ABUJA (Sundiata Post) After he left office in 1985, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, former President of Tanzania, had no home to pack to. Since he was always traveling around on advocacy, he felt no need for a house.
When it was time to have a house, he applied to a mortgage bank in Dar es Salam for loan but was turned down because he had no collateral.
He had to travel back to his village in Butiama, in northern Tanzania to be staying in the old family home. Earlier, he had refused proposals for special attention for his hometown and district by government planners saying it amounted to “favouritism”.
He was personally maintaining where his parents were buried and when the government saw where he was staying as former president, they, alongside the military he strived to professionalise, contributed money to build him a befitting house in his hometown.
And you know what? He spent just two weeks there before dying of leukemia and cancer on October 14, 1999.
He hated being called “His Excellency” or “Mr. President”. Rather, he preferred being called “Mzee”, the Swahili word for ‘old man’.
Nyerere was an African. Not a European.
“INTEGRITY IS NEVER MOUTHED OR PREACHED; IT IS LIVED AND EXHIBITED”- Samuel Ajayi, 2018.
Note: Perhaps, the latest beneficiary of a N45.5m nomination form gift (against the Electoral Act of 2010) and his supporters are aware of this…
Source: Facebook
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