News of the death of Sidiq Asemota has struck me with a peculiar sadness, the kind that comes when a steady and highly professional journalist passes, leaving behind a legacy that most outside the newsroom may never fully grasp.

In a Gambian media landscape often noisy with personalities and politics, Sidiq was the rare figure who let his work speak. He was the steady, unflappable court reporter whose byline became a mark of reliability for more than three decades. May his soul rest in eternal peace.

When The Daily Observer was launched in 1992 under the stewardship of the Liberian journalist Kenneth Y. Best, the paper was more than just a new title on the streets of Banjul. It was an audacious experiment in modern, independent West African journalism.

At its birth, the newsroom was a cosmopolitan hub; there was a small but formidable cadre of foreign journalists, Nigerians, Sierra Leoneans, Liberians, and Ghanaians, who helped lay its foundations.
Among them were Justice Fofana, Sule Musa, Mercy Eze, Paschal Eze, Eric Oriji, Sheikh Kanuteh, Musa Sherif, and the man we mourn today, Sidiq Asemota. Their bylines gave early Observer front pages their texture, rigour, and cosmopolitan flavour.

Unlike many of his colleagues who would later return home or be deported during turbulent political seasons, Sidiq made The Gambia his permanent home. He married, built a life in Brikama, and became a Gambian in spirit and in practice.

Over the decades he worked in almost every newsroom of note: The Daily Observer, The Point, The Independent, The Standard, The Nation, Freedom Newspaper. Wherever he went, editors knew one thing; a Sidiq Asemota court report was solid, accurate, and unassailable. There was hardly an editor in The Gambia who would dare decline a Sidiq filing; his copy was clean, his facts airtight, his language crisp.

A former colleague once described him as “a man who understood the sanctity of the record; humble, honest, deeply respectful, yet fearless when the truth demanded it.” He was never flamboyant, never hungry for celebrity; he belonged to the older school of reporters who believed the story, not the storyteller, should take the limelight.

To understand Sidiq Asemota’s craft is to remember what Fleet Street veterans, those great British chroniclers who defined the modern press, believed about good reporting. They taught that a great reporter must combine three things: relentless accuracy, quiet courage, and a craftsman’s ear for the human detail that makes a story live.

Reporters like Harold Evans’s protégés at The Sunday Times or The Guardian’s Peter Preston generation were not stenographers; they were patient courtroom listeners, scrupulous with fact, and alive to the human drama of justice.

Sidiq belonged to that same fraternity, though he worked far from Fleet Street’s cobbled alleys. He had Evans’s insistence on precision, James Cameron’s humane eye, and Clare Hollingworth’s calm courage in moments when Gambian courtrooms turned tense under political pressure.

He understood that the law is not only statutes and rulings; it is also the silent lives affected by verdicts. His reports gave voice to the voiceless, translating legal jargon into plain English without losing nuance, an art most journalists never master.

Beyond his byline, Sidiq was a newsroom gentleman. Younger reporters remember how he would quietly slide over a note about court procedure, explain a legal term, or correct an error without condescension. He carried no air of superiority, though his experience dwarfed many around him. His humility was his quiet power. In a profession often tempted by ego, Sidiq remained steady, grounded, and unpretentious.

If Gambian court reporting today is taken seriously, if it has matured from gossip to careful legal journalism, it owes much to pioneers like Sidiq. He bridged the early Observer tradition of robust, fact-heavy reporting with the digital age’s demand for speed, never compromising accuracy for clicks. He worked under censorship, political intimidation, and the volatile media climate of three Gambian regimes, yet he remained undeterred.

For me, as a Gambian writer and observer of the media’s evolution, Sidiq Asemota embodied the very ideal of the reporter’s craft: disciplined, accurate, humane, and courageous without theatrics. He showed that one could build an entire career on integrity rather than notoriety and that the work, done well and done honestly, is its own monument.

The passing of men like Sidiq always echoes beyond one newsroom. In Victorian England, when the likes of William Howard Russell of The Times or Henry Mayhew walked into courtrooms and slums with notebook in hand, journalism was an act of moral witness.

The great Greek chroniclers before them, men like Thucydides who recorded the Peloponnesian War with precision and an eye for power and justice, built the very idea of public record that we inherit today. When those traditions waned, the press became more shallow, chasing sensation over substance.

The death of journalists who carried that lineage creates a vacuum that is hard to fill. In The Gambia we have watched that slow erosion. With the loss of Pa Nderry Mbai of Freedom Newspaper, Modou Sanyang of The Point, Momodou Trawally of Gambia Daily, and Abdoulie Dibba of Foroyaa Newspaper, one by one the torchbearers have left us. Sidiq Asemota was the last of that generation of fearless, disciplined reporters who believed journalism was a civic duty first and a career second. Now he too is gone, and The Gambia’s newsroom feels emptier.

Sidiq lived within his means until his last day on earth. The Stoics of ancient Greece taught that modesty in living was the highest form of wisdom, and Sidiq embodied that ethic in his daily life. I remember in the late 2000s seeing him pedalling his bicycle from Brikama towards Bakau while I was returning from lectures at The Gambia College.

I asked the driver to stop, invited him in, and we lifted his bicycle onto the top of the van. Inside, we shared a lively chat and laughter throughout the ride. That moment has stayed with me as a portrait of his humility and commitment. He could have chosen easier paths, but he clung to his craft with quiet dignity.

Like Nderry, Modou Sanyang, and Abdoulie Dibba, he could not be bought or bullied. Those reporters are gone, but their bylines remain untarnished as lasting testimonies of their service to truth.

I wish to send my deepest condolences to his family in The Gambia and in Nigeria, and particularly to his longtime editor and friend Sheriff Bojang Snr of The Standard newspaper, the paper where Sidiq last worked before he bid us his final goodbye. Asemota and Sheriff shared a bond of mutual professional respect because Sheriff, unlike many editors, truly understood what good reportage looks like.

Sheriff Bojang Snr is himself one of the finest editors this country has produced, a ruthless and uncompromising craftsman when it comes to words, but also a generous mentor who has recruited and trained countless reporters. In the darkest days of the APRC regime, when fear silenced many, Sheriff wrote essays and opinion pieces that cut through the fog of propaganda with fearless clarity and literary elegance. He stood firm for the dignity of the press, for truth-telling under pressure, and for the idea that journalism, though dangerous, is a public trust. Sidiq thrived under such an editor because both men valued the same thing: honesty in reporting and courage in the face of power.

But sending condolences alone is not enough. If The Gambia is to show true respect for this man, our media fraternity, the Gambia Press Union, the wider public, and even the Gambian state itself should come together to honour his memory in a practical way. The creation of a trust fund or scholarship in his name that would support his children and assist his family would be a worthy legacy.

This would ensure that his years of service to truth and public record are not answered only with social media posts and whispered prayers. It would tell every young reporter that a nation which benefits from honest journalism knows how to care for those who gave their lives to it.

Fleet Street would have saluted him. The Gambia must now do the same, not with mere words but with action worthy of the man.

By Kebeli Demba Nyima