By: Nyima Sillah
Dodou Jah, spokesman for APRC has called on the Independent Electoral Commission to help enlighten Gambians about citizenship
Mr Jah made the call during a session organized by Peace Ambassador The Gambia to reflect on the post-elections.
“I have been challenging the IEC to enlighten the masses about citizenship of this country. A lot of Gambians don’t understand who is a Gambian as they are discriminating against lots of people who even the law has definitely recognized them to be Gambians,” he noted.
“I always say it is the law that makes you a Gambian not your colour, the language you speak, the tribe you belong to or where you are born these things unless and until it is nurtured into the minds of Gambians positively, it will continue to have lots of challenges,” he disclosed.
According to Mr Jah, the law states clearly that one of your ancestral parents or parents must be a Gambian in other for you to be a Gambian where you are born is not important, whether you can speak other national language is not important, also your skin colour is not important.
Adding that, “the laws stated that you could be born in this country and you are a foreigner,” so unless IEC sensitize people and tell them what the law says, people will continue to have such conflicts and it will be very difficult to settle.
He said that in most cases people render elections not been free and fair and labelling some people as foreigners when they are Gambians. Adding that people must come up with proofs and reflect that after the registration they have the revising court which nobody challenge, “that’s like you are accepting that the registration process is free and fair.”
“You cannot wait until people finish voting and you want to come out and say it is not fair there are laws in this country it should be respected and people can challenge, it is democracy but you cannot wait for things to surpass then you want to draw us back, the law does not specify that,” he lamented.
