09/09/2025
Nurturing Hopes, Building Futures- Lamin J Darboe
It all started in the Atlantic seaboard community of Gunjur Dabanani.
Rural childhood in the sixties came with walking on ‘dapato’, i.e., no shoes, hunting bush meat, working on the farms, partaking in mischief as children everywhere.
From Gunjur Primary School, I transitioned to urban life in my adopted hometown of Dembadou. Although many Sukutarians call me Gunjurngo, I struggle to even participate in the traditional joking relationship between my two communities as Sukuta is a key segment of my overall life journey. I regard it as hometown two.
In Sukuta I played football, and participated in Yusupha Cham’s club management.
From Sukuta I travelled daily to Saint Augustine’s High School where Father Gough, that great spotter of intellectual and sporting talent insisted I must edit the school newspaper, Sunukibaro in 1978-79. I succeeded Basiru Jahumpa.
At Saint’s I won first prize in an international essay competition organised by the International Union for Child Welfare in commemoration of the United Nations Declaration of 1979 as the International Year of the Child.
Three other Gambian children won prizes.
At Gambia High School, I edited the Sixth Form Magazine, Tingol, for 1979-80
After completing GCE A-Levels in May 1981, I worked for the Department of Information and Broadcasting as a Reporter with Radio Gambia commencing June. When Kukoi struck, I was a staffer of Radio Gambia but was not at work that day.
In November of that year I joined Standard Chartered Bank.
My first major job was as Sponsor Relations Team Leader/Manager for Action-Aid The Gambia (AATG), a non-governmental rural development charitable organisation with headquarters in London. As head of the child sponsorship funding arm of AATG, a department that generated about 80% of the Organisation’s operating budget, it was imperative I ensured the inflow of child sponsorship funds to London, and the accounts section in The Gambia was not impeded in any way, certainly not through the withdrawal of support attendant to poor service affecting individuals sponsoring children under the auspices of Action-Aid, and, or, Action-Aid-supported Government schools across the Gambia.
All of AATG’s sponsors were based overseas, with over 95% in the United Kingdom.
After seven years in a management role, I left AATG in 1989 to pursue higher education in the United States on the encouragement of my friend and brother Lamin O. Bojang. He insisted I needed certificates and facilitated the application process.
Upon attaining sufficient qualifications, I returned to the Gambia in the summer of 1997. A first major appointment, in May 1998, was as deputy to the Judicial Secretary (JS) of the Gambia. As Senior Assistant Secretary, I was at the heart of judicial affairs in the Gambia as third in rank in the then administrative set up, after the Lord Chief Justice, and the JS. I assisted in the day to day management of Gambian courts, but asked for reassignment to the bench. On October 6, 1998, I was reassigned as First Class Stipendiary Magistrate by the Judicial Service Commission.
As Senior Magistrate responsible for Courts at Banjul, and later Brikama, I had the good fortune, or the misfortune – depending on perspective – of dealing with cases others were inclined to avoid because of their political sensitivities.
It is instructive that the only appeal ever lodged against my judicial decisions was voluntarily withdrawn by the State in the case of Imam Karamo Touray and others. There was never any intention of activism informing my judicial decisions, only an unshakeable adherence to the rule of law and its undergirding principles of protecting human rights and promoting fairness for the sole purpose of contributing to the entrenchment of security, peace, and stability in Gambian public life.
Through it all, I constantly reflect on my background and assisted those who needed accommodation in Dabanani’s capital city of Sukuta, needed fees to continue education in The Gambia, opportunities beyond its shores, and offered counselling and direction to those in their vulnerable life stages.
As principal tenant at No. 1 Marina Parade, my SPECIAL INTEREST will be The Gambia, not the nicely packaged merchants of deception and misery walking the corridors of power promising illusions and living off the heritage of our people.
In promoting the special interest of The Gambia, a Lamin J. Darbo administration will continue to nurture hopes and build lives as I have done since 1981.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all”
Lamin J Darbo
09 September 2025
