President
Adama Barrow arrived in Ghana on Friday and held a meeting with his Ghanaian
counterpart during which he thanked President Akufo-Addo for the support his
country rendered to The Gambia during the crisis that gripped The Gambia
following the December 1st 2016 polls.
Gambian
President Adama Barrow has thanked President Akufo-Addo for his support in
helping restore democracy in The Gambia.
Mr
Barrow visited Sierra Leone, Ghana and Liberia to thank their leaders for the
important role they played during the political logjam.
President
Barrow expressed his gratitude during bilateral talks with Nana Akufo-Addo for
the latter’s support during the post-election impasse in The Gambia.
The
Gambian leader said: “I am pleased to come and visit you in Ghana as President,
as a brother and as a friend. We all
contested elections at the same period, we all won the election as opposition
and both incumbents lost the fight. My message is to come and say thank you.”
HE
added: “We have a proverb, saying that if you want to visit a farmer and you
want to thank him for a remarkable job, you have to visit him at his or her
farm and that is why I am here today.”
There
were heightened tensions in The Gambia, after long-time ruler Yahya Jammeh
rejected the results of the December 1, 2016 election, weeks after he had
conceded defeat to opposition leader Adama Barrow.
Jammeh
eventually stepped down under pressure from ECOWAS and the AU.
President
Nana Akufo-Addo, for his part, expressed joy at President Barrow’s visit
saying: “It is a joy for us to see you here with us in Ghana. I will always
have you closely associated in my memory because one of the first important
decisions I had to take when I became President was in The Gambia. And that was the decision I made to support
the ECOWAS military force with Ghanaian troops.”
The
Ghanaian president said he decided to support the ECOWAS mission with some 208
soldiers during the post-election impasse in The Gambia because “the process of
democratic consolidation in Africa requires that the region support the Gambian
people.”
