BY THE ARUSHA NEWS REPORTER
PRESIDENT Samia Suluhu Hassan has cautioned public officials and others against attaching her name to an ever-growing list of government programmes and projects, warning that the practice was becoming monotonous and risked reducing the real value of the good intention.
Speaking at the Tanzania Public Bar Association’s Annual General Meeting in Arusha on July 13, 2026, President Samia said institutions should exercise restraint when naming initiatives after serving political figures.
She noted that the legal sector already had the “Mama Samia Legal Aid Campaign,” while the education sector was implementing the “Mama Samia Scholarship Programme.”
The President questioned the proposals to establish a “Mama Samia Centre of Excellence” and a legal training programme bearing her name, saying that would create unnecessary repetition.
She instead advised the legal fraternity to identify a distinguished Tanzanian legal scholar or jurist whose contribution deserved national recognition and name the proposed institution after that person.
President Samia recalled attending a comedy show in Dar es Salaam where a performer joked that attaching “Mama Samia” to an activity appeared to guarantee its success.
She assured officials that government programmes would continue to receive the support needed, whether they carried her name or not.
“When ‘Mama Samia’ appears everywhere, it becomes excessive and loses its appeal,” she said, describing the growing practice as “monotonous.” Her remarks echoed similar reservations expressed by some of Tanzania’s former leaders about public infrastructure and institutions being named after them while they were still alive.
In 1994, The Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere reportedly asked the Dar es Salaam mayor to reverse a decision to rename Pugu Road after him. Mwalimu said he wanted to live as an ordinary citizen and had rejected attempts to erect monuments or other symbols in his honour during his lifetime.
Former President Benjamin Mkapa was also known to have opposed the naming of public places after him.
When the late President John Magufuli renamed the National Stadium in Dar es Salaam after Mkapa following the former president’s death in July 2020, he acknowledged that Mr Mkapa would probably not have accepted the honour had he been alive.
The late President Magufuli was irked to see projects carrying his name but encouraged recognition of public servants and professionals whose work had contributed to national development, such as we still have the 1929 Selander Bridge in Dar es Salaam, which was named after the British Engineer, John Selander, who was the first Director of Public Works in colonial Tanganyika.
The late President Magufuli demonstrated the same reluctance when he inaugurated the Kigamboni Bridge on April 19, 2016. Despite proposals to name it the Magufuli Bridge, partly because of his close involvement in the project while serving as Minister for Works, he instead gave it the official name Julius Nyerere Bridge, in honour of Tanzania’s founding President and Father of the Nation, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere.
The late President Magufuli said he had merely fulfilled his public duty and that Nyerere deserved the greater honour for uniting Tanzanians across tribal, religious and political differences.
In 2018, the late President Magufuli named the Tazara flyover in Dar es Salaam after former Tanzania National Roads Agency chief executive, Eng Patrick Mfugale, praising the engineer’s professionalism, integrity and contribution to the country’s road network, tossing away proposals to have the flyover named after him.
President Samia also used Monday’s meeting to remind state attorneys that no individual was above the law. She said respect for human rights must be accompanied by personal responsibility and adherence to the country’s laws, adding that anyone who broke the law should be held accountable regardless of their position or status.
The President said Tanzania had established constitutional and judicial mechanisms through which citizens could defend their rights and seek redress when those rights were violated.
She said state attorneys had a responsibility to analyse international declarations, protocols, agreements and emerging legal developments before advising the government on which stand to take.
She added that the performance of state attorneys should not be assessed only by the number of cases they won in court, but rather by the number of disputes they amicably resolved, public funds they protected and costly mistakes they helped the government to avoid.
During the meeting, the association honoured President Samia for her administration’s efforts to expand access to legal services through the Mama Samia Legal Aid Campaign. Figures presented at the event showed that the first phase of the campaign had reached more than 4.1 million Tanzanians through legal education, clinics and assistance to communities that previously had limited access to formal legal services.
