Landing B. Sanneh says nearly a decade of foreign military presence has left The Gambia too dependent on outside forces, as a border-fence dispute sharpens questions about sovereignty.
Landing B. Sanneh, chairman of the Mansakonko Area Council in The Gambia’s Lower River Region, has called for Senegalese soldiers and the wider ECOWAS Mission in The Gambia, known as ECOMIG, to leave the country. He argued that Gambian forces should by now be ready to assume full responsibility for national security.
“We cannot continue to be babysitted,” Sanneh said in an interview. “For good ten years Senegalese have been in The Gambia. What have they been doing that the Gambians cannot do?”
Sanneh said the regional force had stayed far beyond the political crisis that brought it to The Gambia in 2017. ECOMIG was deployed after former President Yahya Jammeh refused to accept his defeat in the December 2016 election. Jammeh eventually left office, and Adama Barrow assumed the presidency. In Sanneh’s view, the years since then should have been enough to train and equip Gambian personnel to take over.
“If there is anything special that ECOMIG can do that the government soldiers cannot do,” he said, it should not take “more than five years to transfer that skill and knowledge.”
His remarks come as ECOWAS considers the mission’s future. An ECOWAS parliamentary delegation visited The Gambia from October 27 to 31 to assess ECOMIG’s work and the conditions needed to transfer security responsibilities to Gambian forces. The Gambian government has taken a different position from Sanneh’s: Vice President Muhammed B.S. Jallow told the National Assembly that the deployment is an ECOWAS arrangement, not a bilateral agreement with Senegal, and that its continued need is assessed regularly.
Sanneh also linked his concerns to a July confrontation at the Bulock military post, near the Senegalese border, where Senegalese soldiers demolished part of a fence around a Gambian military installation. He praised the Gambian soldiers who did not respond with force but described the demolition as “an aggression” that could have escalated.
The location of the boundary remains central to that dispute. Senegal maintained that the fence extended onto its territory. The Gambian government initially condemned the demolition, while Lands Minister Hamat Bah later told lawmakers that the fence had been built on the Senegalese side. Sanneh disputed the way the matter was handled, saying any claim should have been established through engagement between the two countries before armed personnel removed the fence.
Sanneh said he has no objection to Senegal as a neighbour, but believes the continued presence of Senegalese troops at sensitive Gambian sites poses a long-term risk. “We have nothing, no problems with the Senegalese. But our country is our country,” he said. He also argued that positions filled by foreign troops could instead provide jobs for Gambian young people.
The chairman pointed to the former Senegambia Confederation as an example of The Gambia eventually taking charge of its own security after relying on Senegalese forces. Senegal intervened during a violent attempted coup against President Dawda Jawara in 1981; the two countries formed a confederation the following year, which ended in 1989. The circumstances differ from the current ECOWAS mission, but for Sanneh, the lesson is that foreign military support should not become permanent.
“It is now time for them to go back,” he said. “They concentrate on their country; we concentrate on our country.”
Listen to the audio interview with Landing B. Sanneh on the continuing presence of Ecomig Troops in The Gambia in the link below:
