Now that the Trans-Gambia Bridge is being inaugurated, after several years of painstaking efforts to kick the start of the project, many people will like to take credit for the construction of the bridge.
Bridge funded by the African Development Bank (ADB) geared towards the greater interest of African integration, promotion of trade, commerce and business.
The approximately D4billion bridge was first conceived by former governments of The Gambia in 1979 by Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara with his Senegalese counterparts Leopard Seedat Senghore and Abou Diouf . It witnessed many unsuccessful attempts to build due largely to political and economic reasons which sometimes arouse border closures and war of words between the neighboring countries.
However, on the 20th of February, 2015, the former vice president of The Gambia, Isatou Njie Saidy and the Prime Minister of Senegal, Momodou Dionne witnessed the laying of the foundation stone of the 1.2km long awaited bridge.
If anyone is claiming to be the architect, where were they, when Sir Dawda visited Paris in 1976 to solicit the French government to build the bridge?
Emerging from his closed door meeting with President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Sir Dawda told waiting reporters at the Èlysèe Palace that: “We discussed development projects which are shared between Gambia and Senegal on the Gambia River basin for the building of dams and hydro-electricity as well as agriculture, irrigation and salinity control and also the building of a bridge across the Gambia river which we call the Trans-Gambia Bridge”
We have experienced delay in crossing Bamba Tenda-Yellitenda to Farafenni or Soma. Jawara had included it in his government (1975-1980) development master plan; however, the project was stalled until he was booted out of power by the military.
When Yaya Jammeh was in charge, he too, promised to reignite the project. However, owing to power politics between Jammeh, Wade and Macky, Jammeh was not too keen to build the bridge because he (Jammeh) thought he was doing a favor to the Senegal government.
The foundation stone for the construction of the bridge was laid in 2015, a year later; Adama Barrow defeated Jammeh at the historic 1st of December, 2016 presidential election. Unlike, Jammeh’s ambivalent foreign policy especially on issues concerning Senegal, Barrow looked the other way and embraced the spirit of the loose Senegambia confederation by mending fences with Senegal. President Macky Sall and his Gambian counterpart can only rejoice in taking part in a project that should have been completed in the late 1970s.
Congratulation! We’ve got a bridge. This is the Trans-Gambia Bridge, it should not be called, Senegambia Bridge, for what? Bamba Tenda -Yellitenda are all villages found in the Gambia.
No stone is left unturned in digging up dirt against each other. Political dominance and winning are the only goal but how one does it is immaterial. No one seems to pay heed to Mahatma Gandhi’s sage advice that noble goals should be achieved with noble means. The politicians, instead, seem to have taken the adage of China’s former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to heart: “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”.