Alieu Njie, the Secretary to Cabinet at the Office of the President, has been given a 72-hour deadline by the National Assembly Select Committee looking into the sale of former President Yahya Jammeh’s properties to provide the papers the committee has requested.
In his first written response, Mr. Njie informed the committee that his office did not have any records pertinent to its investigation. But when he appeared before the committee this week, he acknowledged that some of the documents had since been found.
“I got it now. I came to the conclusion that we didn’t have it the first time (when the committee sent a summons) because I didn’t have it, I couldn’t find it anywhere, and even my team confirmed this to me. To the committee, Njie said.
He claimed that following the summons, he and his colleagues looked for the documents for two weekends in a row, for a total of four days, but were unsuccessful.
The conclusion at the time was that we didn’t have it, but we went one step further and said, Let’s check. He said, “I later discovered it in a closed file named Private and Confidential (PRC).”
Mr. Njie emphasized, “Not everything in the letter is in a closed file; what I am able to provide is what I found in a closed file,” in response to a question about whether the seven documents the committee had requested were included in the PRC file. We clearly don’t have the records of that (the remainder of the document), as the task force was under the Ministry of Justice when it was established.
Cabinet minutes establishing the Ministerial Committee associated with the Janneh Commission, membership records, committee correspondence, and reports submitted to Cabinet were among the retrieved papers. But according to Mr. Njie, there were no meeting minutes of the Ministerial Committee or reports from the related technical committee.
When asked if he had purposefully hidden the records, Mr. Njie vehemently denied any misconduct. “That will be extremely disrespectful; what will I ultimately gain from it?” he asked. He went on to say, “I will only benefit the system and not gain anything else.” “I can’t possibly hide them.”
Mr. Njie, who has been Secretary to Cabinet since 2023, said the committee that, prior to the recent finding, he had not come across any Janneh Commission-related documents while in office.
Following his testimony, Mr. Njie was given a 72-hour deadline by the committee, which was chaired by Hon. Abdoulie Ceesay, to produce all pertinent PRC data.
The lead attorney stated, “I am essentially requesting a collection of all files associated with the PR series.” “We will want you to produce that file, perhaps in 72 hours,” said Hon. Abdoulie Ceesay, the chair of the committee.
