(JollofNews) – Gambia’s President-elect Adama Barrow has temporarily moved to the Senegalese, capital Dakar, until his planned inauguration.
The decision was made for security reasons by West African leaders on Saturday in Bamako, Mali, after a meeting on the political situation in the Gambia with Mr Barrow.
Mr Barrow, 51, is due to be inaugurated on January 19th as Gambia’s third president after he was declared winner of last month’s presidential election by the country’s electoral commission.
But President Yahya Jammeh who has ruled the Gambia since 1994 is refusing to handover power at the end of his term on January 18th. His regime has deployed heavily armed soldiers at strategic locations across the country ahead of Mr Barrow’s planned inauguration.
Mr Jammeh had initially conceded defeat and praised the country’s electoral system as rigged proof but changed his mind a week later and filed a suit at the supreme court asking judges to determine that Mr Barrow was not duly elected or returned as president, and that the said election was void.
But the court is unable to hold a hearing until May – as most of the judges come from neighbouring countries – and Mr Jammeh has said he is going nowhere until then.
His regime has refused to provide security to Mr Barrow and his opposition partners and there were reports some elements in Mr Jammeh’s regime are planning to kill one or two senior opposition leaders to enable Mr Jammeh to declare a state of emergency.
Leaders of the 15-nation regional bloc Ecowas who have unsuccessfully failed to convince Mr Jammeh to handover power peacefully intends to seek the United Nation’s to approve military action if Mr Barrow’s inauguration on Thursday is blocked.