Former Observer MD Sheriff Bojang Calls Halake A Liar!!!!

…….As Bojang Sets The Records Straight

Sheriff Bojang Hits Back At Halake

“Baba Jobe never gave me the job as Editor of The Hansard at the National Assembly. I was recommended to the Speaker, Sheriff Dibba by Pa Sosseh Colley of Bakau Mama Koto through Kemo Ceesay of the GFA. I wrote an application and as was the procedure, all the members of the ‘House Committee’ including the leaders of all the political parties represented in the National Assembly had to consent to my appointment before it was confirmed.  Again you lie.  Baba Jobe as a board member of the Observer was one of people who offered me the job as MD.  I never applied or lobbied for it and it came to me as a complete surprise. And I believe they offered it to me because the company was in a state of complete disrepair; millions of dalasis in debt, record poor circulation, low staff morale, nepotism and scores of other problems perpetrated by an inept and perpetually absent managing director. I laid down my conditions, they accepted and I assembled a team and we went to work. I got that job purely because I was the best man for it at that particular point. Period,.” Mr. Bojang posited.

There’s hardly anything in your philippics to warrant my response bar a few points.

Your problem with me started when you sent me some prolix comments about someone you picked a fight with and I told you in no uncertain terms I wasn’t interested in your idiocy. We sparred and exchanged a few choice words.  

Then the writer and literary critic Foday Samateh wrote a piece in allgambian online challenging me to start writing again and you lyingly claimed in your so-called ‘London Letter’ column that there was no Foday Samateh, and that in fact I was Foday Samateh. 

 Ordinarily, I would have excused such a faux pas had it not been for your malicious persistence in trying to give me grief since I published my essay, ‘Letter To My Nephew’. Why can’t you just leave me alone? Just disappear and stop causing everybody tinnitus and I will not threaten to dump you on your rump

Or break your last good leg!                                        

Regarding the few points meriting a response:

1)  I am not threatening you on behalf anybody. My reactions were in response to your uncouth actions.  

2)  Not only are your children Gambians, I consider you to be as Gambian as myself for all the work you did for school children in Kotu and Mandinaring.  

3) Between October 15, 2000 and April 13, 2003, I have written 17 essays censuring Bush and his rogue group of neo-cons and rightly labelled them mass murderers, liars, imperialists. And I repeated this to the former US ambassador to Banjul and his deputy in their office in the presence of a senior Gambian staff member. In addition, I have taken part in nine anti-Bush/war/Israeli demonstrations in London. So your claims that I said the president is attempting to run The Gambia as ‘Jammeh Kunda Inc’ while not criticising Bush is bullshit. 

4) Baba Jobe never gave me the job as Editor of The Hansard at the National Assembly. I was recommended to the Speaker, Sheriff Dibba by Pa Sosseh Colley of Bakau Mama Koto through Kemo Ceesay of the GFA. I wrote an application and as was the procedure, all the members of the ‘House Committee’ including the leaders of all the political parties represented in the National Assembly had to consent to my appointment before it was confirmed.  Again you lie. 

5)  Baba Jobe as a board member of the Observer was one of people who offered me the job as MD.  I never applied or lobbied for it and it came to me as a complete surprise. And I believe they offered it to me because the company was in a state of complete disrepair; millions of dalasis in debt, record poor circulation, low staff morale, nepotism and scores of other problems perpetrated by an inept and perpetually absent managing director. I laid down my conditions, they accepted and I assembled a team and we went to work. I got that job purely because I was the best man for it at that particular point. Period. 

6) Let me remind you lest you do not know that you do not know anything about The Gambia, the cultural ethers, our politics and the primacy of our social interactions. If you have even a clue, you will not be in the position you are right now. Do I need to say more?  

7) On the essay, Rasputin. I don’t know whether you are stupid or just pretending to be. That was in no way a condemnation of Baba Jobe. What I did when they arrested him was rehash the tale of the Russian holy man Rasputin and how, even where he was considered bad, he was needed for the survival of the Romanovs. All I did was draw a parallel with story of Baba Jobe. Although Baba Jobe was never my friend, (I am friends with one of his friends, Sal) I had always found him very witty and engaging whenever I met him and challenged him on issues. (See my interview with PK Jarju in allgambian). 

And finally, I do not understand why you would have neurosis about me not mentioning Baba Jobe’s name when I talked about the two attempts to firebomb Observer. It’s not a savoury subject to discuss and that was why out of respect for his situation, I did not mention any name.  

You remind me of the bitter old fool in the opening stanza of one of Browning’s poems:

      My first thought was, he lied in every word,

      That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

      Askance to watch the working of his lie… 

You are behaving like an actor who cannot find the exit after the play is over.  Your hubris presaged your fall and you got hang by your own petard. Wallowing in your carousel of serendipity and sorrow why not chill and stop talking about things, places and people you do not understand? In your own words, what part of eff off don’t you get?