BY EMAMEH GABRIEL
I have always believed that the best stories are not the ones you go looking for. They are the ones that find you, often when you least expect them, in the gaps between the things you came to do. I was in Victoria Falls recently for the ITU Regional Development Forum, and if I am being honest, I went there expecting to write about technology and regional cooperation, not about the weight of silence.
But the falls themselves were spectacular. You stand at the edge, feel the mist on your skin, hear that low, unceasing thunder that seems to come from somewhere deep beneath the earth, and you understand why people travel from everywhere just to stand where you are standing. For a moment, the world you left behind feels very far away.
And then you come back inside, and the world finds you again.
It happened in the hotel lobby, during one of those long gaps between sessions. A Zimbabwean journalist sat down next to me. We exchanged pleasantries. She asked where I was from. When I said Nigeria, her face changed—not in a dramatic way, but in the subtle way people do when they have just discovered something interesting about the person they are talking to.
“Ah, Nigeria,” she said. “The giant of Africa. I read that your currency is doing better now.”
I laughed, more from uncertainty than amusement. The naira has been through its own trials, and we Nigerians know this all too well. But I had not considered how it might look from the outside. She told me that Zimbabwe had become a dollar economy in almost every sense—salaries, rent, even the roasted corn sold by street vendors, all priced in dollars. The local currency had become so worthless that people simply stopped using it.
I asked how that affected daily life. She said it was complicated. Then she said something I have not been able to shake.
“The dollar economy has made us foreigners in our own country.”
She said it quietly, without emphasis, as though stating the obvious. But the words landed. I wanted to ask more—about Mugabe, about Mnangagwa, about the long years and the transition and what it felt like to live through all of it. But when I asked, she went quiet.
“I think we should talk about something else,” she said. “This is a professional forum, and I do not want to be quoted on matters that could cause trouble for me when I return home.”
I understood. I have been a journalist long enough to know that look. In that part of the world, journalism is not a career. It is a calculation. You report what you can, keep quiet about what you cannot. The line between doing your job and staying safe is thin. I changed the subject. We talked about the conference instead.
This week, I looked up the numbers. According to the 2026 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders, Zimbabwe ranks 124th out of 180 countries, a drop of 18 places from the previous year, with the report citing a collapse in the country’s “legal indicator” and the weaponisation of laws like the Cyber and Data Protection Act and the so-called “Patriot Act” to silence dissent. Nigeria does not fare much better at 112th, a ten-place improvement from 2025 but still firmly in the “difficult” category, where journalists are regularly monitored, attacked, and arbitrarily arrested under the vague provisions of the Cybercrimes Act. These are not abstract statistics. They are the reason a journalist at a professional forum in Victoria Falls could not speak freely about her own country. They are the reason she lowered her voice and asked to talk about something else.
But that moment stayed with me, through the remaining sessions, the walk back to my hotel, the flight home to Abuja, and the weeks since, as I returned to writing about Nigerian politics.
I think about what it means to be a journalist in a country where silence is the price of survival. She could not even name the fear, she just lowered her voice and asked to talk about something else. And I think about what we Nigerians have, even when we think we have nothing. We can debate policy, question our leaders, write articles and stories that criticise the government without looking over our shoulders. We treat these things as ordinary. They are not.
Nigeria has its own troubles, a currency that cannot seem to find its footing, politicians who have mastered the art of promising everything and delivering next to nothing, journalists who have been harassed, arrested, and sometimes worse. But we can still speak. We can still hold power to account, however imperfectly, it is a freedom we should not take for granted.
As I walked through the airport on my way home, tired from the long flight and still carrying the weight of that conversation, I looked at the faces of the people around me with different eyes. This country has its problems—corruption is routine, and the political class seems to test public patience daily. But it is also a country where I can write this column without looking over my shoulder, where I can tell this story without fear of what follows
The falls were beautiful. I am glad I saw them. But what I carried back was not the memory of water falling from a great height. It was the memory of a woman who could not speak freely about her own country, and the uneasy gratitude I felt that, in Nigeria, I still can.
Yet Again
𝑨𝒔 𝑰 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒑𝒊𝒆𝒄𝒆, 𝒏𝒆𝒘𝒔 𝒃𝒓𝒐𝒌𝒆 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒂 𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒐 𝒐𝒇 2𝑩𝒂𝒃𝒂 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑨𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒆 𝑰𝒅𝒊𝒃𝒊𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒐𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒂𝒕 𝒂 𝒄𝒍𝒖𝒃, 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒎𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕, 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒂𝒏𝒔 𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒍𝒚 𝒉𝒆𝒍𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒊𝒓 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒕𝒉, 𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂 𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒄𝒊𝒍𝒊𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒐 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒐𝒍𝒅. 𝑨𝒏𝒏𝒊𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒔𝒉𝒖𝒕 𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒂 𝒅𝒂𝒕𝒆-𝒔𝒕𝒂𝒎𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒐 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒐𝒘𝒏. 𝑰𝒕 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒂 𝒓𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓, 𝒊𝒏 𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒔𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒘𝒂𝒚, 𝒐𝒇 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒍𝒚 𝒘𝒆 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒄𝒉 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒚 𝒆𝒏𝒅𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔, 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍𝒔 𝒖𝒔 𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒆. 𝑩𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒊𝒔 𝒂 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒂𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝑺𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒂𝒚.
Discussion about this post