By: Nyima Sillah
Abdoulie Ebrima Jammeh, the secretary-general and leader of the National Unity Party (NUP), said his party is still alive and coming back with full force in the 2026 presidential elections.
“It would appear to some that we went into hibernation after the last presidential elections, but in fact, we didn’t. It’s just our style of politics. We concentrated more on grassroots politics, and we were not active in the media, but are growing in followership. We would come up as a surprise to many people as they think that we are dead,” Jammeh said in an interview with this medium.
He stated that instead of making noise about the government in the media in the first two years, the party decided to give it time to demonstrate what it could do based on its manifesto promises, and allow the gestation period of their policies, adding that it’s about time to come out and question those promises.
He asserted that the NUP intends to organize a countrywide tour with the theme ‘Abinyaadii’ and that the party will structure its conversation around that by asking people the realities of the issues that they encountered in the past years and whether their expectations were met.
“Sometimes, certain issues would come up and politicians would rush to comments so that they take credit for it, we don’t want to be repetitive. We’ve made a few comments here and there, but in general, we are not fighting with the government, we are allowing them to be able to do what they said they could do,” he added. “We want to see a good government. Apart from being a politician, we are also citizens of this country. Any bad policy will affect me like it affects any other person. The desire is not to see people suffer, we want to offer something better.”
Jammeh further stated that the NUP does not promote politics of bad-mouthing opponents, instead it focuses on issues and search for possible solutions for the challenges, regarding the economy, foreign direct investment, agriculture, price hikes, electricity etc.
Meanwhile, the NUP leader pointed out that the party is open to coalition based on a condition, citing that getting rid of an incumbent is not easy due to the unfair access to State resources.
“In the Gambian political setup, opposition is not funded. The easy way would be to coalesce and put up our resources together. We are not going to coalesce just to get rid of a government. We want to coalesce because we want to get a good government out of the coalition. We don’t want history to repeat itself like the 2016, as that coalition shows that the foundations were not strong,” he emphasized.
