West African leaders announced Monday they would return to Gambia to persuade President Yahya Jammeh to step down, as the strongman was left looking increasingly isolated at home and abroad.
The mandate for Jammeh’s five-year term runs out on January 18, after which president-elect Adama Barrow is supposed to take power.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari would accompany Liberian counterpart Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ghana’s former president John Dramani Mahama to impress upon Jammeh “the imperative to respect the constitution”, Nigeria’s foreign minister Geoffrey Onyeama said in Abuja.
The same west African leaders at a meeting in Abuja, along with Senegalese President Macky Sall
, expressed concern about worsening security, including a crackdown on the media, which has seen a number of radio stations taken off air, Onyeama said.
Onyeama said the hope is that a peaceful transfer of power will take place, but that force may be used as a last resort.
“Violence should be avoided but nothing is ruled out,” he told reporters.
The same leaders had made a previous attempt at mediation with both sides of The Gambia’s political crisis in mid-December but failed to bring a result.
In Banjul, rumours swirled of imminent defections from Jammeh’s government, while it was confirmed the leader who has been in power for 22 years had fired The Gambia’s ambassadors to 12 different nations, apparently for disloyalty.
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