Alieu Badara Njie

He was born into a Wolof family in Bathurst (now Banjul). Njie attended the Methodist Boys' High School (1922–25) before entering the civil service in 1925.

Njie worked in the civil service until his retirement in 1958 as the registrar of the Supreme Court of the Gambia.

He was first elected to the Bathurst Town Council in 1949 as an independent for the Jollof/Portuguese Town ward and, in 1960, was selected to contest the seat for the Democratic Congress Alliance (DCA) in the first parliamentary election. He won the same seat in the 1962 election.

He transferred to Northern Kombo for the 1966 election and all subsequent ones up to 1977. Following the merger of the DCA and the People's Progressive Party (PPP) in 1965, he contested these later elections for the PPP.

After the 1960 election, Njie was appointed Minister of Communications by Governor Edward Windley, but resigned in March 1961 when P.S. Njie was selected as chief minister. Following the 1962 election, he was appointed minister of works in D.K. Jawara's first cabinet; communications was added to this portfolio in 1963. At independence in 1965, he was appointed Minister of State for External Affairs and first ever Resident Minister in Dakar (Jawara initially retained the foreign policy portfolio for himself). In April 1967, he again became Minister for External Affairs, but was replaced by Andrew Camara in January 1968.

Following a period of out of the cabinet, he was appointed Minister of Information in 1970 and, in 1971, he became Minister of State in the President's Office. In 1972, he became Minister of Agriculture and Natural Resources, before returning to External Affairs in July 1974, a post he held until the 1977 election. After the election, he was made Vice President in 1977 (a largely ceremonial post). He resigned as a minister in August 1978.

Before the 1982 election he voluntarily retired as a member of parliament for Northern Kombo, supporting and garnering support for Nyimasata Sanneh-Bojang. He was persuaded to lead the PPP election campaign, until he was killed in a French Government-owned helicopter crash on 21 April 1982.

• Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) (1955)
• The Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George (CMG)
• Justice of the Peace (JP)

• Touray, Omar A. (2000). The Gambia and the World: A History of the Foreign Policy of Africa's Smallest State, 1965–1995. GIGA-Hamburg. pp. 66–. ISBN 978-3-928049-66-5.