Mustapaha K. Darboe doesn’t go to people’s Facebook pages, copy what they write, paste it on his website and still call himself a journalist. Nor does he call such lazy effort “news article” or anything to be proud of. Muspaha K. Darboe doesn’t sit idle or fill his coverage space with junk. Mustapha K. Darboe separates quality from quantity!

Mustapha K. Darboe knows the bulls-eye of efficacious coverage, the confluence of three-layered verification points and where they intersect the five W’s and H—for it could be only such tenacity of poise that could extrude shrouded practices and bring them to the fore in our Gambia of today.

Like a white-necked eagle after its target in water’s not-too-friendly depth, Mustapha K. Darboe sees who or what’s there, when or where is it there, and even how is it there. And there has been so much, already there, in The Gambia for good journalists to write about!

But it has to take a Mustapha K. Darboe to see that it’s not normal for Billions to be entering Gambia, yet our hospitals lack the basic supplies such as oxygen or gloves. Yes, it has to take a Mustapha K. Darboe to see that it’s not normal for Chinese Fish meal companies to deplete our marine resources, our families impoverished, our laws violated simply because someone is taking filthy bribes!

It has to take a Mustapha K. Darboe type to zoom in on our poor women spreading thin layers of fabric in our markets to set few bunches of okra or “Kutchaa” to sell just to survive while Adama Barrow and his co-religionists purchase fleets of vehicles and bikes for so-called Barrow Youth Movement!

It has to take a Mustapha K. Darboe type of journalist to see that it’s not normal to accuse others of corruption in a so-called gov’t White-Paper, only to receive thirty-five million bribes through the First Lady’s account and still keep lying to Gambians!

It has to take a Mustapha K. Darboe type of journalist, not donkeys or buffoons, to see that it’s not normal to rob Gambians of D116 million for a hard-worked constitution, only to bribe legislators to vote against it to entrench another donkey in power—a donkey that has been selling our country to special interests.

Reader, I know you know where this is going, right? But let’s cut it here, please, even though we could go on and on. We don’t know Mustapha K. Darboe—nor have we ever met him! But we love good journalists. So, bravo, Mustapha!

Like Esau Williams, he gives us hope that, yes, there are still excellent journalists Gambia can brandish to the wider world! We leave you with this reminder we wrote sometime ago, about those so-called Gambian journalists calling themselves journalists. Mustapha K. Darboe, Esau Williams, and few others are exceptions:

And behold! How we dare address, O Gambia, those disdainful enterprises of stealth,

Too cormorant and steeped in ill gains, of bricks in Brufut, motar, vixens or any filthy wealth,

As do we those that aren’t real journalists; thence, let there be axioms piquant of deep flattery galore

For minds too destitute of wisdom to adore.

Adieu! these usurping signatories to our noble art

Who pose with bleeding daggers and seek to start

An unchivalrous bout with those not too bellicose.

O glutinous bellies, beware of choleric cellulose!

Prithee! Submit regalia, O thou enrobed, yet naked.

Exult not at borrowed dividend, nor wisdom faked.

Let vanity and its avuncular egotism quickly fade

For beacons of chaste, hygienic pharaseolgy to evade

Baits and Barrow’s courtesans, whom with poise, we forbade.

Full poem here:

We Clock 1! And Gambia’s Compounded Problems Clock Almost 4 with Barrow!