By Banna Fanneh

On Tuesday, September 8^th, 2025, Fatou Jaw Manneh announced her plan to run for the presidency in the upcoming election in November 2026. Immediately after she made her announcement, Fatou Camara of the FatuNetwork made the following comments on her Facebook page: 

“Fatou Jaw who? We are not doing any hateful individuals in 2026. It would be necessary for Fatou Jaw to seek therapy first before we consider her. Ihave never seen a human being as hateful as FatouJaw. I would love to see a female candidate but definitely not her.”

Many people I spoke to, including myself, became aware of Ms. Manneh’s announcement to run for the presidency through the scolding comment Ms. Camara posted on Facebook about the aspiring presidential candidate. 

The two titans in the Gambian media space, and now perhaps politics, have a long history. The criticism by Ms. Camara is all but too personal. 

In December 2013 after Ms. Camara jumped bail in The Gambia and went to the United States to seek political asylum from the oppressive regime of Yahya Jammeh, she was welcomed with open arms by the Gambian dissidents in the Diaspora as a heroine. 

Musa Camara raised the solitary voice to say “not-so-fast or even ever,” in accepting Fatou Camara as the face and voice of Gambian dissidents in the Diaspora. He wrote an article titled “The Hypocrisy of Fatou Camara” which was published in the now defunct Maafanta—an online opinion and commentary medium owned and managed by Fatou Jaw Manneh. 

After the publication of Musa Camara’s blistering article, Fatou Camara and her supporters took to the cyberspace to accuse Fatou Jaw Manneh of allegedly being the author of that article who skillfully disguised her identity by using the penname of “Musa Camara.”

Even though Musa Camara is a real person who had published numerous articles during the struggle against the Jammeh’s regime, Fatou Camara and her then newfound supporters in the Gambian diaspora falsely maintained their allegation that the article was written by Fatou Jaw Manneh. 

Fatou Camara attempted to add credibility to the allegation when she told the late Pa Nderry Mbai of Freedom Newspaper in an interview that if Fatou Jaw Manneh was not the author of that article, how come the article was published ONLY on the Maafanta platform and not on the other Gambian online platforms?

Fatou Jaw Manneh consistently denied the allegation that she was the author of the article, but Fatou Camara and her supporters never believed in Ms. Manneh’s account of the story. 

Below is the article that Musa Camara wrote as it was published in Maafanta in December 2013: 

The Hypocrisy of Fatou Camara

​by

Musa Camara

​“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way” Viktor E. Frankl.

​To the proverb necessity is the mother of invention,sycophants from The Gambia have supplied the parallel contrast that desperation is the father of self-reinvention. Yahya Jammeh’s collaborators from The Gambia are very skillful in reinventing themselves once they fall out of grace with the ‘ungrateful’ man they so diligently and dutifully served. Ms. Fatou Camara—no relation to this author—is the latest cast member of comic tragedy. Her rambles with the chatterboxes on our Internet Radios provide instructive lessons with larger ramifications for ages to come. Excusing her irrational indulgences, shesaid “there was no way I could walk away from [reading] the news” on national television. Even though she’s ‘tormented by reading the news’ on the extralegal executions of nine inmates, and had ‘cried her heart out,’ she continued to stay on until she’s fired from the job. She claimed to have no choice but to read the ‘unethical and unacceptable’ news bulletins; and to accept the job of Press Secretary, and Director of Press and Communication. Despite the fact that she read the news on television and also being a self-acclaimed ardent reader of Foroyaa Newspaper, ‘she like the majority of the people in the country did not know of human rights violations in The Gambia.’ Weird! 

​Listening to her interviews after she’d jumped bail in The Gambia, she left me with the impression that she’s one who does not take responsibility for her actions. While in The Gambia, she claimed to have no choice but worked for Yahya Jammeh at the State House, and at the national television station. Therefore, no one should blame her for not knowing the particular brutalities of the ruthless regime because she does not watch the national television including her own show. Nearly seven decades after the Nuremberg Trials, she claims to be in the civilian brigade “only following orders.” Marx would have called the claims at Nuremberg tragic, but Fatou Camara’s a farce. 

​That memory is fuzziest of human endowments guarantees the eternal damnation of liars. They’re entangled in unending inconsistent narratives to cover their tracks. Speaking on Freedom Radio few days after her first interview, she bragged that she’s a Mandinka [daughter] woman who does things only out of volition. In herself indictment for eternity, she inadvertently confessed that in The Gambia under even Yahya Jammeh, she had “the last of human freedoms—the ability to choose one’s attitude in a given set of circumstances.” Essentially, she invoked Viktor Fankl in self-incrimination.

​Ms. Camara criticized harshly the man she obediently calls Paabi “a typical Gambian corrupted by power and greed.” Ironically, she worked for the regime to keep her television show, the seven-bedroom house with a swimming pool, and fleet of cars that allowed her the lifestyle of the insatiable moochers on the “Open Sore of Africa”—The Gambia. She collaborated because “Yahya Jammeh is The Gambian Economy” and she would have no career were he “separated from the economy.” The mere fear of that ‘personal apocalypse’ terrifies her to death as she thinks the “nation will collapse economically.” The opportunist convinced herself into believing that she could maintain a talk show on ‘Jammeh’s television station’ if she self-censored by sticking to talk only about social issues. She ignored the fact that the social issues in the country are engineered by the political realities; and that the political class are products and beneficiaries of those social conditions. She in all manners acted like the lunatic who sets the house on fire under the pretext to save the empty bassinet. 

​In a dyad with Bubacarr Sankanu on her show earlier this year, she ridiculed the dissidents aboard who would dare not venture into The Gambia because of the deplorable human rights conditions in the country. In that pandering of the egomaniacs, they attempted to showcase their existence as the evidence of a prosperous, democratic and free Gambia. Deluding herself as the prodigal daughter of the Paabi, who paid for her college education in England, she misjudged the man who wrongfully would put even Baby Mariam Jammeh in jail to teach her a lesson. It took Ms. Camara twenty-five days in NIA detention to confess “it is natural for people to think it will never happen to [me]. The truth is no one is immune to the wrath of President Jammeh.” She knew all along that the vast majority of Gambians, particularly the dissidents she’d tried to cajole on her show, claimed no ‘natural immunity’ to the wrath of Yahya Jammeh. Only the nihilists like her do. They are the monsters that mauled the nation, sapped her blood, and zapped her children with bludgeons.

​In refusing to apologize for having worked for Yahya Jammeh, been his cheerleader as anchorwoman on television, and also employed as a civil servant who simultaneously contracted with the state, she claims to have worked for her country. Until it violates one’s rights, working for the regime that terrorizes the citizens is a noble service to the nation. Her salary, she condescends, was paid by the government but not Yahya Jammeh. She would, however, deny Momodou Sabally, and the NIA agents who detained her the same right of defense. Applying her new standard as an edict, even her adorable Paabi should admit no wrongdoing. Undoubtedly, the government pays his salary too. By detaining Ms. Camara, they were ‘serving the country to maintain national security and enforce the domestic laws of a sovereign nation.’ After all, isn’t she the ‘criminal’who jumped bail?

​Fatou Camara is no feminist but a wannabe petty bourgeois who worships at the doorsteps of power and wealth. Alexandra Kollontai would have characterized her one of the Mashenkas in the citadel of power who“fight for the prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges.” Instead of uplifting her impoverished ‘mothers, older and younger sisters’ whose sagged hands and disfigured bodies toiled to pay for her education and subsidized her television career, she compounded their ‘double’ struggles against social control and economic depravity with a third — political oppression. Her show was a manufactured distraction to trap her ‘younger sisters’ in the preoccupation with the fetishes she wore, including the synthetic grass—the wig—she wears on her head.Evidently, not one of her supposedly ‘thirty thousand Facebook fans’ took up to the streets to protest her detention. They, presumably, had better things to do— window-shopping and gossiping on Facebook. 

​From the journalistic point of view, she’s a train wreck. Even though she had a show on TV, unrestricted access to her affectionate Paabi, and claimed to be a ‘journalist,’ she abdicated her responsibility to President Macky Sall to ask Jammeh the journalist’s question. President Sall, she argued, should ask Jammeh why are Senegalese not fleeing their country, in political persecution, for The Gambia? What a dereliction of duty! She’s by all standards qualified as what the late Babucarr Gaye called ‘not-a-journalist’ but a ‘join-the-list.’ She’s the disingenuous infotainer without a purpose in life but to seek fame. As a stenographer and chorographer of the regime’s propagandas, she’s also the lead model for the indoctrination with materialism in the population. Fans are her obsession. 

​The fallouts between Yahya Jammeh and his sycophantic enablers are most consequential for the political struggle to end our internal colonialism. The Gambian Diaspora realignments in handling the collaborators are helping to demarcate the line between the contending forces for the final liberation of the country. The controversy of Ms. Fatou Camara provides wonderful case study of this division. She bitch slapped our elite dissidents into henpecked submission when she instructed they must accept her because “she’s a woman,a mother of three, and a victim of Yahya Jammeh.” She challenged them that after they had accepted the humbug and hypocrite Dr. Amadou Scattred Janneh, how dare they not embrace her too? They jumped in synchronizing chorus, Yes Ma’am, yes!!! Welcome to the struggle!!! Only you must lead it!!! We will escort you to the Mansion in Potomac!!! Not surprisingly, the perverts marched behind her. The march on the Potomac Mansion was a subterfuge. It was the therapeutic session to enhance their testosterone levels as they inhaled her pheromones. What a tragedy for a nation and its people!

​The fundamental difference between the two camps speaks not much of tactics but to their values and visions for the country. The group that would not accept the collaborators of Jammeh as the spokespersons for the opposition know that Yahya Jammeh himself may have never physically committed the atrocities in The Gambia. He outsourced them to surrogates and collaborators who are culpable for their degrees of involvement. We reject that the abettors can simply invoke the Nuremberg Defense; or that they’re detained and imprisoned by the kakistocracy for their exonerations. The dissidents who strive for fairness and justice believe that we must hold ourselves consistent to values we would want our leaders accountable in post-Yahya Jammeh Gambia. The leaders must respect the rule of law, democratic principles, and just provisions of the Constitution.  They must obey the laws when it does not materially favor them too, or even when they could flounder them with impunity. It’s moral, ethical, and indispensable for a democracy, period. This noble stance by the genuine patriots helps them set aclear vision for a democratic nation, defines their mission, informs their strategies, and dictates their tactics. 

​Contrary to the elites’ claim, Yahya Jammeh’s crimes against Gambians have not yet risen to the levels of the involvement of the International Criminal Court. They are neither politicide nor war crimes. Generally, they are violations in contempt for the Constitution of The Gambia under which he can be held accountable. The collaborators including Dr. Janneh and Ms. Camara, who cheered Yahya Jammeh when he violated our laws to hire them for positions they should not have held, are hypocritical to cry foul when their master violated the same laws to put them in jail. They are responsible for abrogating democracy in our country. Since they’ve arrogantly declined to confess their crimes, admit wrongs, express remorse, apologize for their abominable sins and pay restitutions to the nation, their stubborn patrons among our elites will come to heed Frankl’s dictum that “when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Unfortunately, when that time actualizes for them, it willthen be too late for many innocent Gambians. 

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