Abstract
The task of nation-building today in the world is that which carries along all well-meaning modern nation-states, with Gambia as no exemption. This paper examines the nationhood process and effort in the Gambia between 1994 and 2015. It focuses on national development efforts both in the first and second republics. The paper investigates how human, material and ecological resources are harnessed and deployed towards this noble goal, availing enabling policy-thrusts for effective implementation and goal attainments that attract sustainable socio-economic and political development. The paper beams searchlights on the redoubled efforts under the Yahya Jammeh regime and the pragmatic approaches taken to achieve more meaningfully goal-oriented national development strides that pave ways for practical development giants and strides. An inductive and deductive methods of research that are descriptive and fact-finding are employed for empirical and critical explorations. The paper posits that the strategies of the second republic government, which surpass the first republic’s conservatively-constructed approaches under Jawara served as impetus for the accomplishments recorded from 1994 to 2015 in making the Gambia an economic super power through industrialization of the agro-economic structures and processes of the small nation in the sub-Saharan Africa. Keywords: Nation, Nationhood, National Development, The Gambia, Second Republic, Independence.
Highlights
TO STUDY: In this study, the meanings to the concepts of „Nation‟ and „Nationhood‟ are searched with conceptual approaches, given the considerations of such an effort into how nations or nation-states, as the case may be, strive for national development, in meeting with state objectives and directional goals, under a vibrant, pragmatic and people-oriented political leadership
An inference is drawn into the Gambia‟s experience by surveying happenings beginning from 1994 when the country attained independence and how the efforts have been re-doubled through pragmatic approaches and political determinism with the inception of the second republic in 1994 under Yahya Jammeh
The one in the past is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present – day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form He describes a nation as „a daily referendum‟, saying nations are based on what the people jointly forget and what they jointly remember with semantic reference to nationalism and national identity
Summary
The meanings to the concepts of „Nation‟ and „Nationhood‟ are searched with conceptual approaches, given the considerations of such an effort into how nations or nation-states, as the case may be, strive for national development, in meeting with state objectives and directional goals, under a vibrant, pragmatic and people-oriented political leadership. The one in the past is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present – day consent, the desire to live together, the will to perpetuate the value of the heritage that one has received in an undivided form (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Qu%27es++nation&tbs=bks%3AI&tbo=) He describes a nation as „a daily referendum‟, saying nations are based on what the people jointly forget and what they jointly remember with semantic reference to nationalism and national identity This corroborates Omotosho‟s view of nationhood as the citizenry‟s efforts under an organized government to realize national objectives and goals. Such development strives engage the tools of expertise, economic drivers inherent in an economy as well as a stable political environment and viable electoral process that guarantee enormous peace for attainable self-sustaining development, believed to make a nation giant (Omotosho, 2014)
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