President Yahya Jammeh declared Gambia an Islamic Republic on Friday, December 11, at a political rally in Brufut, a village west of Banjul (the capital). The country has been secular up until now, but according to Jammeh, this will promote the country’s religious identity and values, by distancing Gambia from its colonial past. About 95 percent of Gambia’s 1.8 million population is Muslim.
Some suggest Jammeh’s announcement is a ploy to get developmental support and aid from the Arab world, after the European Union temporarily deprived the country of aid last year, based on a poor human rights record and Jammeh’s infamous economic mismanagement. In 2013, he pulled Gambia out of the Commonwealth because he deemed it a neo-colonial institution.
Hamat Bah, the head of the National Reconciliation Party Constitutionally, criticised Jammeh’s declaration which he points out was made without regards for an appropriate referendum. The Islamic body of the country, speaking through its Chairman, Imam Momodou Lamin Touray, is yet to officially acknowledge the president’s announcement, as they await a meeting with him. Thus, technically, Gambia is still a secular state.
The president, who is often referred to as a dictator, has garnered a reputation for making outrageous declarations and decisions throughout his 21-year reign, which began in 1994. For example, in 2007, Jammeh claimed to have an herbal cure for AIDS which was criticised by international medical experts. By 2013, patients who previously switched to the president’s herbal programme returned to the use of the conventional antiretroviral treatment for HIV, based on the discovery of dangerous side-effects of the ‘cure’.