From Recovery to Controversy: Institutional Failure and the Politics of Asset Disposal in Post-Jammeh Gambia (2017–2026).

Abstract

Yahya Jammeh's twenty-two-year authoritarian rule in The Gambia came to an end in 2016 with a political transition that was hailed as a new era of accountability and the rule of law. The Janneh Commission of Inquiry (2017–2019), which documented widespread state capture, embezzlement, and illicit asset accumulation and recommended thorough forfeiture and recovery, was essential to this promise. Most of these suggestions were accepted in the government's 2019 White Paper. However, the question of what truly happened to the forfeited assets is still unsettlingly unclear almost ten years after Jammeh's departure. This paper offers the first thorough empirical analysis of the post-Commission asset recovery process, drawing from the 2019 White Paper and the 324-page Final Report of a Special Select Committee of The Gambia's National Assembly (March 2026). It contends that a deep-rooted administrative pathology that persisted through the political shift and methodically undermined each step of the forfeiture and disposal process was the primary cause of the failure of asset recovery rather than a failure of the law. The evidence shows that the promise of accountability has been largely unfulfilled due to an implementation gap caused by a number of factors, including disjointed custodial arrangements, flawed valuation and sales procedures, systematic violations of public finance law, catastrophic record-keeping failures, and lax parliamentary oversight. In order to explain how institutional culture, not just legal frameworks, can sustain impunity and mismanagement even after political transition, the paper develops the concept of "administrative pathology" and provides practical suggestions for bolstering asset recovery mechanisms in fragile democracies.