Gambia election crisis: Jammeh risks sanctions, UN envoy says

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh will be “strongly sanctioned” if he tries to stay in power, the United Nation’s regional envoy, Mohammed Ibn Chambas, has said.

BBC reported that Mr Ibn Chambas also called on the Gambian army to leave the country’s electoral commission office, which it seized on Tuesday.

The seizure was an “outrageous act of disrespect of the will of the Gambian people”, he said.

Mr Jammeh initially conceded defeat to Adama Barrow before changing his mind.

He has since challenged the election outcome in the Gambian supreme court.

But Mr Ibn Chambas, who visited The Gambia on Tuesday, said the legal process was separate from Mr Jammeh’s mandate as president and he had to step down when it ends on 19 January.

“For Mr Jammeh, the end is here and under no circumstances can he continue to be president,” he said.

It is also unclear how Mr Jammeh’s supreme court challenge can proceed because only one of its seven judges are in post.

Even if the court does consider the case, it is unclear whether it will reach a decision before the end of Mr Jammeh’s term in office, a spokesman for The Gambia Bar Association has said.

The head of the Gambian electoral commission, Alieu Momar Njai, has said corrected election results do not change the overall outcome and Mr Barrow was still the winner.

The UN intervention comes after the Nigerian, Ghanaian, Liberian and Sierra Leonean leaders on Tuesday failed to convince Mr Jammeh to hand over power.