Tribute to the late Dean Bara Diouf, 89 years old, emblematic Director of APS and the daily newspaper Le Soleil and Socialist MP (By Ousseynou Nar Gueye)

From September 6, 2016 to September 6, 2026. It has been 10 years, to the day, since the baobab Bara Diouf disappeared, at 89 years old.

First Senegalese Director of the APS (Senegalese Press Agency). Iconic head of the government daily newspaper "Le Soleil" and, as such, member of the central committee of the Senegalese Socialist Party and deputy representing the PS.

A man of great culture and eruptive, volcanic erudition. A man with a heart as vast as the sky and immense intellectual generosity, a teacher by example. A man of all pleasures, who practiced his spirituality through the priesthood of work, like a Baay Faal. Living life to the fullest. A man of interfaith dialogue and a man of existential doubt, the kind I admire and who shares my own, even though he was brimming with certainties about everything and anything.

Between 2000 and 2002, he honored me by writing a weekly column in my daily newspaper, Tract. He dictated this editorial to our secretary on the fly and continued writing it until the newspaper closed for economic reasons, due to its publisher, the Com7 press group, then headed by Yakham Codou Ndènè Mbaye. Yakham was my editor-in-chief when I was the publisher of Tract, before Gilles Eric Foadey became my editor-in-chief and then succeeded me after my resignation to work as a Project Director at Reflex SA, a subsidiary of Plastiques et Élastomères du Sénégal (PES), founded by the late Philippe Norgaard, who passed away far too soon at the age of 42.

Uncle Bara did me the honor of coming and staying for a long time at the celebration of my previous marriage, from which M.-AGG, the eldest of my four children, was born.

May you rest in eternal peace, Dean Bara. And loving thoughts to your sweet and lively widow, Fatim, and to your children, including your youngest, Fatou Bara, a child of love in her old age and your guiding light, who has grown so much since then, indeed. May Allah, the Most Merciful, continue to place His protective hand upon all those you left behind, in whose hearts you continue to live on forever, Bara.

KING KONG aka 𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗞oach 𝗢usseynou 𝗡ar 𝗚ueye

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* Director of Axes et Cibles Com (www.axes-cibles-com.sn)

* Publishing Director of NATIONS HEBDO (www.nations-sn.com)