Hamat Bah
Gambian politician
Hamat Ngai Kumba Bah is a Gambian politician who is the current Minister of Tourism and Culture in President Adama Barrow's cabinet. He is also the leader of the National Reconciliation Party (NRP) and has been a presidential candidate in 1996, 2001 and 2011. He was the National Assembly Member for Upper Saloum from 1997 to 2005.
Early life
Bah was born in Upper Saloum in the Central River Division. He worked as a teacher at the Gambia College before becoming a manager at Novotel Hotel in Kotu Strand.
Political career
Bah entered politics in 1996 when he stood as the newly-formed National Reconciliation Party's (NRP) candidate in the first president election since Yahya Jammeh's coup d'état in 1994. He came third with 5.5% of the vote. In the 1997 parliamentary election, Bah was one of two NRP candidates to win seats, making them the third largest party. Bah, specifically, won the seat of Upper Saloum with 56.2% of the vote. He became a leading critic of the ruling Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction (APRC) in the National Assembly thereafter.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Hamat Bah” is gambian politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Hamat, Gambian and politician, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “gambian politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1572664. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1996, 2001, 2011 and 1997.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Hamat Bah” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.