By Yankuba Jallow
Mayor Talib Ahmed Bensouda appeared before the Local Government Commission of Inquiry on Wednesday, 3 September 2025, facing hours of scrutiny over his role in financial approvals at the Kanifing Municipal Council. The commission is probing the financial and administrative operations of local councils from May 2018 to January 2023, and Bensouda’s testimony centered on a recurring question: did he approve payments or merely “suggest” them?
The hearing opened with the mayor submitting a stack of documents the commission had demanded, including contracts committee meeting minutes, correspondence with the Gambia Public Procurement Authority, and contract papers for the digitised revenue collection system with Eco-Tech, the Bakoteh dumpster project, and a contract with Noflai Transport Limited. These were admitted into evidence before Lead Counsel Patrick Gomez began his questioning.
Gomez immediately tested Bensouda’s long-standing claim that he does not approve payments but only advises, while the CEO is the true approving authority. The mayor said he only approved the “request” or “activity,” not the amount. But vouchers produced in the hearing suggested otherwise.
One voucher was a subvention request from Charles Jaw Memorial, a school owned by the council, addressed to the CEO. The mayor had minuted on it that the payment should be made on a monthly basis. He read his own words but insisted this was a suggestion, not approval. Gomez disagreed, saying the wording spoke for itself.
Another voucher concerned a D235,000 community lighting project from Bakoteh Ward Development Committee. The ward councillor pledged D75,000, and Bensouda wrote to the CEO to support them with the same amount. He maintained he was not the approving authority, though the D75,000 was eventually paid. A similar pattern emerged with a capacity building request from Ebo-Town/Jeshwang Ward. The mayor’s note instructed the CEO to support them with D15,000 — the exact amount later disbursed.
The Commission confronted him with more evidence. A 19 April 2021 request from the Public Relations Manager for cash from a Qcell donation bore his notation. A 7 May 2025 request from the chairman of the Establishment Committee for a HR Expert included the mayor’s words: “CEO, D100,000 is approved.” On the stand, Bensouda insisted he was only suggesting. Gomez pressed him: “the words used are clear.”
Another request from the clerk to the mayor carried similar wordings. A separate payment involved D100,000 to musician Nyancho for tickets. This time, Bensouda told the Commission plainly: “I approved the request.” Gomez underlined that the voucher itself carried the same word, “approved,” in the mayor’s handwriting.
The Commission turned to meeting minutes of 19 March 2019, where a councillor raised compliance issues under Section 18 of the Local Government Act. Gomez asked: “Was a resolution passed?” “There was none, but we agreed in principle,” Bensouda answered. He acknowledged that council decisions are normally contained in resolutions, but said not all decisions were written.
He admitted there was no law permitting councils to make decisions without resolutions, but still held that matters agreed “in principle” were binding. Gomez disagreed, pointing to Section 28 (1) of the Local Government Act, which requires decisions to be in resolutions and subject to voting.
When pressed on whether a resolution ever existed to remove him from the cadre of approving authorities — as he had claimed in previous testimony — Bensouda conceded he could not produce one. Instead, he said agreements were informal and not always voted on. “I can say 90% of council decisions were not voted,” he told the Commission.
Gomez countered that the evidence, from vouchers to testimony of former CEOs and finance officials, showed the mayor did exercise approval powers. “We have [pieces of] evidence to show that the control the mayor wanted is in practice,” Gomez said.
The mayor attributed the absence of resolutions to lapses by the clerk. He acknowledged he was now relying on oral testimony as the head of council to explain how things were done. “It was discussed and was in practice,” he maintained.
But the Commission’s lead counsel was not persuaded. “That’s a no go area. We won’t waste time discussing that again,” Gomez declared, arguing that the record was already clear: the mayor’s handwritten approvals, and the disbursements that followed, spoke louder than principle.
