Email Gambia News to a friend
Print version
Comment on This Gambia News

Gambia: Ex-Agric Secy Appears in Court

Mr Sulayman Sait Mboob, a former Secretary of State for Agriculture as well as a former IEC member, yesterday testified before Magistrate Secka of the Kanifing Magistrates’ Court in the ongoing D6M forgery case filed against Kawsu Ceesay, former IEC Chief Electoral Officer.

Mr Mboob told the court that he knew the accused Kawsu Ceesay and Ndondi Njie as he had worked with both of them at the IEC before.

According to him, Ndondi Njie was the chairman of the IEC, while the accused was the IEC’s chief electoral officer.

He said he worked at the IEC from July 2005 to August 2006 and admitted that he knew the Canadian company, Code Incorporated.

He added that the accused told him that Code Incorporated was engaged to supply election materials to the IEC.

Mr Mboob disclosed that there was a lot of email correspondence between the accused, Ndondi Njie, Harry Sambo (who was the IEC’s Director of Operations at the time) and Code Incorporated in March 2006.

According to him, the correspondence centred on the payment for the materials said to be ordered by the accused.

He explained that Ndondi Njie insisted to the Code Incorporated that the IEC made no order for election materials. But Code Incorporated, he added, held that the accused had placed an order for the supply of the election materials.

As the controversy raged on, he said, the matter was tabled before a meeting attended by all commission members, including the Director of Administration Saffie Njie and the accused.

At the meeting, he went on, both the accused and Ndondi Njie were asked to prove their cases.

According to Mr Mboob, the accused was specifically asked whether Mr Ndondi Njie had approved the order.

The accused said Mr Ndondi Njie gave the go-ahead for the supply of the election materials, Mr Mboob said, adding that when he was asked to provide evidence of approval, the accused said the approval was a verbal instruction. He said the accused was instructed to look for election materials during the commission meeting.

According to Mr Mboob, during his tenure as commission member he never saw any document purported to be an approval by Mr Njie, and that nobody showed him any document purported to have been signed by Ndondi Njie as approval for the ordering of the election materials.

With respect to the contract with Code Incorporated, Mr Mboob said the standard procedures put in place  by the IEC were not followed, as it was not done in accordance with the GPPA rules.