Nigeria, We Hail Thee?

 By Obi Nwakanma

There was a tradition recorded by the Roman historians, Suetonius and Tacitus, of the Naumachia, the spectacular, very large scale, gladiatorial public entertainment, which the Romans themselves also called Navalia Proelia because it was held at sea, or large lakes, or flooded arenas. 

Those who were rounded up, or selected to these Naumacharii, normally prisoners of war or state captives already condemned to die, were expected to enact naval battles before the emperor and fight to the death. And on this one occasion, those prisoners already condemned to fight to death, stood before the disfigured and lame emperor, Claudius, and declared, “Ave, Imperator! Morituri te Salutamus!” (“Hail Emperor! We who are about to die salute you!” Neither Suetonius nor Tacitus remarked at any hint of, or intention for irony in making that salute by these tragically fated fighters.

Lessons From Julius Nwalimu Nyerere

By Banji Ojewale 

Gbolabo Ogunsanwo, Nigeria’s most captivating  columnist of the 1970s who rewrote history as editor of Sunday Times of that era, once returned from Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania and thrilled his compatriots with an account of the stoic exploits of this illustrious African leader. Just like his staid gait, Ogunsanwo said, Nyerere had no airs about him to suggest he was the president of Tanzania.

*Nyerere

This picture of an abstemious statesman sharply contradicted the Nigerian paradigm. Here, our leaders, even at the local government scene, would loot the public till to build personal empires, to  satisfy their palatial palate. The predilection of our leaders for financial rape has always been there and Ogunsanwo was among a small circle of ethical journalists who railed against this evil.

So the Tanzania experience had to excite this colourful columnist. Through his celebrated style of writing that nettled bad leaders and won applause from the public, Ogunsanwo said that if he placed the lifestyle of Nyerere side-by-side with what we had in Nigeria, the weight of the East African leader wouldn’t surpass the wealth of a level 9 officer in the Nigerian Civil Service. A shocked Ogunsanwo said something to the effect that the home of Nyerere had uninspiring furniture compared to what a middle level civil servant in Nigeria might offer. Nyerere’s was a study in Spartan decor.

Years later in 1999 when the beloved Tanzania leader died at 77, the New York Times correspondent, Michael Kaufman, wrote what has gone into the books as a most charitable essay by a Western reporter on an African president who mercilessly chided capitalism as a curse on humanity, thus confirming Ogunsanwo’s point. He admitted Nyerere’s “habits of modesty and ethics.”