FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
Isatou Bittaye
10 March 2008
The dispute over who should be the president of the National Union of Gambian Students (NUGS), the umbrella organisation of students unions in The Gambia, has intensified as the University of the Gambia Students Union (UTGSU) recalls its representative in the NUGS Executive Council. This move was taken at an emergency congress of UTGSU on Wednesday.
The president of NUGS, Ebrima Sanneh, is a student of UTG who is not a member of the UTGSU Executive Council. The UTGSU president, Ousman Badjie, was voted in by the UTGSU congress to occupy the position of president of NUGS. This recall came as a result of the just concluded NUGS congress of which the UTGSU boycotted and had threatened to pull out of NUGS if their concerns were not addressed by the NUGS congress.
The row began when the congress decided to amend a constitutional clause to relocate the portfolio of Vice President from UTG to IBC. This move was taken by the Constitutional Review Committee, in which UTG was not represented.
Tabling the agenda before the UTGSU congress, the president of UTGSU told congress that the idea of separating the two unions has created confusion in the system. He said this separation of powers always results to conflict of interest between the two union presidents and that this has denied the UTGSU a chance of achieving its objectives for the students.
He claimed that the NUGS president has always been doing things without consulting with the UTG student Executive Council. He pleaded to the UTGSU congress to endorse the resolutions tabled before them. After a heated debate the UTGSU congress finally endorsed two of the three resolutions brought before it. The three resolutions, as demands, read:
i) Congress should recall the UTGSU NUGS representative, Ebrima Sanneh.
ii) The UTGSU president must automatically become the president of NUGS.
iii) NUGS should go by the previous constitution which granted the portfolio of Vice President to the UTG or the UTGSU would pull out of NUGS,.
The Congress, however, agreed to the first two resolutions and UTGSU president is mandated to take up the mantle of NUGS presidency with immediate effect. For the third resolution, congress gave room to the executive council to enter into negotiations with the NUGS Executive Council before any final decision can be taken.
This reporter contacted the recalled NUGS president, Ebrima Sanneh, to hear his own version of the story. Sanneh said that the UTGSU has no right to remove him from the position of NUGS presidency. He said this move is unconstitutional as it is neither in the NUGS constitution nor the UTGSU constitution. Sanneh noted that any case of removal of an executive official should follow certain procedures. He said it is stated in the NUGS constitution in Article 13, paragraph 1(f) that any executive council officer at anytime can be removed from office when a vote of no-confidence is passed by the NUGS congress against him/her as a result of ;
i) abuse of office
ii) wilful violation of the general objectives of NUGS and
iii) physical or mental incapacity.
"I remain the president of NUGS until proper legal actions are taken based on the NUGS constitution, up till May when my term of office will terminate," Sanneh added. He said from now until May, in any NUGS meeting, he will represent the University because he is still the president of NUGS.
He said it is not spelt out in the NUGS constitution that the presidency of NUGS should go to the UTGSU president and that the separation of UTGSU and NUGS presidencies was made at a congress last year. Sanneh said that it is that congress decision which mandated him to be the president of NUGS and until that congress decision is revoked through the right procedures, he still remains the president of NUGS.
"I am neither impeached nor recalled and I remain the president of NUGS until May," he concluded.
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