By Ebrima G. Sankareh, Editor-In-Chief

It is with a big sigh of relief that we report the safe return of our New York contributor, Tijan Nimaga who was allegedly wanted by Gambia’s autocratic Head of state, Yahya Jammeh. According to an email circulating within the Gambian cyber community, the Gambian government was alleged to have published a confidential memo listing the country’s most wanted dissidents. The memo was reportedly posted to all of the country’s border posts for returning dissidents to be nabbed. At the time of the publication that has generated enormous reactions and concerns, Nimaga was still in The Gambia after almost 20 years of leaving the mini-West African country.

Even though the mailer, who claims to be a Gambian Immigration Department employee had listed all of The Gambia Echo’s reporters as wanted by the Jammeh regime, he decided not to send us the copy after promising four hours earlier to send us the regime’s latest plans after sending Pap Saine and the others to Mile II Prisons.

On reading the piece in the Senegambia news, my esteemed English professor, Dr. Gilbert Thomason Huffman in the exercise of his semantic precision wrote me a rather sarcastic and humorous email thus, “Congratulations! I see you have made it to Jammeh’s most wanted list.”  Numerous others also sent confidential mails while other still continued to react with terse rejoinders but as usual, we decided to play it simple and safe. What our readers did not know was that Tijan Nimaga was visiting The Gambia and the purported wanted list was very dangerous to his life. As Editor-In-Chief of The Echo, I began my own investigations as to the veracity of the list and of Tijan’s whereabouts, a concern I communicated to some responsible Gambians and non-Gambians in the diplomatic service. I had sleepless nights, especially, as I reminisced over Tijan’s gentility, his love for The Gambia and his undiminished commitment to journalistic balance. I constantly reflected on his past articles from The Echo archives trying to imagine what would have angered Yahya Jammeh so as to merit Tijan’s inclusion on The Gambia’s most-wanted dissidents list. Significantly, I began to imagine Tijan’s fate if he were to be arrested. In sum, I was worried because the mere publication of the list may have inadvertently alerted the tyrant to study it and may be, pick new enemies as provided and that is the most dangerous part of the whole exercise.

After every effort to locate Tijan in The Gambia failed, I ran an Internet Protocol test (IP address) on the original Email that the purported Immigration official had sent captioned “WARNING”. Surprisingly and pleasantly, the IP locator traced his email to the city of Falkirk, Region of Scotland and country, United Kingdom. The sender used a DSL devise, country code 44. With this vital information, we were able to sense some dangerous ploy calculated to secure bogus asylum for someone within the UK and I thank God that he decided not to send us his doctored list because he knew that we verify.

Surprisingly and unbeknownst to the scammer and his criminal enterprise, Tijan Nimaga was in The Gambia for the past four months and in the coming days, Tijan’s diary from home will be published here for our readers. In fact, during his stay in The Gambia, Tijan has trekked the provinces, visited major provincial towns and in fact, witnessed the trial of the six journalists.

The Lesson? While it is true that journalists are endangered species in The Gambia and that President Yahya Jammeh is an utterly despicable dictator, it is equally true that so many people in their desperation to be legal abroad, have hijacked our profession to be granted political asylum; sometimes at a cost. If Gambian journalists are to continue to be respected and trusted, we must begin to follow through every piece we receive, examine it closely and verify. There is evidence aplenty of many wannabes only because of their immigration predicaments and given the chance, they will tarnish our reputation and once they secure their political asylum, they dissipate into oblivion; never to be heard again. While it is true that most of us are wanted by the Jammeh regime, it is also equally true that some of the so-called journalists are not even known or considered journalists back home let alone to be considered wanted.

I have said this before and let me repeat it once more; that no one needs to remind me that I am wanted. The fact of the matter is that I have been crossing paths with the NSS, the precursor to the NIA even before Jammeh came to power. I could have applied for political asylum even under Jawara’s regime because I was rusticated from Nusrat High School for speaking truth to power during my valedictory speech. Both The Nation and Foroyaa newspapers gave that extensive coverage as well as the National Union of Gambian Students (NUGS) Newsletter under Jewru Krubally. Ironically, some of the people who sometimes accuse me of not hitting Jammeh hard were actually supporting Jammeh in July 1994. In fact, some of our colleagues were calling some of us at The Point newspaper troublemakers because they were in cohorts with some of the criminal elements in the Jammeh regime. In sum, some of Jammeh’s fiercest critics today were in bed with him yesterday when some of us were branded saboteurs by the AFPRC junta.

Therefore, I urge the multitude of Gambian dissidents abroad, not to rely on the said list and decide to venture into Jammeh’s lawless state. To decide to return to The Gambia only because you could not see your name on that list is suicidal because as far as our investigations are concerned, the most wanted people have not even been listed on that memo. We would not publish their names because the next thing that scammers do is to replicate a new list and include their names to give it a semblance of authenticity.

Significantly, speaking to Tijan Nimaga on the phone from New York 25 minutes ago, he was bedazzled at the information because he was processed through numerous immigrations posts both during his entry to and return from The Gambia and not once, was he questioned by the NIA or immigration officials about his writings. Tijan returned from The Gambia only last night.

Finally, as usual, we will continue to offer testimonials to genuine asylum seekers be they journalists, soldiers, police or civilians but we will equally continue to jealously guard our profession lest we tarnish its image.