The controversy surrounding Mamadou Diop Decroix's statement is escalating. Following the harsh criticism from Dr. Abdourahmane Ba, an expert in Evidence, Management and Development Strategy on Seneweb, it is now Cheikh Ibrahima Niang, head of the Ànd-Jëf North America federation, who has stepped forward to defend the intellectual and, according to him, set the record straight.

"A blatant falsehood that ruins the entire development"

In a lengthy contribution, Cheikh Ibrahima Niang directly attacks Dr. Ba's thesis that Mamadou Diop Decroix had "survived all regimes, always quick to defend the one who reigns, rarely the one who reforms".

"Your learned reply to Mamadou Diop should have taken the precaution that is taught to every academic and, even more so, to an expert in Evidence: 'to seek the truth in the facts'. You failed to do so and this has totally ruined the credibility of your contribution," Cheikh Ibrahima Niang attacks from the outset.

He continues with specific facts: “From the age of 18, Decroix openly opposed Senghor for 12 years and Diouf for 20 years. He then opposed Sall during the latter's 12 years as head of state. Adding this up obviously amounts to 44 years of struggle in the opposition, during which Decroix was expelled from university and forcibly conscripted into the army, arrested about ten times, and spent time in prison or hospitals, the most recent of which was under Macky Sall's regime.”

According to him, "a few short minutes of searching on Google would have saved the Doctor, an expert in Evidence, from this blatant falsehood that completely ruins the rest of his argument."

"What is recycled fear, moral anesthesia?"

Sheikh Ibrahima Niang also criticizes Dr. Ba's style, which he describes as "logorrhea." "Dr. Ba considers Mr. Diop Decroix's call for peace and stability as 'a masterpiece of recycled fear, a sermon to keep the people under moral anesthesia, while the PASTEF government learns to breathe in confusion.' Try to make sense of this logorrhea. What is 'recycled fear'? What is 'moral anesthesia'? 'Breathing in confusion'? The Doctor in question doesn't tell us," he quips.

He criticizes Dr. Ba for making numerous unsubstantiated claims: "Mamadou Diop Decroix's text doesn't analyze," he says. "It warns, it threatens, it instills guilt. It addresses a mature nation as if it were a restless herd, pointing out invisible enemies. However, none of these characterizations is supported by even the slightest evidence. It's all assertions and declamation."

"Is the idea of Senegal being in debt just a fantasy?"

Sheikh Ibrahima Niang also disputes the accusation that Mamadou Diop's Senegal is a fantasy rather than a reality. "Is the debt-ridden Senegal that Decroix talks about a fantasy? Are the Senegal-IMF relations a fantasy when the country will soon have to start repaying more than 15 billion CFA francs a day? Is the security threat a fantasy while jihadists in Mali are attacking right up to our borders?" he asks.

He defends Decroix's position on the expression of divergences within power: "When Mamadou Diop finds the normal and beneficial expression of differences within power for a fruitful transcendence at the expense of hypocritical silence and dissimulation, the expert in Evidence informs us that Diop Decroix does not want a Senegal that thinks, but a Senegal that contemplates."

For Cheikh Ibrahima Niang, "debating is expressing difference, revealing contradictions, and that is precisely what life is. Contradiction is the driving force of life. This is what captures Mamadou Diop's attention when he criticizes hypocrisy and dissimulation."

The head of Ànd-Jëf also questions the claim that it is the people who oppose the Diomaye-Sonko duo. "In Senegal, as far as I know, the people express themselves through elections. In the last two elections of 2024, the duo won brilliantly. First round in the presidential election and 130 out of 165 seats in the legislative elections. So why bring up value judgments in a debate of this nature instead of the obvious facts, Mr. Expert in Obviousness?" he asks.

A call for concrete analysis and for the people to choose their side

In conclusion, Cheikh Ibrahima Niang calls for greater intellectual rigor: “The Senegal of the educated must also be more focused on the concrete analysis of concrete situations. This is what allows for the emergence of fruitful debates because they are correlated to the conditions of our country's development. But this also requires a cognitive and ideological adjustment that breaks free from the constraints in which the neo-colonial school system sought to confine us.”

He concludes with a direct question: "Isn't it, above all, this adjustment that could open the doors for the intellectual to make a conscious choice of siding with the people against the corrupt oligarchy?"