Dida Halake Finally Fired
By Ebrima G. Sankareh
Dida Halake detained at Kuto Police since Saturday
According to the Daily Observer Newspaper, it's errant Managing Director Dida Abdi Jallow Halake who was earlier this week demoted to the rank of Chief Editor has been "finally removed." Halake, who was picked up by state security agents Saturday and whisked to the Kotu police station 12KM off the capital Banjul, remains in detention there under circumstances described by our correspondent as rough. Until now, no charges have been preferred against the detained former Chief Editor, although it is widely believed that he was involved in a host of things that may have apparently angered his newly found friend, Gambian Head of State Yahya Jammeh the owner of the pro-government Daily Observer that he bought through lawyer-turned businessman Amadou Samba posing as a third party.
Halake whose nationality remains at best dubious, came to The Gambia in the pre-coup years (before July, 1994) through two former Cabinet Ministers in the deposed PPP regime Messrs: James Alkali Gaye and Hassan Boubacarr Jallow. He seized the hospitality extended and the latitude of freedom that prevailed during the PPP regime, quickly settling down as a graduate teacher at a prestigious private high school. Legend has it that within a short period, Dida Halake's true character began to manifest as he was entangled in a child molestation case in the school where the Board of Governors swiftly sacked him but no legal charges preferred presumably because of Halake's powerful hosts.
Like most practitioners of the profession in the poverty-ravaged West African state, Dida Halake's journey into journalism was purely accidental hence the facile foolishness that characterized his stint as Managing Director of the pro-government daily that I sarcastically call, The Gambia National Stenographer- printing all that Jammeh does and says, verbatim. The most intriguing part of Halake's tenure was his constant assault on fellow journalists who he unashamedly called unpatriotic; driving a sharp dagger between the regime and his own fraternity despite several warnings that dictators and journalists were strange bedfellows. Two months ago, doyen Gambian journalist and former president of The Gambia Press Union, Demba Ali Jawo stepped in to offer some words of wisdom but all that fell in Halake's deaf ears as if though he was operating from a different universe from his predecessors-folks like Saja Taal and Halake's own successor Nenneh Macdouall Gaye who lost their best friends because of Jammeh only to be trashed later. In the end, Halake became more dangerous to the journalism fraternity than Yahya Jammeh himself; posing as an NIA operative in a paper that had hitherto served as a beacon of hope for all who wanted to try their hands at journalism. Some of us who worked at the paper from its conception in 1992 can say with overwhelming confidence that in the end, Dida Halake was more hated by his staff than even those whom he continuously insulted in almost all his editorials as amply testified by the paper's Dr. Owl; that old creature of Athenian wisdom and knowledge when it aptly said:"what goes around comes around", followed later by a cautionary statement to Halake"it is never too late to repent." It could not have been better said and let us all hope that those who replaced Halake have learnt enough to take the high road and allow the wheels of freedom and justice to grind to eternal glory for the betterment of our dear motherland-The Gambia, that is certainly bigger than all of us put together.