+++By Alioune Diouf+++
Thiès, Jan 5 (APS) – Former journalist Babacar Ndiaye, decorated with the Grand Cross in the National Order of the Lion, last December 20 by the President of the Republic Bassirou Diomaye Faye, after having served for 35 years in Almost all of the regional offices of the Senegalese Press Agency (APS) are proud to have reached the ceiling in terms of distinctions, after a busy agency career.
“I rolled my bump everywhere. Only Louga and Saint-Louis escaped [à mon parcours de journaliste] », says, not without pride, Babacar Ndiaye, former bureau chief and APS correspondent in most regions of the country.
It is as a happy man that the man whose name has long been associated with the APS, receives in a cozy living room at his home in district 10ein Thiès (west).
Having spent more than three decades in a busy career as a journalist, Babacar Ndiaye APS has become an icon of the Senegalese press.
Even if he is not a man to burden himself with glory, his decoration in the National Order of the Lion went straight to his heart, especially since he received it from the highest authority in the country, in the presence his son who accompanied him and former colleagues and friends, including the former director general of the APS, Mamadou Koumé.
“It is a great honor that the President of the Republic has granted me, because it must be recognized that it is the highest distinction in the National Order of the Lion,” he said. With this distinction, I reached the ceiling of the decorations I could receive.”
Diagonally displaying the green ribbon which supports his decoration, a golden pendant, and another medal pinned to the chest which he had received from former President Macky Sall, he does not fail to thank the Grand Chancellor of the National Order of the Lion, General Meïssa Sellé Niang, at the origin of this new mark of recognition, as well as all the members of the chancellery.
At 77, the tall, white-bearded man, once very dynamic, is beginning to feel the weight of age.
Since his retirement in 2008, this father of four boys, one of whom lives in the United States and the other works in the Sabodala gold mines, has lived in his house located in the leafy district 10e of the rail capital, alongside his wife. The perfect complicity between the two is evident to the visitor.
“Mother Ndiaye, these are not my glasses, but yours,” she tells him, after putting on the glasses she has just given him before the interview. “I tell her that she has aged, but she refuses to admit it,” laughs the dean, whose sense of humor has not aged a bit.
“I have been to practically all the regional offices. I am delighted with this journey. I served without a second thought and with self-sacrifice and a lot of commitment,” says this retired journalist, who joined the APS in 1973.
After Dakar, at the central editorial office, he was bureau chief in Tambacounda [est]in Ziguinchor [sud]then capital of natural Casamance, in Fatick [centre]in 1974, in Diourbel [centre] accumulated in Thiès, where he made four return trips.
After a first stay in Tambacounda, he had to return there, to take over a three-month temporary contract, but which will ultimately be extended beyond a year. His successor in eastern Senegal, the journalist Ibrahima Bakhoum, did not get along with the then governor, who labeled him “communist”.
His long journey across the country allowed Babacar Ndiaye to meet illustrious governors that Senegal has known. He remembers with nostalgia, among others, Amadou Thiam, Idrissa Camara, one of the last with whom he worked in Thiès, Souleymane Ly, recently called back to God or even Ndakhté Mbaye, considered the father of administrative reform of 1972.
Babacar Ndiaye witnessed all phases of the evolution of the means of transmitting information to the APS, from letters sent by train to the arrival of the Internet, including the fax. This native of Louga, whose father came from Linguère, has had a remarkable career.
Recognition from peers
In a column published on Thiès 24, an online media outlet by Thiessois journalist Mbaye Samb, correspondent for the private daily L’As, Cheikh Fall, his former traveling companion and head of department at RTS, is full of praise for him. place.
Fall, who worked under his protective wing, as a young correspondent for Radio Sénégal in Thiès, paid tribute to him for having “played the role of an island operator for the good of his young journalist cadets, but above all for the nobility of journalism “.
“As a young correspondent for Radio Senegal in the rail capital, I threw myself into his arms without further ado,” recalls Cheikh Fall, evoking the times when there were bridges between the public media so that Babacar Ndiaye fed the Soleil with his dispatches, and lent his voice to RTS.
“Babacar Ndiaye, master of his art, did his work without clinging to chimeras. This rigor in the exercise of this complex profession gave him the stature of a person respected and listened to by all. Administrative and local authorities, opinion leaders or other public and private decision-makers saw their activities relayed in a concise style with faithful content,” he testifies.
“Babacar was an outstanding agent. His dispatches fed the famous national daily Le Soleil and his beautiful voice resonated on the airwaves of Radio Senegal, to the great delight of listeners. Yes, the dean Babacar Ndiaye was the pen and the symphony,” he writes again.
To top it off, Cheikh Fall suggests to the current mayor of Thiès to name, in his name, the street passing in front of his house, which runs alongside the Chamber of Trades, the UFR/Santé and the ANCAR.
The highlights of his long career as a journalist jostle in his memory. He remembers when, as a young reporter who was not yet a permanent reporter, he was sent to Thiès to “keep house”, while the then bureau chief, Souleymane Diop, went for an internship in Germany. He then took the initiative of making a report on phosphates, which did not please the deputies, who wanted to “get rid of (him)”.
The debate raised by this article led to the vote by the National Assembly of a law nationalizing the exploitation of phosphates by ICS, the Chemical Industries of Senegal, he says.
With the approval of President Léopold Senghor, the State decided to take the majority of shares in this company, continues the retired agent.
Union commitment
The other anecdote that he evokes, not without regret, concerns a report which cost two of his relatives dearly. Having reported on two train accidents in the space of three months, he incurred the wrath of the director of the railways at the time. The latter, “to take revenge”, fired his wife who worked in this company and took away his official accommodation from his father-in-law, an executive in the same company, suspecting them of having passed the information on to him.
Babacar Ndiaye is also the fierce trade unionist defender of the corporation, a costume he had worn since 1994 alongside his comrade and friend, the late Alpha Sall, then general secretary of SYNPICS, the trade union of professionals. information and communication of Senegal.
Among the achievements to which he contributed, he noted the protection of numerous journalists from the arbitrariness of their employers, but also and above all the construction of the Press House. A building whose model was chosen by Alpha Sall and which was approved by President Abdoulaye Wade, despite the reluctance of some of his close collaborators, who felt that it would cost too much.
Today, even if he is not ashamed of the fact that this building bears the name of the great journalist Babacar Touré instead of Alpha Sall, he thinks that it is not too late to pay a well-deserved tribute. to ”this other standard-bearer of the press”, who defended his colleagues across borders, notably in Mali.
Admitting a “real evolution” in the practice of the journalistic profession in Senegal, he believes that “there are still many things to do and perfect, so that the journalist is irreproachable”.
He says he is “scandalized” by the content of certain media and the behavior of certain journalists, and advises his young colleagues to “agree with the facts and not face the facts”.
As an experienced man, the dean warns them against the temptation to “take their heads”, to “believe themselves superior to others”, or even to “cast shame on honest people”.
Babacar Ndiaye also does not fail to plead with the highest authorities so that beyond its status as a national company, his “house of the heart”, the APS, benefits from the support that “rightfully belongs to it”. .
ADI/ASB/ABB/OID
