The desperate Adama Barrow gov’t sent its schizophrenic chihuahua Dr. Ismaila Ceesay to attack forGambia News on Senegal’s 2A TV simply because we reported how it aided Madiambal Diagne, a Macky Sall henchman to escape to France through Gambia.
Madiambal himself verified our story that he escaped through Gambia, a development Ceesay continued to deny even if traced to the horse’s mouth. The Barrow echo chamber, bereft of shame spewed that the founder of forGambia News isn’t a journalist. We urge Gambians to watch 2A TV. Ceesay said a lot!
But he calculatedly avoided the subject of the interview about corrupt issuance of diplomatic passports to foreign nationals. He instead changed bearing to attack forGambia News in a failed attempt to convince 2A TV that we are no journalists.
But we ask him to define or tell us who is a journalist. We will publish just a token of work from forGambia News founder, Ebrima Papa Colley from major newspapers including Gambia’s Daily Observer, his journalistic cradle where he was Head of the Political Desk and Sr. Staff Reporter with journalistic awards. We pray that we never have to write a dot about ourselves again!
In 2002, he almost lost his job at the Daily Observer as Sr. Staff Reporter because he didn’t attend the award ceremony where the then Gambia Vice President rose to the podium to give the award and notoriety-nonchalant Ebrima Colley was no where to be seen as cameras waited.
Managing Director Buba Baldeh later called him to his office, threatened consequences, and confiscated part of the cash prize. Wollaahi, we don’t chase talent or its consequent fame. If we want to publish our writing and journalistic sojourn here, it would be too long and seemingly conceited as evidenced by what falls your wake right now.
Colley also published material on freelance basis with the then Independent Newspaper. Baba Galleh Jallow of Gambia’s TRRC can attest to this. Newspapers in the United States of America also published Colley’s works. We don’t want to blow our own trumpet, thanks to the apothegm that a picture tells a thousand words.
We will also publish the press card of Mr. Colley as well as Dr. Ismaila Ceesay’s own materials he used to send to forGambia News for publication as recently as 2021 when he was trying to sell Citizens’ Alliance (CA), his political party that never secured even one parliamentarian under his tuition.
If Ceesay’s party never won a single seat but still calls itself a political party, what could rightfully dismiss Colley’s journalist background given the numerous publications both local and international, stellar awards, experiential credit and academics?
Also, do you fathom we are stupid to let you know who and who are working for us or giving us information? We neither gloat, nor thirst for recognition as to put patriots at risk. It is really to our advantage that you are left in the dark about who and who are part of this “Nobody-knows-site.”
The Gambia gov’t is trying a desperate damage control when the Senegalese foreign minister recently visited Banjul. It was a blatant backstabbing by Barrow and his gov’t to harbor and aid Senegalese gov’t enemies to escape to international destinations through Gambia.
Yet, Barrow, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay and their hypocrite kin-spirits would trumpet that they have the best interest of the Senegalese gov’t. But PASTEF members were denied a simple gathering in the Gambia during the campaign to elect Diomaye Faye.
Further, when few Senegalese citizens in the Gambia organized themselves to protest against Macky Sall during his Gambia visit while in office, the same Barrow gov’t attacked them. But today, the same forces of Adama Barrow are reciting lies that they are pro-Diomaye and Sonko.
As for Dr. Ceesay, he is the very mouth that was campaigning that Adama Barrow was “clueless” and shouldn’t be president. Few Gambians knew Ceesay wasn’t in the opposition out of patriotism. His true colors went on steroids as soon as the same “clueless” Barrow offered him a ministerial position.
Today, Adama Barrow isn’t “clueless” anymore in Dr. Ceesay’s lexicon. He’s the best president. This is how a status climber behaves. Without Barrow’s breadcrumbs, what else could this guy do?
About our journalism, we don’t want to waste time on that. We don’t want to fire all our bullets at once. Dr. Ceesay, what do you know about mass communication, broadcasting, news and feature? We still respect you as a brother. We don’t want to destroy your life by publishing what we know about you, please!
We don’t usually publish gossip. We have issues with the corrupt Barrow gov’t and its enablers. You are too little for us. Please look at our name and see our publications for yourself. We love to be underrated. In your head, we’re not journalists. But our publications, which unsettled your composure and warranted time and ticket to Senegal are indeed journalistic, right?
Maybe you’re too dumb to understand simple phenomena. You mentioned nobody knows us. We don’t want many people to know us. That’s why our publications seldom bear our authors’ names. Here is a food for thought:
When social media came out, mainstream media underrated and wrote it off with its present nomenclature, “Social media.” They thought they (mainstream media) were the kings of print and broadcast and others don’t belong to the club’s periphery.
I was in journalism school when our professor unequivocally stressed that “the internet would take over.” When we studied radio, we treated how it was killed by television and television to be later killed by the internet.
It was this little understanding that made the founder of this site veer off of journalism as a career to a totally different profession. Today, iShowSpeed, a kid from Ohio is more powerful than CNN, ABC, BBC, ESPN, and all mainstream media outlets combined.
How about Khabe Lame, from Senegal? These were never journalists. But they journal about many topics and help international youths make choices. If iShowSpeed travels to foreign countries, traffic stops and he garners bigger crowds in the streets than Trump or Biden. Heads of state invite him!
Tech giants had seen this writing on the wall when they started venturing into the “social media” market. Is there any major news channel that doesn’t have a YouTube or Facebook channel today? Remember Myspace.com which Facebook later killed off?
So, Dr. Ceesay, please re-educate yourself. In the history of Gambia’s press, do you recall a time a gov’t had to send its minister to a foreign country because of a “Not so journalistic” publication by a little nobody-site? You were a political Science lecturer at UTG, right? Did you study political science and wrote a thesis on it?
Back to the main Issue:
Dr. Ismaila Ceesay didn’t go to Senegal because both him and Barrow and their co-religionists in the NPP love Diomaye Faye or Sonko. Not at all! He went there because he knows Ahmed Aidara could sue him or his gov’t for defamation.
Ismaila’s gov’t rushed to tell the world in this digital age that it was Ahmed Aidara who said that The Gambia gov’t issued diplomatic passports to foreigners including Senegalese.
Aidara clearly stated that he was quoting forGambia News. Ismaila understands Wollof enough and could see Aidara reading a French translation of our publication. Now they are worried Aidara and 2A TV might press charges for both slander and libel!
Ismaila knows forGambia News far too well as proven by the above documents he used to send us for publication. But it’s his visceral indignation and the Barrow administration’s congenital phobia that this paper becomes well-known.
That’s why they’ve been desperate to bottle up our existence in a selective amnesia or choice blindness. But fate has something otherwise. Dr. Ceesay, please proceed with those antics against those who crave fame. Ask Gambia’s veteran journalists whether Ebrima Colley covets notoriety.
The United States!
Television!
Became Journalist Out of Necessity or by Accident!
Wollaahi, we won’t have ever published any of the above if the Barrow gov’t, Dr. Ismaila Ceesay or their press release didn’t attack us to pique international cororallies. Please Ismaila, since you’re now a lincesed authority on who is a journalist and who is not, go ahead and tell the world we at forGambia News aren’t journalists.
We were trained and educated by erudite professionals. Even while in The Gambia, we received training certificates from classes taught by luminaries. One of such courses was taught by the late Deyda Hydara. We still have his notes with us.
If you’re butt-hurt that Ahmed Aidara has a plausible legal prospect against you, please pursue the matter by withdrawing your irresponsible accusations against an innocent professional. You can’t threaten Aidara. He is more astute than you and Barrow.
When we started this paper, we informed our sister online paper Jollofnews and they broke the news. The late Pa Nderry Mbaye also broke the news on air. But we made it clear that we would only publish as time permits due to other professional engagements.
Before we started this paper, Ebrima Papa Colley used to write articles on all the then online papers such as Gainako News, Freedom News, Jollof News, Fatunetwork, Kairo News, Kibaaro News, etc., under the penname “Gambiano.”
It was with this pen name that Ebrima Colley started the Jammeh Soothsayer series when Jammeh was in power. Later it became Barrow’s Soothsayer series when Barrow took over and pursued corrupt, surreptitious maneuvers.
Ask TRRC’s Dr. Baba Galleh Jallow and erudite Lamin J. Darboe about this claim. They used to be my biggest fans. It’s so touching that Baba would always ask me to come out in the open and help my nation.
I kept saying I wasn’t ever a man of knowledge they assumed and I fear clamoring atop my tonsils to the average Gambian that 2+2 = 4 while they would reach for my throat with rage that it’s actually square root of Pi-R squared times area of a parallelogram! Baba never knew who Gambiano was.
He knew me as Ebrima Papa Colley and used to pay me money to sketch cartoons for his Independent Newspaper in 1999. If Barrow never started destroying Gambia, Gambiano would have still remained Gambiano, a Scarlet Pimpernel as Baba galleh Jallow once dubbed me.
A fame seeker would have stamped his big name all over the place. Ask Sheriff Bojang Sr., of Standard Newspaper how the paper felt when I stopped sketching cartoons. Usually, fame seekers would die for multi-talented notoriety.
But Dr. Ismaila, you’ve disgraced yourself by making bizzare conclusions against your kid brother. I was a journalist when you needed me. But I’m not when you join Barrow?
Here is one last thing we all can perhaps learn from: When I was a kid in the Brikama both you and I grew up in, we used to have an old grandma’s cousin visit us regularly. I was named after my dad’s father, Ebrima Colley Sr., whose nickname was “Saherrawu.”
Grandma’s cousin used to call me not Ebrima, but “Papa Saherrawu!” In Jola, “Saherrawu” means scribe or writer. This old man would tell us how beautifully our grandfather, Ebrima Colley Sr., used to write.
Wollaahi, my biological father (and I’ll say his name here for the first time) Kandaffeh Colley once showed a script and calligraphy written with stick and ink by his father Ebrima Colley sr. I was a kid then, but the scripts looked like machine-written Qur’anic scripts and wonderfully done before my dad was born or any Arabic typewriters arrived in The Gambia in the late 1920s or 1930s.
In 1999, Kandaffeh Colley, who used to sit with Omar Bun Jeng and others at Radio Gambia died. His first son walked on foot to the Daily Observer to sell small articles for D55 just to feed his family. You’re fighting that son who accidentally became a journalist, not out of choice.
Kandaffeh Colley’s maternal grandfather Samo Jatta prayed for a son to commend to Allaah’s service and scholarship. But like Wife of Imraan in Surah Al-Imraan, he was disappointed when a baby girl was born. They name her Isatou Jatta. Like in Surah Mariyam, Isatou Jatta later gave birth to the Kandaffeh Colley you hear about.
That Kandaffeh Colley’s first son is Ebrima Papa Colley (Gambiano), an accidental journalist, writer (Saherrawu), illustrator, and more we don’t talk about to avoid the evil eye (Ayn hassad). If O.J Jallow was alive today, he would tell you “Dr. Ceesay, please stop! an Ebrima Colley walked to my pipeline house in the summer of 1999 to interview me for his frst ever article.”
If you talk to GRTS Tombong Saidy, he might tell you, “Please stop, Dr. Ceesay. This kid interviewed me as director different times when he was fresh from high school. It was Tombong Saidy’s ex-wife Fatou Dibba who advised me to do free-lance journalism when I was only a Gambia High School kid.
If you talk to D.A Jawo, he would tell you stories about Ebrima Colley. If you talk to Dr. Baba Galleh Jallow, the same outcome. If you talk to lawyer Ousainou Darboe, he would possibly remember my published interviews with him or Kemeseng Jammeh and many other UDP titans.
Or if you call the British Embassy and the American Embassy to get into their archives, they might see an Ebrima Colley interview with the Consular General immediately after 911. The list defies infinity! So much for an Information Minister who lacks basic “Information” on people he grew up in the same town with.
To the Reader:
Please permit us this chance to publish this non-vainglorious response to he who seeks to deny us our toil and transcript, strip us of our devotion no matter how sparsed or intermittent, or condemn us to an unrecognition we are rather content with. At forGambia, we don't "beguile time to look like time." We lay low for time to beguile the arrogant!
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