Africa Speaks — Page 95
I f~ Gambia, was first to earn it. Only a few years before this, the Ahmadiyya had been excluded from The Gambia altogether, as Muslims there opposed the entry of a Nigerian Missionary of the Movement. Since 1957 they have expanded in the Gambia as elsewhere; they have just completed a medical mission at Bathurst. They have four medical centres in Nigeria, the largest being at Kano; and in Nigeria, in spite of its thousand years of Islamic history, there is only one Muslim Newspaper, THE TRUTH, and that is published by the Ahmadiyya. Khalifatul Masih III was received by General Gowon and other Heads of State on his tour, which included two countries where the Movement is just beginning to take root-Liberia (where President Tubman offered I him a plot of land) and the Ivory Coast. He arrived just too late to be received by Sir Farimang as Governor-General in The Gambia but the acting Governor General of Sierra Leone, Mr. Banja Tejan-Sie, is the son of an Ahmadi (other prominent Ahmadis in Sierra Leone include the ex-Ministers Kandeh Bureh and Kamanda-Bongay), the large number of non-Ahmadis who took part in the ceremonies marking the tour shows how prominent the Movement has become in Commonwealth West Africa. L t 94 '\