Five newly-appointed Secretaries of State including Abdoulie Momodou Sallah, Secy for Higher Education; Mass Axi Gye, Secy for Youths, Sports and Religious Affairs; Ousman Jammeh, Secy for Petroleum, Energy and Mineral Resources; Momodou A. Cham, Secy for Forestry and Environment and Mrs. Marie Saine- Firdaus, Attorney-General and Secy for Justice, yesterday swore to the oath of allegiance and secrecy at State House in Banjul.

Speaking on the occasion, President Alhaji Yahya Jammeh advised the newly invested Secretaries of State to work for the interest of the country. He contended that his government has long passed the planning stages and is now advanced on implementation.

“When you do not perform you will be given a goodbye,” he said.

“I am duty bound to serve the interest of The Gambia. If you perform you are my favourite. My friendship with you is based on your performance.

“I want you to be part of a team that will make the country an envy. I thank you for accepting the challenge. But it is a challenge you must overcome,” he asserted.

“It is a matter of choice. If you cannot work with me it is better to resign. I will not allow double faces or chameleons. When you are not performing I will tell you goodbye,” President Jammeh warned.

He advised the Secretaries of State to work loyally, adding that they are paid from tax payers money and they want results.

“If you leave your work to the Permanent Secretary, the Permanent Secretary will give it to his deputy and it goes like that, and at the end of the day nothing would be done,” he remarked.

“If you work, you are working for yourself. That is the country, because the country doesn’t belong to me.”

In conclusion President Jammeh pointed out that their mission is to fight nepotism and so it will never be tolerated, dissuading the newly sworn-in Secretaries of State from favouring anybody because of supposed kinship to him or being an APRC militant. “I want to achieve something,” he said.

In a separate engagement the president, as is usual with him during the month of Ramadan, also distributed over 13,000 bags of sugar across the country.

Presenting the gift he said one needs to be content with what one has, small or big, and also learn to share the little one has with other people.

He concluded with the warning that if anyone sold the donated bags of sugar, he would punish the individual by sending him to jail for four months for each bag, without any judicial proceedings.

Mr. Abdoulie Sallah, who made a statement on behalf of his newly sworn colleagues, assured the president that they would live up to expectation.

“We will merit the confidences and trust you have on us,” he said.