The
Minister of Tourism and Culture, Hamat NK Bah, has called on the Gambia’s
backway migrants to return home and marry as many wives as they could in order
to ease the burden of rising single women on Gambian society.
Bah
warned that the rise in the number of unmarried women in the country may lead
to an impending social implosion if urgent measures are not taken to find a
sustainable solution.
Bah
said the 7:1 ratio of women to men means the society needs to adjust in
addressing such a gap in order to avoid a social crisis.
Speaking
at the 4th Annual Islamic conference of the Bijilo Fass Daara on the theme
“Women and Power”, Mr Bah said such a gap, as indicted by the women to men
ratio, is also reinforced by the high rate of backway migration by young and
able bodied male youth to Europe.
“Some
of the youth made it to Europe but many also perished at sea and the deserts
simply because of the bad governance and economic disempowerment that existed
here under the former regime,” he said. “Thousands are stranded along the way
and they left behind wives and children, single women and young girls
graduating fresh from school. All of
these become additions to the situation at hand,” Hamat argued.
Barrow
is a unifier
According
to the tourism minister, Adama Barrow was the best among all contending
political candidates in the 2016 presidential elections; hence he became a
natural choice of God and the country.
“Barrow symbolises national unity and he is a
person with good character who will be
able to lead this country out of the political crisis,” Mr Bah
contended, urging religious leaders to keep praying for the Gambian leader to
succeed in that endeavour.
“Anyone
among us the coalition leaders who had won against Jammeh would have ventured
into some sort of vengeance. That is because all of us went through serious
afflictions under the former regime.
That
would not have been good for the country’s healing process,” said Bah, who is
also the leader of the National Reconciliation Party (NRP).
