Yankuba Darboe, UDP candidate for BAC Chairmanship
By: Badara Pullo
I have known Yanks all my life. I hereby endorse him for chairmanship of Brikama Area Council. But wait! To be clear, I do not endorse him because I know him. I have in the past rejected many others I know better. I am not partisan either. I endorse Yanks for who he is, what he stands for and what he is capable of. He will make a great chairman if elected.
Yanks and I both hail from Kafuta. Growing up, he was the big brother who looked out for us. Sulayman Van Sanyang, Kombo SILLAH Jack Joje, Pa DARBOE, Lie Touray, and all the other boys from Ba-Santo can attest to that. Back in the day, we would spend countless hours hunting, picking wild fruits and looking after our cattle in the swamps of “Atuyaaf” and “Sutubatoo” on the outskirts of our hometown of Kafuta.
Yanks was the bar for me. He was my mentor and big brother. I wanted to be like him – rode on his citations all the way to SOS Hermann Gmeiner High School. Yanks has always been connected to his village. Even when he left for the United Kingdom in 2000, he made sure that he was always in tune with what was going on in Kafuta—supporting, cheering on, helping the community, and of course, like me, creating trouble where necessary. 😂.
We have initiated and continue to lead numerous community self-help projects, from farming to child development to sports to provision of social amenities. Yanks has always had our back. On numerous occasions, Yanks sent money for summer study sessions. From his personal funds, he contributed more than two hundred thousand 200000 dalasis toward the construction of the Kafuta Market. He is a chief patron of our library initiative, paying school fees for many underprivileged children from our area.
Yanks has always been generous with his time and resources and has always championed the cause of the underprivileged and marginalised. For example, over the years, Yanks’ home in the UK has been a place of refuge and shelter to international students and migrants. As a lawyer, he has put his skills in law to good use, helping countless of these migrants and others to regularise their status in UK, allowing them to live in dignity while supporting respective families back home.
In 2016, during an international summit we organised in Leicester—bringing together people from all over the world, Yanks volunteered his time, provided his house and car to support the delegates. Yanks is a people’s person, he is committed to the Gambian cause—put simply, he loves his people.
I can go on and on and on.
Yanks is outspoken and truthful. He is fair-minded and has a great sense of truth, and justice. He is strong and compassionate. He is a democrat through and through, and has the acumen, grace, empathy, brilliance, honesty, intellectual capacity, network, integrity, love, passion to deliver the West Coast Region from the current bad state of affairs.
Yanks got the ideas to transform our beautiful region we all call home.
To my people of the West Coast, it is A Time for Choosing and I’m imploring every single one of you to choose my dearest brother and friend, Yanks, to lead our region out of the glum! Yanks is me.
YANKS for BAC
