There are one or two things this country can teach others, one of them is the art of writing obituaries. One suspects that the reason why some of our newspapers still manage to break even is because of the great amount of revenue they derive from obituaries. It is not unusual for about one quarter of the volume of an average daily to be constituted of obituaries and in in memorial alone. One possible explanation for this, it has been argued, is that Nigerians value their dead greatly. And there is a saying amongst us that you do not say evil things against the dead. This is obviously the philosophy behind the large dose of encomiums with which our dead are bestowed. From evidences of these obituaries and in memorial, every dead Nigerian must have been something of a saint while alive. This would explain why the death of most Nigerians is attributed to the evil Machinations of the wicked. Only very few people in our country die natural death, and even when they do, the obituaries, etc always give the impression that such deaths constitute the saddest loss to befall the deceased family. And that is why writers of these obituaries and their allied advertisements are experts on ‘mortuary stylistics’. This ‘mortuary stylistics’ the study in the art of eulogizing the dead and making their loss sound so heart breaking, is one of the commodities we can export to other countries.
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