The Barrow administration like all others in Africa frequently refer to the importance of building strong institutions. The Jammeh administration is heavily criticized for using executive orders in order to direct heads of institutions to do things that may not tally with the dictates of law and procedure.
During the Janneh Commission many institutional heads claimed that they did things that were at variance with the law due to executive directives. Recommendations were given for institutional heads to do what is in line with the rule of law. A strong institution is therefore one whose head is not under the direction or control of any authority that gives illegal or unconstitutional orders.
The nation was informed that the cooperatives department will be charged with the responsibility of registering cooperative producer marketing societies (CPMS) that will be issued with certificates based on application of their members. The certified cooperative societies and their registered presidents and secretaries are in charge of seccos to buy groundnuts during the trade season. Foroyaa undertook to monitor the buying of groundnuts during the 2024/2025 groundnut trade season. This paper has discovered the operation of seccos without certified producer marketing societies and informed the director general of the department of cooperatives, the coordinator and liaison, the GGC and QMoney management of institutional flaws requiring remedy. Somebody is giving directives and somebody is following those directives contrary to building strong institutions.
If the Barrow administration is not to repeat past shortcomings it must introduce performance audit of such institutions to ensure that those factors that are against the building of such institutions are identified and remedied. The government should be mindful of the fact that its record is being monitored by its global partners. Hence it is its duty to remedy shortcomings instead of waiting to be asked to remedy them or be indicted for bad governance.
