Gambia To Dump English As Official Language President Yahya Jammeh of the Gambia has vowed to change the official language of his country from English to a local language. Mr Jammeh said the change is necessary because his people no longer subscribe to the belief that they have to speak a foreign language in order to be a government. Speaking at the swearing-in ceremony of the country’s new Chief Justice, Justice Eli Nawaz Chowhan at State House, Banjul, on Thursday, the Gambian president denied accusations by his critics and UK government of being a dictator. He said his government has put in place a well functioning democracy in the Gambia with an independent judiciary and parliamentary system. Mr Jammeh said he would not take lectures on good governance and democracy from Britain because the British colonial government was bad and never cared about educating and improving the well being of Gambians. He accused the Gambia’s former colonial masters of looting his country’s resources while living Gambians in abject poverty. The Gambian leader added: “The British didn’t come here to develop us with our malaria and mosquitoes but to loot. The Gambia was the worst story of colonialism. They killed all our elephants and wild life in the country. Our wild life could be compared with Southern Africa. Rhinos whatever you think of in Southern Africa has a local name here which means it existed. “What brought the British to the Gambia in the first place - which was bigger than it is now- was trade in ivory because the Gambia had a lot of elephants. We even have an island called Elephant Island. It was the ivory that brought them. They wiped out all the elephants and ended up selling Africans. The British instituted slavery. So now even for the next one billion years they have no moral platform to talk about human rights anywhere in the world more so to talk about good governance.” President Jammeh further added: “After 400 years of British occupation and looting in this country, they built only two hospitals and one high school. And in January 1943, the main referral hospital in the whole colony of the Gambia, Royal Victoria Hospital, was described as the worst hospital in the whole of the British Empire. “In 1943 less than 100 years ago, Gambian animals lived longer than their owners because they were better treated. Life expectancy in this country was 25 years.” Mr Jammeh said he is a better governor than the previous PPP and colonial governments. He said since he took over power in 1994 his government has brought development to the door steps of Gambians including a university and a television station. “I didn’t rule this country for 400 years but at least today people are seeing me on television even in the UK,” he told his cabinet. “I have a university and today even the children of beggars in the country can go to university. It is not based on who you know but what you know. When I took over power in 1994 there were only two volunteer doctors at the Royal Victoria Hospital. So what is good governance and democracy?” He added: “If good governance is anything to go by, why was the government that took over at the time of Mickey Mouse independence and couldn’t built a high school for 30 years praised as a democratic government? It was simply because they toed the ambition of the colonial masters to under develop this country. If the British didn’t care about education that means they were not good governors. All they did was loot and loot and loot.”
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 22:30:33 +0000
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