In the 1994 Gambian coup d'état, a group of soldiers led by 29-year-old Lieutenant Yahya Jammeh seized power in a bloodless coup d'état on the morning of 22 July, ousting Dawda Jawara, who had been President of The Gambia since its independence in 1970.
Background
The coup of 1994 was spontaneous; it was not planned but rather a mutiny that eventually turned into a coup. The mutiny had been planned the night before its execution, leaving much to chance. Despite its spontaneity, the sentiments behind the coup had been developing since the attempted coup of 1981. The primary complaints of supporters of the coup included the delegitimization of the government, the lack of accountability, its overall ineffectiveness, and the corruption that pervaded it.
Declining legitimacy of the government
In the 1992 election, the People's Progressive Party (PPP) maintained a comfortable 58.2% share of the vote; there was, however, a sharp decline in government legitimacy almost immediately after the election. Citizens increasingly felt that the government was no longer responsive to their needs and had been acting in its own
self-interest. Citizens argued that the government had become complacent as a result of its comfortable hold on power since the nation's independence 29 years earlier. This sentiment was particularly present among younger voters and youth groups, who felt under-represented by the patriarchal nature of President Dawda Jawara's government. They believed the only route to fair representation had to be outside the Jawara government and thus they were some of the coup's greatest proponents.
At the same time, the uncovering and investigation of multiple ongoing scandals revealed the corruption of the Gambian Government. The Jawara government had been embroiled in a scandal involving three high-ranking government officials accused of embezzling millions of dollars from union funds in late 1993. Jawara and his government were reluctant to investigate this scandal and once the officials' guilt was proven they were even more reluctant to punish them, except for seizing and auctioning their houses. This made many citizens very sceptical of the government's complacency with corruption; eventually, domestic pressures resulted in the establishment in June 1994 of a commission to investigate. Jawara's attempt to regain the trust of the people came far too late; the commission had not reached a conclusion in time to save the regime. This incident, and many other scandals, led to the Armed Forces Provisional Ruling Council (AFPRC) continually rebuking the Jawara regime for its corruption, despite Jawara's objection that "the extent of corruption under the PPP was nothing like as great as claimed by the AFPRC". This was confirmed later in November 1994 when an investigation uncovered considerable corruption and mismanagement of the Jawara government, including accusations of tax noncompliance, the distribution of favourable lands in Banjul to the administration, overpayment of travel expenses, theft of state resources and the nonpayment of government loans.
Ineffectiveness of the Jawara government
Another factor leading to the discontent of the Gambian people was the ineffective nature of the Jawara government, which many accused of being ineffectual in its final months, arguing that governmental corruption prevented the country from progressing. Following the December 1992 establishment of the Assets Management and Recovery Commission (AMRC), which aimed to recover debts accrued by Gambian citizens and government officials, the ineffectiveness of government programs became increasingly clear. It was argued that the government had deliberately resisted AMRC efforts to collect debt and had purposefully limited its collecting powers; a result of the government's reluctance for its own debts to be collected. This resulted in more accusations involving the ineffective, corrupt and tyrannical nature of the Jawara government, which even argued the PPP was responsible for the underdevelopment of the country.