West African leaders on Friday said they would travel once again to The Gambia in a last-minute effort to convince election loser Yahya Jammeh to cede power, a media report said.
It said the presidents of Liberia and Guinea were expected to arrive in Banjul to give the ousted leader, who ruled the small West African nation for 22 years with an iron fist, a last chance to respect the constitution.
The announcement came hours after military forces of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) crossed from Senegal into Gambia in an attempt to search for Jammeh.
On Thursday, President Adama Barrow was sworn into office in the Gambian High Commission in Dakar, Senegal.
Barrrow fled to Dakar on Saturday for security reasons.
Report says the defeated leader’s whereabouts remained unknown as at Friday.
On Dec. 14, 2016, representing the ECOWAS, presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, Ernest Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone, and John Mahama of Ghana met Jammeh and president-elect Adama Barrow in an attempt to manage a peaceful transition of power.
But those talks yielded no results.
Again on Jan. 9, Buhari lead two other West African presidents and other citizens to meet with Jammeh.
Buhari in his capacity as mediator in chief traveled with his counterparts, Sirleaf and Koroma , as well as the immediate past President of Ghana, John Mahama, to the Gambia to meet with Jammeh.
Jammeh lost the December, 2016 Gambia presidential election to Barrow.
He initially accepted defeat and congratulated Barrow but changed his mind and decided to challenge the outcome of the election.
