TRRC: Amadou Sanneh Recalls Rough, Unfriendly Meetings with AFPRC Junta Leaders

Former Accountant General Amadou Sanneh Tuesday described to the TRRC the series of meetings he had with the AFPRC military junta back in 1994.

Testifying before the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, Sanneh said such meetings were very rough, unfriendly and unprofessional, adding that the junta leaders had no respect for the rule, procedures and best practices of the civil service.

“Yes I did have interaction with the council member because every now and then they would pop in at my office,” he said. “On one occasion, Sana Sabally (the Vice Chairman of the AFPRC) and a group of security officers burst into my office surprisingly, without notice. They started looking at the pictures on the wall and said they should be brought down because they thought it was Jawara’s pictures, but I told them that they are pictures of the former accountant generals who served this country before they left.”

Sanneh was appointed Accountant General by the AFPRC after the July 1994 coup d’etat. He resigned in 1996 after the junta decided to hang onto power, and set up his own practice. In 2013, the authorities charged him with sedition and jailed him for three years.

He described the attitude of the council members as forcefully authoritarian, saying they had no respect for procedures and processes. He said the council members blatantly showed their ignorance and disrespect of the codes of the civil service regulations.

Sanneh, who later became Finance Minister in 2017 before he was fired by President Adama Barrow early this year, described how the then junta leader Yahya Jammeh would call him into his office at state house and rant about the former PPP regime. He recalled Jammeh using derogatory and threatening statements against PPP ministers and top officials about alleged missing monies.

“He always threatened that if these people refused to bring out their stolen monies he would kill all of them. I’d also try to calm him down by telling him that the economy was intact,” Sanneh told the TRRC.

“Even though I always tried to explain to the council about the state of the government account, Jammeh just kept on ranting and threatening PPP officials. Sometimes when I go to his office around 1pm, Jammeh would keep on ranting till 4 or 6pm, and sometimes he would just be talking about himself and issues he had with some officials of the PPP.”

Sanneh described the working conditions of civil servants during the time he served the junta as bad and horrible.