Sigga Jagene On Gambia’s Democratization .jpg)
Process!
Part Two Of Our Interview
By Pa Modou Bojang, UK
Sigga Jagne, the Vice Chairperson of the Save The Gambia Democracy Project, and also an HIV/AIDS Program Director, Kentucky Department of Public Health has been explaining the significance of radio in mass communication. The STGDP VP said her organization deemed it crucially imperative to set up the “Baati Rewmi” known as the (Voice of the Nation) radio station in a bid to raise political awareness in The Gambia—most importantly grassroots Civic Education. She said they intend to use the radio to sensitize Gambians about their civic duties, and responsibilities.
FREEDOM RADIO – Interview with Siga Jagne 26th June 2010
This is the verbatim version of the interview with Sigga Jagne, the Vice Chairperson of Save The Gambia Democracy project (STGDP) and also a staffer of the “Baati Rewmi” known (Voice of the Nation) radio station. In this interview with Pa Nderry M’Bai, Sigga Jagene explained the rationale behind the formation of “Baati Rewmi” radio and other burning issues in The Gambia.
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PNM: Well said Sigga. What are you doing to educate Gambians about their civic rights, and responsibilities as citizens. Voting is very important in any democratic dispensation. Is civic education high on your programme?
SJ: The main reason, in fact this radio station was formed was for that particular initiative to educate every Gambian about their rights, about not only around voting, but how important they are in any democratic system and nation building, and one other thing we want to do is to have an independent venue, an independent media venue that we can speak directly to all Gambians and in a voice that is not censored in any manner and in a voice that is open to different perspective and interpretation; in a voice that is able to look at issues from different angles and certainly civic education is key in that venture. STGDP’s main goal and objective, one of our main reasoning really for the organisation is democratization of The Gambia. Not necessarily in the political arena, but democratization and building of system, the facilitation of a creation of system in The Gambia that will lead to an initiation of proper democratization as well as sustenance of that. That involves so many things—it involves awareness of the people of The Gambia about their inherit rights and also about their responsibilities, because with those rights come the question of responsibility. We have the ability to vote and the right to vote, comes with the responsibility of the people that are put in power, making them accountable to representing your best interest. Whatever interest they may be, because anyone serving people’s interest, would be different from another side of people’s interest and that’s what really true democracy is. But maybe Sigga Jagne wants to be different from what somebody else wants, but the written awareness among Gambian people who realise the importance of their votes and also the importance of nation building and their inherit responsibility in nation building is the main aspect whether within a small community level or to national level.
PNM: Talking about public empowerment through free expression, free speech, of late some dictatorial regimes in Africa, notably in Ethiopia, they resorted to jamming the Voice of America (VOA) relay station in Ethiopia. What contingency plans do you guys put in place in the event Jammeh’s government felt that there is a need to jam your radio in Gambia, because there’s no clearance from the regime to allow you to broadcast in The Gambia. What are you going to do if the government resorts to jamming your radio?
SJ: That’s certainly what I want to say, we broadcast back in 2006 around the election. We didn’t broadcast for a long time, but almost within six months to a year, one of the things that didn’t happen was enough gathering of licence of the radio station and this time around we certainly want to change that, but we’ve long even in 2006 that the key factor in why we choose the agent that we did, the company that we’re working with and even the type of radio station we’re broadcasting from, is that very fact to be able to allow dissenting voices as well as agreeing voices, to be able to allow different voices to maintain a freedom of speech without being interrupted by either the government of President Jammeh or any other government, was key to our planning process and our strategization for the radio station. We suddenly include that into our thinking when we’re planning this radio obviously there is various technologies, so it is not impossible to jam our radio station, but be rest assured that this was in the fore front of our thinking and part of the reason why we make sure some of the entities we did as well as the particular type of radio that we are broadcasting from is to avoid that very scenario.
PNM: What are the feedbacks you’re receiving so far since the launching the radio?
SJ: One of the things that we have done, we as SGDP in collaboration with GRTS International, we have, in fact, the one from spot check, we call people from back home in different part of The Gambia to say “Hey have you heard the broadcast, please listen to it at this time”, was its clear. So we’re still at the testing field. We’re doing what we call formative research to inform us going forward like, what we need to do and how we need to structure it, so certainly in its infancy and, you know, try to work with individuals like yourself and one of the things we really want to make it very clear it’s not the SGDP radio, it’s not the GRTS radio. We want ownership from Gambians everywhere, we want to get to a point we’re broadcasting to a radio which is open to so many different people and groups, depending on their time, being able to diversify the voices that are heard on the radio as such, trying to get ownership of the radio by different folk, including yourself, who are veteran in the media and know how to strategise our aim. One of the things we’re really looking forward to is to try and get feedback from subject matter experts, so people, like yourself, people like Mbye Sarr, ordinary Gambians all over the world, getting their feedback, but in the initial formative research of it we have been able to do spot check, calling different people from different parts of The Gambia, asking them and listen to the broadcast and then give us feedback about what they’re hearing and we are going to continue doing that for at least the next two, three months so that we can get some information of what is helping our planning in an improvement process as the radio is still in very much of its infancy. 