to be called. If we had our way, you will simply be called the Nation’s First Citizen Dr. Yahya Jammeh, with the understanding that being so called comes laden with profound responsibilities that must be executed by the Nation’s First Citizen. These responsibilities will not only be the day to day running of government affairs. They will include, among many other things, that as a citizen belonging to the Nation, you must never deliberately act in a manner prejudicial to the health of the nation – both mind and body. Not if there are acceptable or better alternatives.

Now Dr. Jammeh, we are particularly critical of titles because historically, in postcolonial African politics at least, they have tended to blind the vehicles on which they ride to the sharp curve on the cliff ahead or to the large potholes just ahead. They have tended to blind most if not all postcolonial African leaders who carried them, to the fact that there are always acceptable or better alternatives when they chose to act in a manner prejudicial to the wellbeing of their nations. By the time of independence in many African societies, people yearned for the good old days of the African leader. There was a kind of  Euro-fatigue engendered by the alien ways of European colonialism, a colonialism that reduced Africans to mere subjects of empire to be exploited and civilized, to be silenced when they protested, to be denied a voice in the conduct of their own affairs. For these reasons especially, Africans yearned for the departure of the white ruler, and looked forward to having their own ruler, just as in the good old days before the colonial encounter.

And so they did depart, handing over power to the new nationalist leaders. The people, in their enthusiasm, started resurrecting ancient appellations and heaping them on the new rulers. Some were called Nzee, others Mwalimu, the Great Peace, the Guide, the Lion and many other lofty titles besides. And then there were the late to come, the Mobutus, the Amins, the Bokassas who were not given honorific titles, but manufactured a great deal more than the earlier leaders with one possible exception. Mobutu claimed that he was The Great Warrior Who, Moving from Victory to Victory, will leave fire in his wake. The irony that moving from victory to victory should leave peace, not fire in its wake was apparently lost from Mr. Sese Seko Wa Ba Ganza. His Imperial Majesty Jean Bedel Bokassa was so enamored of great titles that he imported horses from France to pull his chariot on his coronation day, when a crown worth ten million dollars was placed on his head and imported pages attended at court. For all these leaders, the titles that they amassed and carried along everywhere represented tragic blinders to their political sight. It had happened to at least one great African leader; one who was far above the caliber of Mobutu, Amin and Bokassa, but one who nevertheless got tragically blinded by excess titles and honorific appellations. Thankfully, the damage done him by his titles did not prevent Nkrumah from being voted the most influential pan Africanist of the Second millennium in 2009. Needless to say, Nkrumah’s case is a particularly rare exception if only because most African leaders who carry lengthy titles are not gifted with a particularly lengthy imagination or coherent vision.

Nkrumah received so much adoration and adulation from state-owned newspapers and radio that he lost touch with Ghanaian public opinion. In the Ghana public media, the only one that existed in Ghana after 1962, covered Nkrumah as if he was a god. Early in his career, Nkrumah had amassed titles such as Osagyefo (victorious in war), Kantamanto (one who never breaks his promise), and Oyeadeeyie (one who puts things right) which, among other traditional titles were constantly invoked in the public media. In addition, the newspapers in particular continuously manufactured grandiose titles and appellations for Nkrumah, some outright blasphemous. One cannot help but wonder why or how a man of Nkrumah’s intelligence could allow himself to be so called by the public media. Among many other grand names and titles, they called him The Savior, The Messiah, His Messianic Dedication, the Messenger of Destiny, Iron Boy, His High Dedication, and the Torch of Africa, often invoking images of his “return from Calvary”, a direct reference to Jesus’ Resurrection. On the pages of the Evening News, he is often represented as a Black Jesus levitating in the atmosphere, a sparkling halo around his entire body, his right hand raised in the manner of Jesus contemplating his children. References to deadly blows he had dealt the evil forces of imperialism and neocolonialism were frequently made amid claims that with the exception of a few stooges of imperialism and neocolonialism who would soon be eliminated, the entire Ghanaian people were a hundred percent behind him. As for his vast network of informers, they told him only what he wanted to hear: on the one hand, that the people loved him and everything was going on just fine; and, on the other, that so and so was a traitor, a Fifth Columnist, an imperialist and neocolonialist agent engaged in nefarious activities that called for immediate precautionary security measures against them.

In the end, Nkrumah did great things for Ghana and for Africa. But he also did some terrible things. He introduced both the de facto and de jure authoritarian one-party systems into African politics. He encouraged, perhaps by default, the current specter of spineless praise-singing by sycophants, shameless flunkies, and unprofessional media that need no telling to extol the glories and achievements of the groot leader - mostly imagined - or to exclude all voices that are the least critical of the groot leader from the arena of public discourse.  Nothing but praise and success must be reported in these media because the groot leader is infallible, above blame and above failure. Unfortunately, most of these excluded voices are often the groot leader’s best friend and counsel, the voices that could have helped him avoid getting blinded by empty titles and superfluous praises, the voices that are merely out to help feed the national psyche the kind of nutrients it needs to flourish and enrich the nation.

It is important to note, Dr. Jammeh that two days after he was deposed by a combined military-police coup on February 24, 1966, his own newspapers - the same state-owned media that literally deified Nkrumah - started calling him all kinds of uncomplimentary names? The Acrra Evening News, the most vociferous of Nkrumah’s former praise-singers, now carried headlines such as “Nkrumah Regime Dismissed”, “Democracy is Reborn in Ghana”, “Massive Support for the New Government”, “Kwame Nkrumah’s Regime was a Disgrace to Ghanaland”, “Ghana is Really Free Forever”, “Freedom of expression and liberty reborn”, “Kwame Nkrumah is Buried Forever”, and many similar unfriendly headlines. Indeed, a procession of Ghanaian’s actually conducted a mock burial of Nkrumah by marching in the streets of Accra carrying a coffin with his name on it. On the title front, Nkrumah was transformed from the high and mighty Osagyefo and Star of Africa into “Africa’s Number One Tyrant”, “Traitor Nkrumah”, “Satanic Tyrant and Dictator”, “The Despotic Colossus”, “Satan Kwame Nkrumah”, “Mad Demagogue Kwame Nkrumah”, “False and Self-Imposed Messiah”, “Arch Criminal Kwame Nkrumah”, “The Bloodthirsty ‘Saint’”, “The Poison Doctor”, and many other uncomplimentary titles besides. All of these could be found on the pages of his own newspaper, the Evening News of February - March 1966. Cartoonists that formerly depicted Nkrumah as the levitating Christ now portrayed him as a horned demon, a giant octopus with a vampire face and a monster serpent coiled around the helpless body of Ghana, its bloodstained fangs ready to sink into the nation’s head. Beside these demonic depictions of yesterday’s Messianic Dedication was always the gallant soldier with the bayonet, cutting the beast in half to free the nation. In a large front page cartoon on the March 3 1966 issue of the paper, Nkrumah is depicted a giant ogre literally squeezing a helpless Ghana dry.  In one particularly telling poster on page six of the Accra Evenings News of March 4, 1966, Nkrumah is depicted as Sasa Bonsah, a particularly vicious horned devil of Ghanaian mythology.

The point of this story, Dr. Jammeh, is to argue that lengthy titles do not have a good history in postcolonial Africa and to suggest, thereby, that you seriously consider dropping all but the Doctor from your name. You were conferred with a honorary doctorate with a well respected university and you are legitimately entitled to carry that title anywhere. But for Sheikh, Professor, and especially Nasiru Deen, we recommend that you discard them expeditiously for the sake of our nation’s welfare. As for Alhaji, we believe that it merely means that you have been on a pilgrimage to Mecca and may therefore be easily rationalized out of the picture. We are particularly critical of Sheikh and Nasiru Deen because being religious titles, they have no business hanging over the shoulders of a secular president of a modern republic. Of course, modern republics are also human and therefore part of history. But they are too politically secular to be burdened by religious titles without spiritual substance. They may be accepted when conferred; but they may not be part of the political trophies of the president.

Finally, Dr. Jammeh, we must say that it is to your credit that you also do not carry all your other titles, among them the Libyan Grand Commander of the Order of Al-Fatah, the Libyan Grand Order of Bravery, and Libyan The African Medal conferred upon you by your erstwhile friend Muammar Gaddafi. There are also the Chinese Order of the Brilliant Jade with Grand Cordon, the Orders of the Distinction of Liberia, Deputy Governor of American Biographical Institute Research Association (North Carolina and London), and one of the enterprising Institute’s Nominees for Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century and Man of the Year 1997. We are especially glad that you do not carry the title of Admiral of the Great Navy of the Great Commonwealth of Nebraska, especially since, as it turns out, the Great Commonwealth of Nebraska has no navy, great or small. One wonders why some of these titles are manufactured since they really cannot be either positioned in space or comfortably carried around. But we are glad that you do not carry them all in addition to the others, for that would have raised some really difficult questions in our minds which, perhaps, we could have only answered by appealing to the Dr. Owl of the twentieth century. We say Dr. Owl of the twentieth century because the Dr. Owl of the twenty-first century has lost most of his thinking capacities and can now only grunt lame platitudes about non-existent glories of non-existent realities. Anyway, so much for Dr. Owl at this point. We might have occasion to return to him later. For now, let us turn to another crucially important issue of national concern namely, the issue of your neo-traditional rulership of our constitutional republic.

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