By Saul Saidykhan
Since the election of Donald Trump last November for a second term, a new acronym called FAFO has gained currency in the American lexicon. In social interactions both in person and online, people tell you “it’s FAFO time!”
Using its nicer appellation, the “FAFO” -Fool Around and Find Out, movement in America is a cultural and social phenomenon that has recently gained traction exponentially in the context of political activism, social justice, and online discourse. The term “FAFO” is an expression that essentially means that if someone willfully engages in risky, thoughtless, bigotry-driven, or provocative behavior, they will eventually face the unpleasant consequences of their actions. It has become a rallying cry for various groups and individuals who are pushing back against injustice, misinformation, discrimination, or harmful actions directed at them by others that boomerangs on the plotters.
I told a neighbor when the “FAFO thing” flared up a couple of months ago that I no longer have any safe sanctuary as both my birth country and adopted country are now in the same self-manufactured risky boat.
Indeed, the Gambia is in a bigger mess and has been for years than America. It seems the longer Barrow is in office, the more incompetent or corrupt he’s becoming. And Unlike America, Gambia has no guardrails. The citizens are completely at the mercy of the three traditional branches of government we have blindly copied and pasted from our western colonizer without any twitching for our peculiar African circumstances.
And NONE of the Gambia’s three branches are functioning as they should. Our Executive branch operates as a textbook mafia Cosa Nostra prototype; our Judicially is corrupt and dominated by sectionalists; and our Legislature is dominated by morally bankrupt or barely literate opportunists who never pass up a chance to line their pockets at public expense.
Consequently, Gambians are left to the vagaries of the natural jungle on their own. While the executives loot on an industrial scale in literally every sector of the government, the people have no one to save them from armed robbers, murderers, ritualists, drug dealers, terrible hospitals, collapsed public schools, bad or nonexistent roads, horrible services at public MDAs, unqualified drivers, fake or expired medications, and expired imported foods.
Like in America, the record of Barrow in 2021 was an open secret. That notwithstanding, many Gambians cheered his crude rigging of the poll out of bigotry. Now, even the dull witted have come to realize the folly of their action given the harsh and unsustainable nature of Gambian reality. Many now recognize Barrow’s former arch critics-turned spinmeisters for exactly what they are. Try as they are, it’s impossible to fool a hungry mass of people about their circumstances. And unlike bigots, the unbearable hardship in the country is blind to party affiliation and ethnicity. What all rational Gambians are wondering is when will this terrible chapter of our national history end?
About the author:
Saul Saidykhan is a renowned writer and financial professional. He is a regular contributor to this medium.
