It turns out that Nigerians and their leaders are not the only ones who love retinue of titles to be attached to their names!
Again, Nigerian leaders are not the only ones who love to be in office forever!Talking about appellations, the incumbent president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, will make Nigerian title holders green with envy, what with his chain of titles that is capable of leaving any announcer breathless.
In full
trot, Jammeh is as addressed as His Excellency Sheikh Professor Alhaji Doctor
Yahya Abdul-Azziz Jemus Junkung Jammeh Naasiru Deen.
In addition to his fondness for titles is
his undying love for power! Twenty-two years on, The Gambian president
currently seeks re-election in the December 1 presidential election, and says
he’s “only answerable to God.”
So far, Jammeh has spent four terms in
office at the rate of five years per term, having stood for election and
winning to become president of his tiny West African country in 1996.
The AFP reports that Jammeh seized power in
a 1994 coup and has maintained it ever since with a mixture of severity,
mysticism and iron-clad self-belief.
“No matter what people say about me, I am
not moved… I don’t listen to anybody because I know what is important,” he said
while depositing his candidacy for this week’s presidential election.
Governing, he said, “is between me and God Almighty.”
A
deeply devout Muslim, Jammeh, 51, and husband of four wives, grew up in the
western village of Kanilai in 1965, the year that The Gambia, a long east-west
sliver of land bordered by Senegal, gained independence from Britain.
Never seen without his Koran, sceptre and
prayer beads, Jammeh’s billowing white robes are rumoured to hide a bulletproof
vest, the legacy of several coup attempts by his own guards.
He has promised to bury critics “nine feet
deep” and told the UN Secretary-General to “go to hell” after Ban Ki-moon
called for an investigation into an activist’s death in custody.
But in another moment, he urged his supporters
to restrain themselves from violence and allow Thursday’s election to go ahead
peacefully.
Jammeh controls several businesses in the
country and has in the past seized them without warning, discouraging foreign
investment.
The state of the economy has pushed many
young Gambians to take the “Back Way”, or migrant route across the Sahara to
Libya, where they board boats bound for Italy.
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