From the pages of Gambian history, the name “Momodou Sabally” is written down as it sets a fire of betrayal and exploitation. The reputable confidant turned enabler of despise Sabally is the posterity of the corrosive result of unmonitored power cum blind loyalty.
Ranging from his co-plundering of the Government coffers to his tribe-targeting tactics that create ethnic antagonism, Sabally's term embodies the big danger posed by those who put self-serving interests ahead of the welfare of the people.
The era of Sabally is characterized by servility, blind loyalty, and subservience to the oppressor, Yahya Jammeh. It has taken several decades for Jammeh's rule of terror to cast a shadow over the Gambian landscape. As a voluntary co-conspirator, Sabally made an invaluable contribution to the master scheme by Jammeh of successful robbery of the country's resources, to the advantage of officers. However, while the title of a puppet master belonged to Jammeh, that of the marionette should have been Sabally, who engaged in corrupt schemes to enrich himself and plunged the nation into a quagmire of corruption and mismanagement.
Sadly, Momodou Sabally's delinquencies go beyond even the simple money skimming. The scheme of polarization and manipulation by the leadership provided additional exacerbation to the existing tensions in the Gambia. The ethnic groups were equally put into opposition to each other to gain more power. Such depths of hollowness evidenced by a readiness to employ the worst avenues such as insulting whole Mandinka-speaking communities to instigate inter-ethnicity animosity is what makes him face moral bankruptcy.
In addition, there was an environment of fear and intimidation under Sabally with dissent violently suppressed and opposition forcefully suppressed and silenced through coercion and violence. His arrogance and bullying nature were comparable to his incompetence, and one only needs to look at history to see that he was often a failure in positions of responsibility. In contrary to his egotistical behaviour, which the workers report as a toxic boss who used to rule with an iron fist, Sabally’s track record speaks for itself, and erstwhile employers have a habit of shunning him.
Already after the ouster of Jammeh, her caricature of his legacies through memoirs and self-glorifying narratives sounded like empty rhetoric, especially in light of a huge body of evidentiary shreds of evidence. His claimed intellectualism comes nowhere close to the consequence of his egoistic ambition and immorality.
Given the efforts of the Gambia for restoration and for healing from the gashes of dictatorship, individuals like Momodou Sabally should be held accountable for the crimes that have been committed against the motherland. The only way by which Sabally and his alike ‘s evil works can start to heal the wounds inflicted is through reconciliation and justice that will lead to a more just and equitable future for all Gambians.
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