The Gambian president Adama Barrow has for the first time talked about his refusal to honour the agreement among coalition leaders to step down after his three years in power.

President Barrow who ousted Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh and ended his 22-year brutal rule through the ballot box in 2016, agreed to handover power after completing three years in office.

He however changed his mind and refused to step down which led to a political showdown with political group ‘Operation Three Years Jotna’ who stage large scale anti-Barrow protests in a bid to force him out of office.

The President has spoken about his decision not to honour the 2016 Coalition agreement  in an interview to privately owned television station, QTV.

President Barrow said:”I didn’t change my mind. I think there was a condition attached to three years. But people try to forget about those conditions.

“We wanted to do a lot within that three years, when we were outside. That’s what we thought. But we found out that it’s impossible.”

“These reforms we’re doing right now, we cannot do it in three years. The constitution, we cannot do it in three years. The TRRC, we cannot do it in three years. So these were the things that were attached,” he added.

“So you want us to abandon that and just go because other people want to be president or we want to go for elections? And at the same time, I think even the arrangement was also wrong. It was a very hasty thing we did,” he continued.

President Barrow is seeking a second fiver-year term in office in the upcoming presidential election in December and face mounting challenges from dozens of opposition parties that want to unseat him.

Reporting by Adama Makasuba

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