Professor Jonathan Moyo’s copy, the man he calls “my brother” in Gambia has resigned.

“My brother & counterpart in #Gambia doing the right thing at the right time!,” wrote Professor Jonathan Moyo yesterday. 

Gambia’s most loquacious Minister of Information, Sheriff Bojang, has defected from President Yaya Jammeh’s predacious regime and has arrived in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

According to sources quoted by local journos at the Presidential Palace in Banjul, Bojang’s defection will be followed by a series of higher profile defections no later than the end of this week.

Appointed to Jammeh’s Cabinet on January 5, 2015, he replaced novelist and essayist, Nana

Grey-Johnson, who was sacked in November 2014 and has since been teaching at The University of The Gambia’s School of Journalism.

Before his highly predictable Cabinet appointment in President Jammeh’s most authoritarian regime, Bojang had served in various capacities at The Daily Observer newspaper rising later to its Chief Editor position. He subsequently sojourned to Great Britain but returned home and set up an independent daily, The Standard Newspaper, that remains in circulation.

As Information Minister, Sheriff  Bojang continued with remarkable zeal and obsequiousness, his predecessor’s position of defending tyranny and his rendition reached a deafening crescendo in the wake of Solo Sandeng’s arrest, torture and murder behind NIA’s harrowing walls. Mr. Sandeng and other opposition elements of the United Democratic Party were arrested by Gambian police on Thursday April 14, following a peaceful protest in advance of the recently concluded December 1^st. Presidential election. They were simply protesting for electoral reforms and the greatest of political ironies is that Solo Sandeng and colleague, Solo Koroma, could not live to witness the end of Yaya Jammeh’s misrule through peaceful democratic elections; a cause they fought and died for.

In a related development, contrary to reports on GRTS last week, that Secretary General and Head of the Civil Service, Mr. Saul Samba, was sacked, our sources say Mr. Samba had actually resigned from the Government. “Mr. Sankareh, several ministers, up to 6 of them, had agreed with the Secretary General to tender their resignation letters as a way to encourage the smooth transfer of power, but before the following morning, one minister leaked their planned mass resignation to Babili Mansa. The President got infuriated and quickly sacked Samba before the gentleman could tender his letter.”

Reassures Kissy Kissy Mansa, “I can guarantee you that by the close of business this week, you will be reporting several high profile defections. I know up to six ministers and senior officials who are counting their days and their defections are a  fait accompli”.

While the Gambian Echo could not reach Sheriff Bojang to confirm his alleged defection, our story is sourced by sources with unimpeachable credibility. Three of our sources within the regime have in fact, confirmed talking to him after arriving in Dakar.

In fact, a highly dependable source had hinted that Bojang was scheduled to flee since December 19 but despite that source’s persistence that the Gambian Echo breaks the planned defection, journos were reluctant. Today, the Gambian Echo can report without equivocation that the official mouthpiece of the despot of Banjul, has abandoned ship and could be busy eating roasted lamb chops (afra) in Dakar. – Gambian Echo