Comment: President Jammeh hopes to discontinue the use of English as his country's language and substitute a local one or Arabic. Language is the last hold-over from British "colonial legacy."
Jammeh further noted that citizens of other faiths would still be able to practice their religious rituals. Gambia's population of 1.8 million people is 95 percent Muslim. The smallest country in continental Africa gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1965.
In October 2013, Jammeh pulled Gambia out of the Commonwealth, which is an intergovernmental organization of 53 previous colonies of the former British Empire, calling the bloc neo-colonial.
Comment: Gambia gained its independence from the UK in 1964.
This comes as Gambia's relations with the West have also soured over the past few years. Last year, the European Union temporarily suspended its aid money to the West African nation over what it claimed as Banjul's poor human rights record.
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