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Momodou
Denmark
11859 Posts |
 Posted - 10 Sep 2026 : 19:19:45
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*Old Man Musing*
The Conscience Of A Citizen Edition
PART 1
By Hassan Gibril
WHY I SPEAK: A Testimony Of A Bona Fide Citizen Who Owes No Man, Fears No Man, And Seeks Nothing From Any Man
On Civic Duty, The Silence Of The Intellectuals, And The Price Of Truth In The First, Second, And Third Republics
My beloved Gambians,
Let me state, with the clarity that old age grants and with the traditional “Kersa” (modesty/good manners) which Bathurst taught me, why I speak, and why I shall continue to speak until the breath that remains in this tired body is recalled by its Maker.
I speak as a bona fide citizen of this riverine republic — nothing more, nothing less.
I do not speak as a partisan.
I do not speak as a job-seeker.
I do not speak as a praise-singer or supporter in search of a contract, nor as an opponent in search of a platform.
Those who have known my walk through the First Republic of Sir Dawda Jawara, the Second Republic of Yahya Jammeh, and this Third Republic of Adama Barrow, know that my tongue has never been for sale or rent.
Since 1995, when our nation stood at the crossroads between tyranny and hope, I, behaved and acted, without any remorse or regret, in truth when truth was a dangerous currency and indeed that cost me my over 2 decades of public service career.
I did not whisper in the London drawing rooms or even elsewhere.
I stood, I acted and I also contributed, in my own humble insignificant way, to the “Coalition” that ousted the 22 years of autocratic rule — a contribution that many, then and perhaps still alive or now dead, can and will attest to.
And I did so and will continue to do so without seeking a single photograph opportunity or newspaper or press release headline.
In 1995 and again in 2017, when the State House became a kind of a “Mecca”, and every man who owned a suit or “haftan” queued and still continue to queue to shake hands with the powers that be for a photo-op, several well-meaning friends urged me: “Hassan, go. Just show your face."
I declined. Not out of pride, but out of principle.
For I had not joined the struggle for change in our beloved country to be seen or photographed.
I had joined it because not to join it would have been a betrayal of my own conscience.
I considered it not activism, but civic duty — “fard al-kifayah” — the obligation that falls upon every citizen when the house is on fire.
Even when it meant putting my own life, and my family's comfort at direct risk, I did it, notably at advent of the Jammeh dictatorship.
And let this be understood forever:
I am a citizen first, before I am a public servant (national and international), nay before I am anything else.
The lie that we have passed down or sold to our youth is that politics is only for politicians.
No. Because political decisions can invariably decide whether we will survive or be doomed, as a nation and as a people.
Whether the “dalasi” money in our pocket buys bread or buys shame.
Whether our sons will stay in Banjul or die in the Backway.
Whether our daughters will learn in a classroom or learn in a street.
Therefore, I have not only a right to speak, I have a duty to speak whenever I believe it necessary.
My commitment to the truth is not seasonal.
It is not conditional on who is in the State House.
It does not expire when a political party wins, nor does it awaken only when a political party loses.
What, then, troubles my soul in this winter of my life?
It is not the noise of the sycophants.
I have seen sycophants in three (3) republics. They are predictable, like the rains.
What troubles me is the thundering, calculated, profitable silence of the intellectuals — the professors, the lawyers, the journalists, the doctors, the former permanent secretaries, the men and women who supposedly know better, who purportedly know that a road is leading to a ditch, yet say nothing, because perhaps their consultancy is being paid, their board appointment is being kept safe, their visa for travel abroad is now secure.
They have made a Faustian bargain:
They will trade their voice for position.
They will trade their conscience for comfort.
Let them be warned: silence may protect one’s interest today, but history will judge that silence harshly tomorrow.
For history does not record only those who did evil.
History records, with even greater contempt, those who saw evil and polished their glasses and looked away.
So, whenever the true history of our beloved native Gambia is written — and it will be written, not on Facebook timelines that vanish, but in books that endure — there will be a chapter titled “The Complicity of the Silent”.
And many big names will be in it, not for what they said, but for what they refused to say when their nation needed their voice most.
Let me be final, clear, and categorical, so that no political agent and no future ruling class agent ever misunderstands me again:
I neither seek nor expect an appointment, favour, contract, consultancy, ambassadorship, or reward from any political dispensation or regime or from any government — present or future.
I am not auditioning.
I am not lobbying.
I have no CV in circulation.
The Almighty God remains my sole Provider and will always be my Sustainer.
What I have, though small, is enough.
What I lack, though much, I do not need from any political dispensation or from anywhere else.
My contentment is my wealth, my “tawazu” (inner strength) is my protection, and my grave whether in the Old or New Jeshwang Cemetery or even elsewhere will not be any wider if I become a Cabinet Minister or any other high-ranking personality or statesman.
I speak because I must.
I speak because if men like me do not speak, then who will teach our children that a citizen is not a beggar of the state, but its owner?
- CONCLUSION: Three Sobering Lessons For The Generations Yet Unborn
1. The most expensive thing a citizen can sell is his silence.
You may think you are protecting your business, your job, your family's income by remaining silent.
In fact, you are mortgaging your children's future for your present comfort.
For the Gambia that you are silent about today is the Gambia your children will inherit tomorrow — voiceless, because you taught them that silence is wisdom.
Silence is indeed not wisdom.
Silence in the face of shared national decay is cowardice wearing the “boubou” or “waramba” of false diplomacy.
1. No political dispensation or regime can buy a man who has already been paid by the Almighty God.
When your provision is tied to a man in power or to a set-up in place, your tongue will forever be tied to their swings or moods.
When your provision is tied to the Almighty God, then your tongue is free.
Seek therefore to be free economically, however modestly, so you may be free morally, however loudly.
A citizen who needs nothing from anyone can tell anybody everything.
1. History does not remember crowds at State House or Any Seat of Power.
History remembers the one man who refused to go.
In every republic, there are a thousand photos of men shaking hands with power.
There is only one story of the man who refused to shake hands for a photo, because he believed power should shake hands with the people, not the other way around.
Be that man.
Be that woman.
Speak, even if your voice shakes.
For a nation dies not when the wicked shout, but when the good whisper: “I don't want to be involved."
You are indeed involved, willy nilly.
By birth, by blood, by burial ground, you are involved.
And so, I will continue to speak — not for a political party, not for a politician, not for profit — but for that little boy in Half-Die or in Soldier Town in the 1950s who believed that Bathurst belonged to him, and he belonged to Bathurst.
And that boy, by the grace of God, is still alive, and is still speaking.
Let the reader, therefore please, understand !!!
Hassan Gibril
(The Nondescript Old Man But Forever Banjulian)
To Be Continued ……
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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Momodou
Denmark
11859 Posts |
Posted - 12 Sep 2026 : 10:53:53
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*Old Man Musing*
The Conscience Of A Citizen Edition !!!
(From My Armchair In North London — In The Winter Of My Life, But Still A Child Of The Island)
PART 2 (Final)
- WHY I WILL NEVER STOP SPEAKING: The Price Of Truth, The Wages Of Silence, And The Covenant Between A Citizen And His Grave !!!
On Why The Third Republic Is Judging The First Two, And Why My Generation Must Speak Before The Soil Takes Our Voice
My beloved Gambians,
If PART 1 was my testimony, let PART 2 be my will.
For every testimony must end with an inheritance — what I leave you when my armchair in North London is finally empty.
I have walked, as I told you, through two former republics, not as a tourist, but as a civil servant who carried files, who typed memos at midnight, who was praised in one and purged in another.
Let me now tell you, without embellishment, what two former republics taught this old Bathurst/Banjul Soldier Town “Ndongo” boy.
In the First Republic of Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, we had men of immense education and impeccable English, but they began to believe that manners could replace management.
We had democracy, but it became a democracy of a few families (mostly from the provinces but based or schooled in Banjul) who passed ministries like kola nuts at a naming ceremony.
It was somewhat gentle, it was somewhat decent, but it was also somewhat tired.
And because it was somewhat tired, it did not see the gun coming.
In the Second Republic of Yahya Jammeh, we had a gun (and a bunch sycophants mostly Banjulians) that believed it was a government.
I served in its early dawn, for barely six (6) months, believing as many fools did that a soldier could sweep clean what politicians had soiled.
I learned, at great personal cost — at the cost of over two (2) decades of public service career and at the cost of sleepless nights when truth was a dangerous currency — that a broom that does not know how to sweep will only scatter the dust into your eyes.
That republic, notably the 2nd, did not want citizens. It wanted subjects.
It did not want advice. It wanted applause.
And so I, like many, chose to act.
Not in London drawing rooms over tea, but in the small, dangerous ways that honest men act when the state has become a predator.
And now, in this Third Republic of Adama Barrow, in which I have never served, we seemingly have something more bewildering than the first and more cunning than the second: We have a republic that has mastered the art of making everyone feel included while nothing gets fixed.
It is a republic of endless handshakes at State House, endless foundation stones that never become buildings, endless commissions that commission nothing, and endless silence from men who should know better.
This, my children, is why I cannot stop speaking.
Because the tragedy of the 3rd Republic is not that it is wicked.
Its tragedy is that it is wasteful — wasteful of the greatest sacrifice that our people ever made in 2016.
We did not oust a dictator of 22 years to replace him with a photograph album.
We ousted him to replace him with a blueprint.
And I still do not see the blueprint yet.
- THE ANATOMY OF PROFITABLE SILENCE
Let me dissect, with the precision of an old surgeon who has watched many national corpses, this silence that I indeed indicted in PART 1.
Why are our intellectuals so silent?
Why is the professor who wrote fire in 2015 now writing consultancy reports for the very system that he denounced?
Why is the journalist who was once a lion now a lapdog with a press card?
Why is the lawyer who quoted Montesquieu, John Locke or Edward Coke now only quoting his legal fees and per diems?
I will tell you.
Three (3) reasons:
—- First, The Economics of Silence:
In a poor country, the state is the biggest employer, the biggest contractor, the biggest donor.
To criticize the state is to risk your child's school fees.
So men have made a cold calculation: My conscience is expensive, but my silence is paid monthly.
This is not cowardice in the classic sense.
It is a mortgage.
They have mortgaged their tongue to pay for their compound.
—- Second, The Sociology of Exile:
Many of our best brains live, like me, in the diaspora.
They have British passports, American mortgages, Swedish pensions.
They have learned to be Gambian on WhatsApp and English at work.
It is easy to be a patriot from a distance.
It is harder to be a citizen who must face the “Alkalo” tomorrow.
So they choose the safety of ambiguity: They will not praise, they will not condemn. They will simply say: “It is complicated."
No, my son.
Hunger is not complicated. Corruption is not complicated.
A light that does not come on is not complicated.
—- Third, The Spirituality of Defeat:
This is the deepest.
After 30 years of Jawara and 22 years of Jammeh, many intellectuals have concluded in their hearts that The Gambia cannot be saved, only survived.
So they survive.
They tend their garden. They tell themselves:
“Let me not spoil my small peace."
This is the most dangerous silence of all — the silence of a man who has stopped believing that his country is worth the risk of his voice.
And that, fellow Gambians, is how a nation dies — not with a coup, but with a shrug.
- WHY MY VOICE MUST SHAKE, BUT MUST STILL SPEAK
You may ask me:
now, that you are a septuagenarian in North London, now that your pension is small, now that your bones ache, now that your son and daughters do your shopping,
Why not join the silent? Why not enjoy the drizzle?
I will answer with the covenant that I made with my own grave, whether that grave be in Old Jeshwang, New Jeshwang, or in this cold English soil where I now reside.
I have seen what happens when good men decide to become professional neutrals.
On 22nd July 1994, when the soldiers came, many good permanent secretaries said: “I am not a politician. I will just do my job."
And by doing just their job for a tyrant, they became a tyrant’s clerks.
In 2017, when the new dispensation came, many good men said: “Let us give them time. They are new."
And yes, in all truth, we have given them nine (9) years.
And now time is no longer new.
I speak because neutrality in the face of national drift is not neutrality.
It is permission.
Every time an intellectual sees a procurement scandal and says nothing, he has co-signed the contract.
Every time a former minister sees tribalism being weaponized and says nothing, he has blessed the weapon.
My commitment to truth, as I said in PART 1, is not seasonal.
Let me now add:
My commitment to The Gambia is not conditional on The Gambia being grateful to me or not.
A mother does not stop speaking to her child because the child is rude.
She speaks louder, with more tears, precisely because the child is rude.
I owe no man. I fear no man. I seek nothing from any man.
That is why I can afford to love my country more honestly than those who need it to pay the rent or feed their family or become someone or some personality.
- CONCLUSION: Four Final Sobering Lessons Before I Put Down My Pen
If PART 1 left you with three (3) lessons, let PART 2 leave now you with four (4) final ones, for the road that is yet un-walked by your generation:
—- A Republic Does Not Die When Dictators Come. A Republic Dies When Citizens Decide To Become Clients.
The moment that you see yourself not as a citizen who owns the state, but as a client who begs the state, the republic is finished.
A citizen demands a hospital.
A client begs for a medical referral from a Minister.
We have too many clients in fine “Kaftans” and too few citizens in torn shorts.
The First Republic died because it created too many clients.
The Second died because it jailed too many citizens.
The Third will die if it turns every youth into a client waiting for a project, not a citizen demanding a system.
—- The Opposite of Truth Is Not Lies. The Opposite of Truth Is Comfort.
No one in Banjul today believes the lie that everything is fine.
What they believe is: “If I tell the truth, my comfort will end."
And so they choose comfort over truth.
But comfort bought with lies is always rented. It will expire.
And when it expires, you will have neither comfort nor truth.
Speak then when your bread is still small.
It is too late to speak when you have become fat on silence.
—- The State House Does Not Need Your Photograph. Your Street Needs Your Shadow.
Stop queuing to shake hands with power.
Power has enough hands to shake.
Go and let your shadow fall on your street in Bakoteh, in Tallinding, in Soma, in Janjangbureh, in Bansang, in Basse.
Let the children see you cleaning a gutter, tutoring a child, fixing a tap.
That shadow is longer than any photograph at State House.
A nation is not built by those who visit State House.
A nation is built by those whom State House must visit to learn what is happening.
—- Your Grave Will Not Be Wider.
Whether you die a Cabinet Minister or Presidential Adviser with sirens, or a night watchman in Half-Die or Soldier Town with no shoes, the grave is the same width — about two feet.
The angels of truth who will question you, in your grave (as per the Scriptures), will certainly not ask:
“What was your rank? How many times did you appear on GRTS or Q TV or Kerr Fatou or whatever.
But they will, most probably, ask:
“When your people were being led astray, where was your voice?"
And so, I will therefore keep speaking, but always in our genuine traditional way — with “Kerrsa”, with “Tawazu”, with “Sutura”, and without fear — until my voice, by the will of the Almighty God, is returned to the dust from whence that little boy in Bathurst/Banjul Soldier Town came, barefoot, chasing a wire-car, believing that Bathurst/Banjul belonged to him, and he belonged to Bathurst/Banjul.
That boy never wanted a government ministry. He only wanted a Gambia that he could be proud to bequeath to his children and grandchildren.
And that boy, by the grace of the Almighty God, is still speaking.
Let the reader, therefore, once again, please understand !!!
Hassan Gibril
(The Nondescript Old Man But Forever Banjulian) |
A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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Momodou
Denmark
11859 Posts |
Posted - 12 Sep 2026 : 10:56:53
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*Old Man Musing*
The Conscience Of A Citizen Edition !!!
EPILOGUE — The Final Closure
- THE COVENANT OF THE GRAVE:
Why I Speak Now That I Have Nothing Left To Lose Except My Country
The Last Testament of a Banjul Soldier Town Ndongo Boy Who Walked Through Three (3) Republics, Owes No Man, Fears No Man, And Will Be Buried Whether In Old Or New Jeshwang Or In Cold North London As A Free Man
My beloved Gambians,
If PART 1 was my testimony, and PART 2 was my will, then let this Epilogue be my “Janazah” funeral prayer — nay the prayer that I whisper over my own political corpse before the soil takes me, and over the corpse of a nation that still believes it can be resurrected.
For after I wrote PART 2, I sat long in my armchair in North London.
The drizzle was on the window. Watford was silent.
And an old question, older than Jawara, older than Jammeh, older than Barrow, came and sat with me like an old friend:
Old Man, you have spoken for fifty years.
What has your speaking changed?
I will answer you honestly, as a man answers his grave.
I. THE CONFESSION OF A CIVIL SERVANT
I did not change The Gambia. The Gambia changed me.
The First Republic taught me that education without courage is mere decoration.
I saw men who could recite Burke and Laski, who wore immaculate “haftans” or “warambas” and spoke the Queen's English better than the Queen, yet watched the nation drift from a competent civil service to a family compound where government Ministries were passed like kola nuts.
They had manners, but they had no management.
I learned then that our traditional social norm and value of “Kerrsa” without courage is just cowardice dressed in a fine “boubou” or “waramba” kaftan attire.
The Second Republic taught me, in those brief six months that I served at its dawn — indeed six months that cost me over twenty-two years of public service career — that a broom that does not know how to sweep will only blind the sweeper.
I believed, as many fools did, that a soldier could clean what politicians had soiled.
I learned that power that demands applause instead of advice will soon demand your soul.
That Republic did not want citizens. It wanted clapping subjects.
And when you clap for a gun, the gun learns to think that it is God.
And this Third Republic, in which I have never served and will never serve, is teaching me the most painful lesson of all:
That a republic can die not from cruelty, but from kindness without competence.
From endless handshakes that never become handiwork.
From foundation stones that never become foundations.
From a government that has mastered the art of making everyone feel included in the photograph, while excluding everyone from the blueprint.
We did not, fellow compatriots, remove a dictator of 22 years to replace him with a photo album.
We removed him to replace him with a plan.
I still search for that plan, as a man searches for his glasses when they are on his own forehead.
II. THE FINAL ANATOMY — WHY WE ARE SILENT
You have read my indictment of the silence of the intellectuals.
Let me now, in this epilogue, pronounce its final judgment, for history must have a record.
There will come a day — and I will not be alive to see it, but you will — when the archives of this Third Republic are opened.
And the historians will not ask, "What did Barrow do?"
They will ask, “What did the educated Gambian do while Barrow did it?"
And they will find three (3) receipts for our silence:
—- The Receipt Of the Mortgage:
A generation of lawyers, professors, journalists, and former Permanent Secretaries who mortgaged their tongues to pay for their compounds.
They calculated correctly that conscience is expensive, but silence is paid monthly.
They will be remembered not as intellectuals, but as tenants of power.
—- The Receipt Of The WhatsApp Patriot:
A diaspora that learned to be Gambian on voice notes and English at work.
British passports, American mortgages, Swedish pensions, and Gambian opinions typed only when it is safe.
They will be remembered as men who loved The Gambia at a distance because loving it up close required facing the “Alkalo” or the masses of the people.
—- The Receipt Of The Shrugged Shoulder:
The deepest betrayal:
Men who decided that The Gambia cannot be saved, only survived. Who tend their small gardens while the national farm burns.
This is how a nation truly dies — not with the boom of 22nd July 1994, but with the shrug of a man in 2026 who says, “Let me not spoil my small peace."
A shrug is more lethal than a coup.
III. THE COVENANT BETWEEN A CITIZEN AND HIS GRAVE
So why, you ask again, does this Old Man in Watford, with small pension and aching bones, still type when his son does his shopping for him?
Because I made a covenant with my grave, whether that grave will be in Old Jeshwang, New Jeshwang, or in this cold English soil.
I promised the soil that when I am lowered — about two feet wide, no wider for a Minister than for a night watchman in Half-Die — and when the Angels of Truth come as per the Scriptures, and they will not ask me how many times I appeared on GRTS, QTV, or Kerr Fatou, nor what was my last per diem, but will ask me one question:
“When your people were being led astray, where was your voice?"
I want to be able to answer, even as dust:
“I spoke. My voice shook, but I spoke. With “Kerrsa”, with “Tawazu”, with “Suturra”, but without fear, I indeed spoke."
That is why I owe no man. That is why I fear no man. That is why I seek nothing from any man.
A man who seeks nothing can say anything that is true.
A man who needs everything must lie about everything.
I am not auditioning.
I am not lobbying.
I have no CV in circulation.
My sole Provider remains “Ar-Razzaq”
— the Alighty God — and He has paid me already with contentment, which is a wealth no government can budget.
- FINAL CLOSURE: Four (4) Lasting Covenants For Those Who Will Remain When My Armchair Is Empty
Let this Epilogue, therefore, be my final inheritance to you, my children, my grandchildren, and the unborn Gambians of 2050:
1. Remember: The Republic Is Not State House. The Republic Is Your Street.
State House does not need your photograph.
Bakoteh does not need your photograph either.
It needs your shadow — indeed your shadow sweeping a gutter, your shadow tutoring a child under a mango tree, your shadow fixing a tap.
A nation is not built by those who visit State House.
A nation is built by those whom State House must visit to learn what is happening.
Stop queuing for handshakes.
Start queuing to serve.
1. Remember: Comfort Is The Most Sophisticated Form Of Betrayal.
The opposite of truth is not a lie. The opposite of truth is comfort.
When you say, "If I speak, I will lose my consultancy, my board seat, my travel visa," you have not chosen silence.
You have chosen comfort over country. And comfort bought with silence is always rented.
When it expires, you will have neither comfort nor country to return to.
Speak while your bread is still small.
1. Remember: A Client Can Never Be A Citizen.
The First Republic died because it created too many clients waiting for “kola nuts”.
The Second died because it jailed too citizens who dared.
The Third will die if it turns every youth into a client waiting for a "project" or "empowerment."
A client begs a Minister for a hospital referral.
A citizen demands a hospital that works.
Decide today: Will you be a client in a fine “Kaftan” or “ Waramba” or 3-piece suit or a citizen in tattered clothes or torn shorts?
One begs. The other builds.
1. Remember: Your Grave Will Not Be Wider, But Your Name Can Be.
Whether you die with sirens or with silence, the grave is two feet.
But your name — ah, your name — can be wider than the River Gambia.
Leave a name that means, "He did not cheat. He did not sell. He did not remain silent when silence was profitable."
Money finishes. Mansions crumble. Ministries dissolve.
But a name that means he spoke when it was dangerous to speak — that compounds like interest in the hearts of your children's children.
My beloved Gambians,
I began this trilogy as a little Ndongo boy in Banjul Soldier Town, in erstwhile Bathurst, chasing a wire-car barefoot, believing that Banjul/Bathurst belonged to him and he belonged to Bathurst/Banjul.
That boy never wanted to be a Minister.
He never wanted a convoy.
He only wanted a Gambia that he could bequeath without shame.
That boy is now over 75 years, in the winter of his life, in North London, watching the drizzle.
And by the grace of the Almighty God, that boy is still speaking.
And when his voice is finally returned to dust, may the dust itself remember that there was once an Old Man who refused to let his country die with a shrug.
He chose to die, if need be, with a word.
Let the reader, for the last time on this matter, please understand !!!
Hassan Gibril
(The Nondescript Old Man But Forever Banjulian: From His Armchair in North London — In The Winter Of His Life, But Still A Child Of The Island) |
A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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The Conscience Of A Citizen Edition - Part 1
