Yahya Jammeh is a Gambian politician and former military officer who was the second president of Gambia from 1994 to 2017. Jammeh ruled Gambia for twenty-three years after rising to power as a young army officer in a bloodless military coup in 1994 that ousted Dawda Jawara who had been the first president of Gambia. He was officially elected the second president of The Gambia in 1996 and reelected in 2001, 2006, and 2011. He was defeated in the 2016 Gambian presidential election by Adama Barrow and was subsequently forced to step down from power in 2017.
Jammeh was born on May 25, 1965, in Kanilai, Gambia, three months after the country gained its independence from Great Britain. Jammeh joined the Gambian National Army in 1984 and was commissioned a second lieutenant in 1989. In August 1992, he became commanding officer of the Military Police of Yundum Barracks. He received extensive military training from neighboring Senegal and military police training at Fort McClellan, Alabama. Jammeh’s rise to power began on July 22, 1994, when he and a group of young officers in the Gambian National Army seized power from President Sir Dawda Jawara in a military coup by taking control of key facilities in the capital city of Banjul. The coup was known to be a bloodless coup that was met with little resistance. Jammeh’s group identified itself as the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC) with Jammeh acting as chairman.
Soon after seizing power, the Jammeh-led AFPRC suspended the constitution, sealed the borders, and implemented a nationwide curfew. Jammeh’s new government justified the coup by decrying corruption and the absence of democracy under the Jawara regime. Army personnel were also dissatisfied with their salaries, living conditions, and prospects for promotions.
In 1994 Jammeh founded the Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction as his political party. He was narrowly elected president in September 1996 in a national election which foreign observers declared was neither free nor fair. He
