By Landind Ceesay
Claim: “Yahya Jammeh took more than 100 people to court and prosecuted them for corruption. In the entire government of [Adama] Barrow, only two people, Dr. Banja and someone else who were prosecuted for corruption.”
Source: Nyawuru Komma, personal assistant to the National Treasurer of the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP)
Verdict: Misleading
Claim
While appearing on Eye Africa TV’s Sunu Rew programme on 2nd October, 2025, Nyawuru Komma, a personal assistant to the National Treasurer of the opposition United Democratic Party (UDP), who was speaking on a topic related to corruption, made a comparison between former President Yahya Jammeh’s regime and that of President Adama Barrow’s regime in the fight against corruption.
Mr. Komma claimed that Yahya Jammeh “prosecuted more than 100 people for corruption” , while Barrow prosecuted only two people.”
“Yahya Jammeh took more than 100 people to court and prosecuted them for corruption. In the entire government of Barrow, only two people Dr. Banja (Dr. Bamba Banja, former Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Fisheries), and someone else who were prosecuted for corruption. Two, you want to compare the two regimes,” Mr. Komma said. Watch video above between 00:55 to 1:06 minutes.
Fact-check
Eye Africa TV is one of the leading online media platforms in The Gambia with 250, 000 followers on Facebook and 180, 000 subscribers on YouTube.
The four minutes thirty-nine seconds video extracted from the over two-hour live programme shared on Facebook by the medium went viral as it received 46.5 thousand views, shared 57 times, with 1, 300 likes, and 220 comments as of October 17, 2025.
While this fact-check does not validate the claim that Jammeh’s government, which ruled for 22 years “prosecuted 100 people”, we seek to focus on the claim that only two people were tried on corruption allegation in the 9 years of the Barrow regime.
According to our research, the following corruption cases came up in court under the current regime.
In July 2022, Saihou Drammeh, Former General Manager of Gam Petroleum, and Lamin Gassama, Former Operations Manager of Gam Petroleum were prosecuted on corruption charges – accused of pilfering over $20 million at the Gam-Petroleum facility in Lamin Mandinaring. They denied the charges and ended up being discharged and acquitted by the High Court of The Gambia “due to lack of evidence” from the state prosecution to warrant them enter their defence, according to reports.
On 8th March, 2023, Dr. Bamba Banja, former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Fisheries was prosecuted and convicted by the High Court of the Gambia for corruption. He was sentenced to 2 years in prison for bribery and corruption and fined over D1.1 million.
On the 25th of June 2024, six Immigration Officers were prosecuted and convicted for official corruption. They were Momodou Jammeh, Omar Ceesay, Sarjo Saine, Sulayman Colley, Omar Badjie and Sambujang Badjie.
Currently, multiple corruption cases are before the High Court of the Gambia involving public officials. This includes three senior officials of the Ministry of Health:
- Mr. Muhammadou Lamin Jaiteh, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health;
- Mr. Balla Kandeh, Programme Manager of the Malaria Control Programme; and
- Mr. Omar Malleh Ceesay, Executive Director of HePDO.
These top Health officials all pleaded not guilty. The case is still ongoing at the High Court of The Gambia.
Verdict
Based on our research, Nyawuru Komma’s claim on Eye Africa TV that the government of President Adama Barrow prosecuted only two people for prosecution is MISLEADING.
Nyawuru Komma’s Response
We did reached out to Komma with our findings, and this was his response:
“I don’t count the case of the immigration officers as convictions for corruption. Those are ‘minor corruptions’,” he told Fact-Check Gambia. “I am not talking about five or seven immigration officers they are accusing, I am talking about top government officials,” Komma said – something he didn’t explicitly mentioned when the original claim was being made.
