Gambian President Yahya Jammeh seized power in a 1994 coup and has maintained it ever since with a blend of severity, mysticism and iron-clad self-belief. "No matter what people say about me, I am not moved... I don't listen to anybody because I know what is important," he said on applying to run for a fifth term in office at Thursday's presidential election. This deeply devout Muslim grew up in the western village of Kanilai in 1965, the year that The Gambia, a long east-west sliver of land bordered by Senegal, gained independence from Britain.
