By Adama Makasuba
Former vice chairman of the AFPRC military council has said Gambian soldiers were being served rotten food during leadership of the Nigerian Training Group which he said also contributed to the 1994 coup.
Edward Singhatey, 51, who held various portfolios during the 22-year rule of Jammeh’s regime while testifying before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission on Wednesday” during the NATAG, the food was deteriorating, they would give us rotten foods and it was a matter of routine,” adding that “if the senior officers were not in the barracks (that) soldiers would eat rotten foods.”
He said as he went on an inspection to a Barrack that “I saw a soldier down the road around the Atlantic hotel coming and dragging his AK47 when he arrived, I asked him what happened and told we are all sick. I said what are you doing at the beach and he said we all have a diarrhoea.”
The politician turn lawyer added “deficit of infrastructure, definitely we knew that Gambians deserve better. There was no school, there was no hospital and there was no medicine in the hospitals which continued down the line. There was no television and the only means of communication…radio Gambia signal stopped at Brikama.”
Meanwhile, he said the idea of coup was invented by him and it was launched by Sanna Sabally, adding that Yahya Jammeh, Yankuba Touray and others were invitees.
Despite saying there was no problem in the army before the military takeover, he said but soldiers who came from peacekeeping in Liberia protested against unpaid allowances and that there was discontentment among the soldiers by operation orders of the Nigerian army.
On November 11 incident:
Mr Singhatey told the commission “we were ordered to was to go and quashed the coup and make sure no prisoner was left behind,” he told the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, adding that “there was gunfire at the camp and the camp was taken.”
According to him, the November 11 counter coupists planned was to arrest the junta members and their families and executed them, adding that despite the rumour that the junta members “met the soldiers to dispel the rumour at Yundum Barracks and appealed to them (soldiers) to be bit patient.”
Meanwhile, Mr Singhatey is expected to continue his testimony on November 11 incident and death of Ousman Koro Ceesay on Thursday.