By Ndey Jobateh
“Before, there was starvation in The Gambia. By August, Gambians were eating wild mangoes just to survive. That was what was happening in this country.
Today, there is no one in The Gambia who wakes up without breakfast, lunch, dinner, or Njogonal. Such a situation does not exist.” President Adama Barrow, NPP Rally, Mamuda Village, Kombo South!
Wow!! Power has a way of revealing the true character of leadership. One must ask: since when did President Barrow become this detached from the reality on the ground? Where is he getting this information from?
This statement is troubling not only for what it says, but for when it was said. To respond to the tragic deaths of Gambian youths on the Backway by claiming that “no one in The Gambia wakes up without breakfast, lunch, and dinner” and that “such a situation does not exist” is to disconnect leadership from reality. The Backway is not a historical accident; it is a contemporary symptom of economic desperation, unemployment, and hopelessness.
I was born and raised in Banjul. We ate breakfast, lunch, dinner, Njogonal, and even snacks. When I travelled to the provinces during holidays, I never saw or heard of people having no food. In fact, people often ate more healthily, using produce from their own gardens and harvests. So which Gambia was the President talking about?
People do not risk the Sahara, detention camps, and the Mediterranean because they are guaranteed three meals a day. They leave because survival without dignity is not life. They leave because opportunities are scarce, incomes are unstable, and the future feels closed. That is President Barrow’s Gambia, his legacy!!
Hunger today in President Barrow’s Gambia is not only about starvation,it is about food insecurity, rising prices, underemployment, and households that cannot plan beyond the next day. To declare that such conditions “do not exist” while families are burying their children who died seeking a way out is both insensitive and irresponsible.
The Backway deaths demand accountability, empathy, and policy answers, not denial. A Government serious about protecting its citizens would confront the reasons young people are leaving, rather than invalidate their lived reality with sweeping claims.
Gambians, this is what the President said: you have no cause to worry because you are all fed. And a President who believes that everyone is fed will never understand why young people are leaving. And a President who does not understand the problem will never solve it.
The rest is up to us, this is how he welcome us in 2026!!
