The Gambia Echo Press Release-Clarification

Hon. B.B. Dabo

It has been brought to our attention that some people have made scurrilous allegations to the effect that The Echo’s on the line/off the line appearances last weekend resulted from Bakary Bunja Dabo and Sidi Sanneh’s decision to forfeit their financial support to the paper. Some also alleged, that The Echo was experiencing financial problems and that we were shut down by debt collectors.

On the allegations that Messrs. Dabo and Sanneh pulled the financial plug on The Echo this is what we have to say. As far as our records go, there is not a scintilla of evidence that either BB Dabo or Sidi Sanneh ever contributed a BUTUT towards The Echo. Our relationship with both gentlemen is purely on professional lines and as far as we know, Bakary Dabo has never, never, never (excuse the tautology) pledged nor contributed a single penny to The Gambia Echo Newspaper. Likewise Sidi Sanneh and Samsudeen Sarr. If anybody has evidence to the contrary please send it to the other online papers to expose us for being ungrateful to the gentlemen. As far as we know, only one Mr. Darboe ever contributed to the Echo in the sum of one thousand dollars ($1000.000) after our one-year anniversary and that is Mr. Haruna Darboe of the Georgia headquartered Global Democracy Project. That was never a secret because it was front-page news here. How some Gambians can just make up stories to score a point or to smear someone’s reputation is beyond my imagination. Sometimes I wonder why all this hatred especially, from people that you have never competed, quarreled or argued with. What is more ridiculous however is that people who I had had the highest respect for peddle some of these fibs. That is probably inevitable in a society where every computer literate is a professional journalist.

In case you want to know, here is what transpired. We had paid hostgator.com for a whole year and never moved. When we finally decided to move, we contacted Register.com, the registrar of our domain name: www.thegambiaecho.com to shift the DNS signals to hostgator.com and after the signals shifted, hostgator could not run our paper because the programs were not compatible. This is why The Echo kept shifting from Point Click and Hostgator until Sunday when the situation was normalized. When someone forwarded the first allegation from a pathetic character hiding behind a Sainey Manneh, I forwarded it to Point Click under the fitting caption: “The Sheer Maliciousness of the Gambian character.” 

Over the past two weeks we have received all kinds of phone calls some callers masquerading as advisers and others as sympathizers. Amazingly, some of these characters have never concealed their desire to have our paper closed or hacked. They would begin with a very appealing introduction and then by the time the conversation ends, the naked cruelty of their intentions unraveled. You can continue to hate or despise us, but to go as far as fabricating news that Bakary Dabo and Sidi Sanneh were sponsoring the Echo is the height of folly. The naked truth is The Gambia Echo has been fledgling for only one year and six months and we are proud of our record. Sophisticated news items that have almost always passed the test of time. It goes without saying but it must be stated that the Echo’s brand of journalism, is nulli secundis regardless of what some eggheads in lalaland may be pontificating. And for the record, may I remind some of our detractors that when Sidi Sanneh was appointed Foreign Secretary, Ebrima G. Sankareh broke the news on The Gambia Post and no one then, denounced him. But when a US Corporation appointed the same person and the same reporter covered it for The Echo, he was ridiculed as Sanneh’s propaganda secretary. That too is a pathological lie because Sidi Sanneh and Ebrima G. Sankareh have never met in life. Our relationship if any, is through proxy. Here is the trick. I am a reporter and I have a passion for this trade and when I see opportunities, I seize them. My first newspaper article came out in Form Three at Nusrat High School on William Dixon Colley’s Nation Newspaper and since that day, not even Jammeh the tyrant could stop me. No amount of caricature, mockery and malicious lies can close this paper and the sooner we realize this, the better.