As The Gambia goes to polls for the Local Government (LG) election next month, President Adama Barrow in an interview with Star TV has vowed that his National People’s Party (NPP) will win all council seats to bring collaboration between local councils and central government.

Speaking on Saturday, Mr Barrow stated: “I need all the seats because they are important to me. If I win all seats, then it will make my work easy. Having a mayor who is the same party as me will make my work easy and functioning. But if we have a mayor who is left and we are right, we will crash at the traffic light.”

The NPP leader revealed that he doesn’t want to have leaders in the local authorities who will be politicizing the work. He explained that the premises within the Banjul Market, which is a commercial area, is always not cleaned.

He stated that the council’s primary responsibility is the cleansing services, saying people pay their taxes and 60% of that revenue should go back to them.

“The councils said they are independent but they should work in partnership. 94% of the offices we built in the councils are government funding and we are still paying. During the inaugural ceremony, they invited their party members without the involvement of the government. They just wrote a letter day before to invite us as if that’s how things should be done after putting 94% of our resources into its construction.”

President Barrow said the government should have been part of the planning and be given the honour to lead, but said it was rather politicized. In the KMC, he continued that they charged people for waste collection which he believes should not happen.

“What is the use of its revenue?” he quizzed, adding that he never saw where people are charged for waste collection since independence.  

Barrow reiterated that he wants all local government seats to be handled by NPP for peace to prevail and to collaborate with the government.

He further narrated that when Covid-19 came and the councils had challenges, they contacted the government to pay a six-month salary for their staff, saying that they would never talk about it.

He confirmed that he has suitable candidates and that they would stage the biggest politics in order to secure all council seats.