Dear Editor,
On the evening of May 16, 2026, the University of The Gambia was supposed to witness a moment of transition and renewal. Ismaila Fadera, a recognisable face in The Gambia’s youth politics, and the newly elected President of the 24th Executive Council of the University of The Gambia Students’ Union, was to be administered his oath of office. What unfolded instead was a scene that no student union president, new or old, should ever want associated with their inauguration: half of his own cabinet walked away.
Of the 21 members that constitute the 24th Executive Council, excluding the Justice Minister whose appointment remains pending, only 11 stood before the Principal Arbitrator of the Judicial Tribunal to take their oaths. The remaining members, all elected on The Solutionists-Salvation Coalition banner, turned their backs on the ceremony in a collective act of solidarity with Sports Minister-elect Cherno MB Jallow, who had been denied the most basic prerogative of his office: the right to appoint his own deputy.
What happened, and why it matters
The dispute is straightforward in its facts, is deeply troubling in its implications. When Cherno MB Jallow nominated Modou Lamin Jallow, widely known as Arturo, as his Deputy Sports Minister, he followed the longstanding custom of the UTGSU: a minister informs the Council of their intended nominee, walks members through the nominee’s track record, confirms that the individual has the requisite semesters remaining to serve the full tenure, and invites the Council’s confidence in the nominee’s character and integrity.
Arturo cleared that bar by any reasonable measure. His record in university sport and governance speaks for itself. He served as a Sports Committee Member of the 21st, 22nd, and 17th Executive Councils of UTGSU and the Social Sciences and Humanities Students’ Association (SoSHSA) respectively. He served on the Technical and Logistics Committee of the 23rd Executive Council of UTGSU. He has coached the SoSHSA football team and, in 2022, led that team to victory in the Vice Chancellor Football Tournament. He is, by any honest assessment, among the most experienced and decorated sports figures in the university’s student governance structure. More critically, he has never been found by any disciplinary body, within or outside the institution, to have acted in misconduct of any kind.
And yet President Fadera, alongside Vice President-elect Adama Ndow, Secretary General-elect Muhammed Bah, Information and Communications Minister-elect Ebrima Mbaye, Education and Research Minister-elect Fatou Darboe, and Auditor General-elect Isatou Bah, the Alliance bloc within the new Council, said no.
The hypocrisy the numbers expose
What makes the rejection of Arturo so indefensible is the standard the Alliance camp applied to every other nomination, which is to say, no standard at all, applied selectively and only against him.
The Coalition ministers raised no objection to the Deputy Information and Communications Minister, who actively campaigned against Coalition candidates during the elections and served as a polling agent for Alliance. They raised no objection to the Deputy Secretary General, who served as Secretary General of the UTGSU Electoral Commission, the very Commission that rejected the Secretary General candidate of The Coalition, and subsequently resigned that post to take up a deputy role under Muhammed Bah. They raised no objection to the Deputy Education and Research Minister, or to the Deputy Gender and Health Minister. Coalition members accepted every Alliance-nominated deputy without complaint, including individuals whose political involvement in the elections was direct, documented, and far easier to question than anything attributed to Arturo.
The Alliance bloc, by contrast, found no issue with any of those nominees. Their only objection was to Arturo. Not because of his record, which is, as demonstrated, entirely creditable. Not because of any finding of misconduct, because there is none. Their objection, sources confirm, is rooted entirely in personal grievances and political allegiance. Arturo has been a vocal defender of The Coalition and has previously had personal conflicts with certain Alliance members, including Fadera himself. The “concerns about character” raised by the Alliance side are, in plain terms, political payback dressed up as principle.
The contrast is stark and it is damning. The Coalition gave Alliance the benefit of the doubt on deputies who were genuinely politically compromised by the standards of any previous council. Alliance could not extend the same courtesy to a man whose only disqualification is that he belongs to the other camp and has defended it openly.
A precedent the 23rd Council did not set
What makes this all the more damning is the comparison history invites. The 23rd Executive Council, which has since issued multiple press releases appealing for calm after a week of disruption on campus, operated on a markedly different standard. In that Council, the Finance Minister appointed the UTG Inter-School Alliance for Change Campaign Manager (2025) as his Deputy Finance Minister. The Justice Minister, appointed in consultation with the full Council, was himself an Alliance member. These cross-camp appointments were not merely tolerated; they were embraced, because that Council understood that union governance is not an extension of election-season politics. It is a service to every student, regardless of which slate they voted for.
The 24th Council, under Fadera’s watch, abandoned that standard before it even formally began.
The ministers who walked out, namely the Welfare and Culture Minister-elect and her approved deputy, the Finance Minister-elect and his approved deputy, the Technical and Logistics Minister-elect and his approved deputy, and the Agriculture and Environment Minister-elect and his approved deputy, all belong to The Coalition alongside Cherno MB Jallow and Arturo. Their departure was not theatrical. It was a principled refusal to inaugurate a council that had already been compromised.
The gap between words and conduct
Ismaila Fadera has spoken of unity. It has been a recurring theme of his campaign and of his public profile as a youth leader. But there is a question every campus observer must now sit with: how does a president credibly advocate for unity while leading the politically motivated exclusion of one of the university’s most accomplished student sports figures from a ministerial appointment?
Leadership is not a speech. It is not a campaign promise. It is a daily series of decisions about what you will permit and what you will stand against. On his very first day in office, Fadera chose political allegiance over institutional integrity. He chose to allow the grievances of the campaign trail to contaminate his Council. And in doing so, he handed half his cabinet an unanswerable reason to leave.
He speaks of unity. It was his decision, and his decision alone, that sent half his Council walking on inauguration day.
The Vice President, the Information and Communications Minister, and the Secretary General bear particular responsibility here as well. Both backed the exclusion of Arturo. Both chose faction over function at the earliest possible moment. Their complicity matters. But the ultimate responsibility rests, as it must, with the president who set the tone.
What this Council must now confront
The 24th Executive Council can still recover. Institutions have survived rocky beginnings before. But recovery requires more than time. It requires candour. Fadera must acknowledge that the rejection of Arturo was a mistake, not in vague terms, but plainly and without qualification. He must make clear to his Alliance-camp colleagues that the Council is not a prize to be distributed among loyalists, but a table at which all elected and nominated ministers, regardless of their political colours, have an equal right to stand.
The students of the University of The Gambia elected a Council to serve them. They did not elect a faction to govern them. That distinction must be lived, not merely spoken.
Fadera is a young leader with a profile that extends well beyond the university, and there is genuine potential in that. How he responds to this crisis, not in his next press statement, but in his next actual decision, will tell us whether the promise of his campaign was real, or merely rhetoric. The verdict on his presidency is not yet final. But the opening chapter of the 24th Executive Council has been written, and it does not make for comfortable reading.
Yusuf Tunkara
Former Deputy Speaker of UTGSU Legislative Body
Alumni of UTG
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