Opinion | SAM SARR OF DELUSION: A COLONEL WITHOUT
CREDIBILITY, A DIPLOMAT WITHOUT DIGNITY, AND A WRITER
WITHOUT WISDOM
By Kebeli Demba Nyima, Atlanta, GA
There are bad articles, worse rebuttals, and then there is what Mr. Samsudeen Sarr
recently produced. Christopher Hitchens might’ve called it “a dog’s dinner laid out
on the carpet of civil discourse.” One does not often encounter a piece so bereft of
truth, so starved of self-awareness, and so thickly slathered in egotistical delusion
that it reads less like a rebuttal and more like a soliloquy from a retired bureaucrat
performing to an empty theatre. In fact, to call Sam Sarr’s response a rebuttal is to
insult the very idea of written argument. What he has submitted to the public
domain is not an essay; it is a literary miscarriage, the ramblings of a man drunk on
the cheap liquor of his own pomposity. It is not satire, for it has no irony; not
polemic, for it has no spine; not criticism, for it lacks both precision and evidence.
It is, in short, a chaotic chorus of rhetorical false notes, lacking even the charm of
amateurism.
But let us begin not with invective but with instruction. Before one sharpens the
knife of critique, it is only fair to state what the patient ought to have been.
Whether one is penning a scholarly treatise for The Oxford Review, a philosophical
dialogue for The Times Literary Supplement, or even a scathing tabloid column for
The Daily Express, all writing — whether academic, fictional, polemical or
satirical — must honour the same foundational commandments. These are not the
whims of ivory tower pedants; they are the ancient rites of literary civilisation.
First, coherence. A sentence must contain a subject, a verb, and an idea. These are
not suggestions; they are prerequisites. A writer who abandons them has not
written a paragraph, but committed a grammatical hit-and-run.
Second, structure. An argument is not a grocery list of grievances. It is a
deliberate staircase of thought, each step bearing weight, leading somewhere.
Whether one is defending Darwin, denouncing imperialism, or eulogising a friend,
the architecture of thought must be evident.
Third, tone. A writer must know whether he is in a court, a pub, or a theatre and
adjust his voice accordingly. To mistake sarcasm for wit, or rage for rhetoric, is to
mistake the tantrum of a child for the thunder of Cicero.
Fourth, evidence. An accusation without proof is not heroism. It is cowardice. It is
gossip. It is the whispered bile of men huddled in the corners of second-rate
taverns off King’s Cross, where failed clerks and armchair revolutionaries nurse
warm beer and colder reputations.
Fifth, and above all: language. Style matters. A good essay carries rhythm; it
respects the music of the sentence. It does not stumble drunk through clauses, nor
slap adjectives across nouns like wet paint on a crumbling wall. The best
prose—yes, even in satire—has restraint, elegance, and bite.
By these standards—and they are universal, whether one writes from a study in
Cambridge or a booth in the Dog and Trumpet Inn—Sam Sarr’s essay is not a
rebuttal. It is a wreckage. A textual catastrophe. It does not advance argument; it
collapses under its own smug weight. One could find more logic in the footnotes of
a discarded Victorian pamphlet than in his entire screed.
To write is to think. To publish is to take responsibility for that thinking. Mr. Sarr,
alas, has done neither. He has instead hurled syntax at the page like a schoolboy
flinging porridge—hoping it sticks, unaware that it stinks.
Now to the specific charges he levelled—and the rebuttals he so richly deserves.
Let us begin with the lowest-hanging fruit—the claim that my article was "AI-
generated," supposedly confirmed by his omniscient nephew studying at the
University of Maryland. One might forgive such a comically ill-informed assertion
from a village elder misled by WhatsApp forwards, but not from a former
lieutenant colonel. The idea that AI usage automatically equates to fraud is not
only primitive, it is intellectually dishonest. As someone with a graduate degree in
Information Technology, I understand both the architecture and ethical application
of artificial intelligence. Sam, on the other hand, cannot tell the difference between
a tool and a ghostwriter. AI is not autopilot; it is augmentation. It cannot replicate
insight, experience, scholarly tone, or contextual nuance—which are all found, in
abundance, in my original article. If your nephew’s definition of AI-generation is a
well-written sentence, then perhaps your family needs less screen time and more
scholarly reading. Instead of parroting digital hearsay, Mr. Sarr would do well to
invest in understanding what he criticizes. After all, it is not technology that
offends him, but the intellectual insecurity it exposes.
From digital ignorance, we move swiftly into academic fabrication. Mr. Sarr
claims he graduated from Dekalb College in Atlanta, Georgia in 1985—a claim as
verifiable as a unicorn sighting. Having scoured alumni directories, educational
registries, and faculty logs, I found no trace—no citation, no archived newsletter,
not even a yearbook nod—that links him to this institution. And unlike the
academic records of Gambian institutions, those of U.S. colleges are centralized,
digitized, and easily searchable. Any journalist worth their salt knows that a
credible educational background leaves a digital footprint, especially in the United
States where FERPA-compliant verification systems exist across the higher
education landscape. So where, Sam, is the degree? What was the major? Who
were your professors? What yearbook page celebrates your academic triumph?
None of this exists because the story is, in all probability, invented. The tragedy is
not just that he lied, but that he thought the lie would go unchallenged. In a world
where truth is but a few clicks away, Mr. Sarr opted to die on the hill of his own
imagination.
Sarr then pivots to what he imagines is a masterstroke of deduction: that I was sent,
presumably by Alagie Yorro Jallow, to defend him in some tribal, familial, or
ideological mission. The idea is as absurd as it is revealing. Absurd, because it
reduces argument to allegiance as though I, a scholar with multiple earned degrees,
international credentials, and an independent publishing record, must be a foot
soldier in someone else's army. Revealing, because it betrays Sarr’s own
intellectual poverty; he cannot conceive of a world in which people write for
principle rather than payroll.
I have no need to “defend” Mr. Jallow, nor have I ever received instruction or
permission to critique Mr. Sarr. I write because I read. I critique because I care
about standards. I expose, not because I am summoned, but because I am incensed.
There is no tribal network behind my paragraphs, no political machine beneath my
metaphors. There is only the pen, the brain, and the oath every serious writer
takes—to name foolishness where he finds it, and to spare no fig leaf when the
emperor is naked.
I have critiqued Mr. Sarr before. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. Long before
this particular episode, I have published essays in Kairo News, The Voice, and
Concern TV The Gambia dissecting his bombast and exposing his inconsistencies.
Some of those links still live (IN THE SAM SARR VS. GAF, THE VERDICT IS OUT –
Gambia).Others have expired with the fickle memory of web servers. But hard
copies remain, and the editors who published them will stand as witnesses if need
be.
If Sarr were truly informed, he’d know this. If he had done even the barest
minimum of research, he’d realise that my prose precedes Jallow. That my
critiques precede his conspiracy. That my voice does not echo Yorro, it precedes
him.
Then there is his libellous accusation that Alagie Yorro Jallow plagiarised his
credentials, forged affiliations, and stole content to pad his résumé. A serious
charge, were it supported by evidence. But this is Sarr’s signature move: to level
accusations without burdening himself with proof. In any credible system of
intellectual inquiry—be it the courts of Athens or the chambers of
Westminster—such an unsubstantiated claim would collapse under cross-
examination. In the tradition of Greek philosophical ethics, as argued by Isocrates
and taught by Socrates, it is not enough to accuse; one must demonstrate.
Assertions are not arguments. Rumours are not verdicts. Even the Sophists, for all
their rhetorical vices, knew better than to fling such slanders without corroboration.
To accuse someone of forging credentials without supplying even a footnote or
testimony is not just reckless—it is defamatory. It is the textual equivalent of arson.
If Sarr believes that a Google search and a sneer make for evidence, he has
mistaken internet gossip for jurisprudence. His writing does not seek truth; it seeks
scandal. It does not expose liars; it manufactures victims. And in doing so, it says
more about the author than the accused.
Alagie Yorro Jallow has, over the course of his career, published under his real
name, obtained recognisable fellowships, and appeared in public academic forums.
His affiliations with respected institutions, including the Harvard Kennedy School,
are documented, verifiable, and, unlike Sarr’s screeds, do not evaporate under
scrutiny. I have personally reviewed his published empirical research in several
high-impact academic journals, and not to mention the hundreds of articles Jallow
has written across different local papers year in and year out without ever charging
a penny. Jallow is to the publishing industry what a lighthouse is to mariners:
steady, principled, and impossible to ignore even in the fog of mediocrity. His
affiliations with respected institutions, including the Harvard Kennedy School, are
documented, verifiable, and, unlike Sarr’s screeds, do not evaporate under scrutiny.
Anyone with a browser and a conscience can find them. That Sarr cannot is not
proof of Jallow’s fraudulence, but of his own failure.
More importantly, in the classical tradition of philosophical dispute, such an
accusation must bear the weight of logos, ethos, and pathos—reason, character, and
persuasion. To levy an allegation as serious as credential forgery without a shred of
verifiable documentation is to reject the very foundation of ethical inquiry. As
Aristotle would say, the deliberate failure to differentiate between what is probable
and what is proven is the domain not of philosophers, but of demagogues.
Sarr, in this moment, does not behave as a critic. He postures as a prosecutor in a
court he cannot convene. Were this a tribunal in Athens, Socrates himself would
have asked: where is the testimony, where is the material proof, and what logos
supports this claim? In Westminster, such slander would meet the gavel of libel
law. In a peer-reviewed forum, it would be returned unopened.
One suspects that had Mr. Sarr ever sat through a proper lecture on literary
criticism, perhaps under the guidance of a professor of English literature or a
philosopher versed in moral epistemology, he might have understood that criticism
is not the same as slander, and scepticism is not licence for libel. Literary criticism,
at its best, is an act of moral clarification, not an exercise in public character
assassination. Plato would have called his method dialectical cowardice. Orwell
would have called it cheap. And Virginia Woolf, had she encountered such prose,
might have paused her sentence, blinked once, and poured herself another brandy
in dismay.
This, in the end, is the tragedy of Sam Sarr—not that he lacks learning, but that he
refuses instruction. He wanders the forum with the posture of a philosopher but the
weapons of a heckler. He imagines himself a Socratic gadfly when he more closely
resembles a disgruntled town crier in a broken hat, railing at the skies from an
empty street.
There is no shame in not being a scholar. There is only shame in faking it. He
should cease waging fights against minds whose altitude he cannot scale. One
cannot box with thought. One cannot debate with echoes. His pen, if it is to be used
at all, ought to be dipped in humility, not envy.
And let us spare a brief moment of empathy for those around him—his peers, his
relatives, his unfortunate readers. How do they endure the avalanche of errors, the
torrents of tantrums? How many polite silences have concealed private
embarrassment? For surely, even among his friends, there must be those who wish
he would simply write less and read more. There must be some who look at his
keyboard and wonder—not when he will strike it again, but when he will stop.
He has confused assertion for articulation, fury for fluency. And for all his sound
and fury, he signifies—nothing.
Lastly, let us consider the self-centered melodrama of a man who has lived past
sixty yet writes with the tone of a sulking adolescent. His rhetorical style resembles
that of a character in a poorly written Nollywood courtroom drama—grandiose,
inaccurate, and utterly detached from reason. What kind of intellectual, if one can
use the term loosely, spends his paragraphs posturing rather than persuading? Mr.
Sarr writes not to inform, but to inflate. He views every disagreement as betrayal,
every critique as blasphemy, and every critic as an enemy agent. This is not the
behavior of a statesman; it is the tantrum of a man who mistakes memory for merit.
His prose reads like a diary entry from a narcissist convinced that the world is
conspiring to forget him. Rather than engage ideas, he indulges in character
theatre, performing for an audience that exists only in his mind. The longer he
speaks, the clearer it becomes: Sam Sarr is not debating. He is mourning his own
irrelevance.
Final Thought
Sam Sarr is a colonel without credibility, a diplomat without dignity, and a writer
without wisdom. The man cannot write. Worse still, he does not know he cannot
write. Like a pianist with no fingers, he pounds the rhetorical keys and wonders
why the result is not music.
Were this drivel submitted to Charles Kingsley or Matthew Arnold, it would return
soaked in red ink and pity. Had it landed at The Spectator or Punch, it would have
been used to mop the inkwells. If it had reached the desk of Thackeray, he would
have parodied it; Ruskin would have rebuked it. There is not a single editor from
the golden age of English prose who would have printed Sam Sarr’s rejoinder
without shame—or satire.
And yet, in today’s Gambia, where journalism has been reduced to a hungry hustle
where most so-called columnists possess little education beyond the school-leaving
certificate, and many are poor, partisan, and dying for proximity to power, Sarr’s
screed would be readily mistaken for statesmanship. Among the half-literate
blogmen of the moment, his verbosity passes for valour, his confusion for
complexity, and his conspiracy for commentary.
Grammar and Rhetorical Breakdown of Sam Sarr’s Rebuttal
Opening Statement:
"Well, well, well… look who decided to crawl out of obscurity to defend the
'Harvard-educated intellectual'—and I use that term with the loosest stretch of
imagination—Alagie Yorro Jallow."
This opening line dribbles into view like a child’s imitation of debate. “Well, well,
well” is the linguistic equivalent of knocking thrice on your own coffin. “Crawl out
of obscurity” is so exhausted a phrase it ought to be put to rest beside “grasping at
straws” and “pot calling kettle black.” The “loosest stretch of imagination” is a
redundancy—a tautological circus trick performed without flair. And those em-
dashes! Abused again, scattered like rifle shots in a war against logic.
Violations:
Redundant phrasing
Misused em-dash (again)
Tired clichés and lack of rhetorical sophistication
Correction (Literary Scathing): “One is not surprised to find you championing
Mr. Jallow—though one might wish you had arrived armed with something
sturdier than clichés, bravado, and broken grammar.”
"Your write-up is a dazzling cocktail of fiction, desperation, and laughable
sycophancy, served up with all the finesse of a clumsy circus act."
A cocktail, served with circus acts? Mixed metaphor is the poor man’s poetry, and
here we have a veritable soup of it. Fiction and desperation do not pair well in a
glass, and “laughable sycophancy” is an accusation better proven than presumed.
The whole construction reads like the work of a man leafing through a thesaurus
while riding a unicycle over the ruins of coherence. It sounds less like a sentence
and more like something overheard in the smoky backroom of the Dog & Boar in
Soho.
Violations:
Conflated and clashing metaphors
Overstuffed abstract nouns
Pretentious phrasing without supporting logic
Correction: “Your article is an uncooked stew of falsehoods, hyperbole, and
sycophantic bravado—disguised, unsuccessfully, as criticism.”
"First things first: while you strut around pretending to possess encyclopedic
knowledge about me…"
“First things first” belongs to grocery lists, not rhetorical engagement. “Strut
around” is a phrase fit for gossip rags and political cartoons, not rebuttal.
“Encyclopedic knowledge” is not only unqualified—it is vaguely vainglorious.
This sentence is a verbal puff of smoke with no fire beneath it. It sounds as though
dictated between mouthfuls of pickled herring at a Bloomsbury brasserie.
Violations:
Colloquial intro in a informal/formal setting
Verb-noun mismatches
Inflated tone with no substance
Correction: “You presume, erroneously, to lecture others on my biography—a
presumption as unsupported as it is self-serving.”
"I must confess—I had never heard of you until your delusions were splattered
across my screen."
“Splattered” is a verb better left to ketchup or misfired paintball. The sentence
lacks sophistication, and “I must confess” is a rhetorical sigh, not a claim. A
scholar rebuts with citation, not confession. It reeks of something penned hastily in
a King’s Cross public house, before last orders.
Violations:
Vulgar verb usage
Self-referential tone
Correction: “I had not encountered your name in serious circles prior to this
spectacle, and I fear that acquaintance has not improved opinion.”
"A ghostwriter? A figment of someone's inflated ego? A chatbot on steroids?"
This is not an argument. This is a Twitter thread. Each phrase lacks a verb; each is
a stunted stump where a sentence once might have grown. “Chatbot on steroids” is
a phrase so overused it now belongs to the graveyard of dying tech analogies. It
reads like a pub quiz team brainstorming insults after three rounds of gin.
Violations:
Fragmented rhetoric
Slang and informal constructs
Incomplete clause structures
Correction: “One wonders whether you are a silent hand behind borrowed words,
a construct of borrowed bluster, or simply a mimic programmed for provocation.”
"You boldly proclaimed I only had an O-level certificate before joining the army.
Oh, how original."
No citation. No evidence. No structure. “Boldly proclaimed” is empty flourish.
“Oh, how original” is the sneer of a schoolboy, not the argument of a gentleman.
Were this line uttered in a Cambridge common room, it would be followed swiftly
by the gentle closing of doors to future conversation.
Violations:
No punctuation after “proclaimed”
Weak sarcasm without proof
Juvenile tone
Correction: “If your claim regarding my academic record is based on more than
tavern talk, I suggest you provide evidence. Otherwise, your originality is as
shallow as your grammar.”
Next time, Colonel, less caffeine, less cigarette and more citations.
Please see one of my previous articles about Sam Sarr: IN THE SAM SARR
VS. GAF, THE VERDICT IS OUT – Gambia