Yahya Jammeh
Yahya Jammeh ruled The Gambia for twenty-two years, said he would rule for a billion, and left after losing an election he had already conceded. He was a lieutenant of twenty-nine when he took power in a bloodless coup in 1994, and he was elected and re-elected afterwards in votes of declining credibility. The rule was personal to the point of eccentricity. He announced a herbal cure for AIDS which he administered himself on Thursdays, requiring patients to stop antiretrovirals; he threatened to behead homosexuals; he declared an Islamic republic in 2015 without consultation; and he had people accused of witchcraft rounded up in 2009 and made to drink a hallucinogen, of which several died. Journalists and opponents disappeared, and a truth commission later documented killings by a unit answering to him directly, including the murder of some fifty West African migrants in 2005. He lost the election of December 2016 to Adama Barrow, a property agent who had worked as a security guard in London, and conceded on television. A week later he rejected the result and declared a state of emergency. ECOWAS moved troops to the border while Senegal and Nigeria applied pressure, and he flew out to Equatorial Guinea in January 2017 with, it was reported, a good deal of the treasury and several luxury cars. He has been in exile in Equatorial Guinea since, and his party still polls respectably in his home region, which is the awkward part of the story for everyone who expected the transition to settle it. The Gambia has asked for his extradition and has not got it, and a special tribunal to try the crimes the commission documented was agreed with ECOWAS in 2024.
- Lived: 1965 CE – ?
- Nationality: Gambian
- Roles: head_of_state, military
