Fifty four years must not be seen as fifty four days. Those who governed the country for the past 22 years and those who have been governing the country for the past two years have one thing in common. They are led by presidents who were born in 1965.
For the first thirty years no foundation was laid to ensure that agriculture is linked to processing in order to generate employment and promote sustainable development. No sufficient effort was made to prospect for minerals. Ninety percent of the development budget depended on loans and grants. The country continued to eat most of the food it ate and imported most of goods it needs.
People still saw the president, ministers and councillors as kings and queens. Citizenship education was never conducted.
Many parastatals were privatized and the government was faced with a bankrupt Cooperative Union with less than D50 in its account. Eventually a coup d’état became the final outcome giving rise to a quasi-monarchy that sustained the poverty of the people and provided no breathing space to the sovereign Gambian people to realise their sovereign authority.
Now that change has occurred through the ballot box all Gambians should endeavour to take charge of their destiny and place it in hands that would ensure that they live in prosperity and liberty rather than poverty and ignorance. It is no time to celebrate, it is time to contemplate and take stock of where we have gone wrong and how we are to right the wrong.
