By: Alieu Ceesay
Police in Kanifing Municipality deployed tear gas late Monday night to break up a demonstration in Westfield as residents protested prolonged blackouts and NAWEC’s failure to restore reliable electricity. What began as a local gathering quickly drew crowds from across the Greater Banjul Area and parts of the West Coast Region, turning the streets into a flashpoint of public anger after months of intermittent or absent power.
Youths and other residents poured onto the roads after another evening of darkness, blocking traffic and marching toward NAWEC headquarters. They chanted “we need our lights back” and “we live in darkness,” holding phones aloft for light and recording the scene. The Alkamba Times provided live coverage as the crowd approached the utility’s offices, capturing the growing size of the group and the tense standoff that followed.
Officers moved in as the demonstration reached the vicinity of NAWEC’s Westfield compound. Clashes erupted when some younger protesters pressed forward. Police responded with tear gas to disperse the crowd, sending people running through side streets and nearby compounds. The chemical irritant filled the air in the commercial and residential area, forcing bystanders indoors and leaving a haze over the junction. No official confirmation of injuries or arrests was available in the immediate hours after the incident.
The Westfield confrontation was not isolated. Similar gatherings formed in several neighborhoods of the Greater Banjul Area and the West Coast Region as households, shopkeepers, and students voiced the same complaint: electricity has been unreliable for months. Families report spoiled food, generators running at unsustainable cost, disrupted study time, and businesses forced to close early. Hospitals and water pumping stations have also felt the strain when supply fails.
NAWEC has repeatedly cited aging generators, delayed spare parts, high fuel costs, and rising demand. Residents counter that explanations have not translated into consistent service. The Monday night protests reflected a broader impatience after weeks of load-shedding notices and unfulfilled restoration timelines.
Meanwhile, Banjul North National Assembly Member Hon. Modou Lamin B. Bah also led a peaceful protest in the capital after residents endured a 24-hour electricity blackout.
The lawmaker marched with constituents to demand an immediate end to the outage, saying households, businesses and essential services had been left without power.
Bah called on the National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC) to restore supply without delay and to explain the cause of the disruption. He also urged the utility to address residents’ wider concerns over unreliable electricity in the city.
Protesters described the blackout as a serious hardship and called for lasting service improvements.
By early Tuesday, the streets of Westfield had quietened, but the underlying grievance remained. Communities that spent the night without power woke to the same uncertainty. Authorities had not issued a detailed statement on the use of force or on any steps to address the outages that triggered the unrest. For many Gambians in the urban corridor, the tear gas marked another night in which the demand for basic electricity moved from living rooms onto the streets.
