The deaths of six men recently concentrated one on the vapour of life, at once immense and fleeting. Chief Hope Harriman. General Shuwa. Olusola Saraki. Lam Adesina. Kayode Esho. May Nzeribe. When great men expire we wonder at the exaggeration of life. Life is not as substantial as we suppose when such personages end as victims of the tyranny of time. They seemed immortal before they were not.

In his play, Richard 11, William Shakespeare, the immortal bard of death, mused over how death eventually overshadows all of human calamities. "Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay," sang the playwright, "the worst is death, and death will have his day." It also prosecutes its sting over all human joys.

Death had its way with all of these men. Was it Harriman, the ebullient burly pace setter whose face always lit up with a cheerful glitter? Or Shuwa whose sullen years after the civil war did not dwarf his mythic soldiery? Or Saraki the party wheel horse who redefined dynasty? Or Lam Adesina, who stood like a Trojan when progressive politics was his Troy? Or Kayode Esho whose longevity was an insistent rebuke of the putrefaction of a judiciary? Or Nzeribe whose professional ardour pounded home the integrity of standards? East, Southwest, Southsouth, North, each with their own lugubrious gift as though death was doling out geographic favours. No thanks.

But they all left without enough warning, as though warning often means anything to death. They vanished because everyone has a "dateless bargain" with death, to quote Shakespeare again in his Romeo and Juliet.

These men represented a generation as well as anyone could. This was the generation that Wole Soyinka described as wasted. As an artist, we may excuse the Nigerian bard an access of exaggeration when we look at some of these men. We may not excuse him if we look at the big picture of a remorseless decline that has assailed the nation after independence. But they, all six of them, tell us the story of Nigeria, and how the rain began to beat us to drenching stupor.

Harriman was a pace setter, who began as a real estate valuer and surveyor, and ended an investment omnivore. He represented what is lost in today's businessman, a knack to bring something out of nothing, to create wealth. To be wealthy for him was to create. This is a contrast to the businessman as contractor today.

To be wealthy for most of that class today is to be a carpet bagger. They wake up with mock sobriety in government house, leave with cheap contracts, party with cheap money at some fancy hotel and arrive home with the smell of alcohol as their John the Baptist.

Harriman helped open some parts of Lagos to Nigerians as important areas in which to settle. He rose to become not only the first president of the association in the country, but was also recognised internationally. Can we produce a Harriman in this age, with his genius for opportunities, the bonhomie that disdains ethnic or religious fidelities, or an energy for work that took him to other areas: oil, rubber, banking, blasting rocks, etc. His foray into politics was not tainted by the desperation for filthy lucre that makes glorious men into public scoundrels. He stood for the progressive idea whether as a supporter of the Unity Party of Nigeria or as an elder espousing Southsouth as a force in a six-region democracy.

Nzeribe came to personify standards in an industry that quickly succumbed to hustlers, opportunists and thieves. That was why he helped pursue it as head of the body guarding advertising in the country. So important was his role that he won international accolade and award, perhaps the highest laurel any Nigerian has acquired in that profession beyond these shores. His insistence on standards mocks what some Americans call the soft bigotry of low expectation common in Nigeria today. Whether it is medicine, law, journalism or teaching, we no longer abide by any sort of minimalism. Hence doctors misdiagnose, judges jail the innocent and teachers teach a lot of nonsense, apologies to Fela.

Saraki's story is, however, a mixed bag. He brought into politics the idea of the grandeur of family. But it was not democracy that ignited him but a nepotistic dream. We have seen families enrich the ideology. The Kennedys, the Bushes, the Ghandis, the Bhuttos, etc. The idea is to encapsulate in one family the noble array of a society's virtues: industry, vision, character, a gregarious love of people.

But Saraki subjected the whole state to the zeal of his own fiefdom, where sons and daughters became the princes and princesses of a democracy. Without a doubt, we still run a democracy of big men. The United States had founding founders as the big men, the avatars who turned their personal charms and gifts as sacrifices to foster institutions. George Washington had opportunities to be a Napoleon or king or president for life. But he preferred a great country to a big man. So he instituted and bowed to the rule of law. That is why he became a great man.

They still had foibles then, but they had their eyes on the great prize. Hence John Adams asserted that the country was a "nation of laws and not of men." This was Adams who had a fight to the literal death with Jefferson, who had to form his own party to confront his foe. We hope we can build institutions which some states are doing.

Adesina fought for democracy, and when he died he was more like victim who had a sort of last hurrah with the enthronement of Abiola Ajimobi, the cool-headed remoulder of Oyo State. Adesina was at the barricade in the struggle for democracy when Abacha's jackboot crunched about the country. He became governor but also fell prey to a democratic parody when Obasanjo hoodwinked the progressive out of their own pies. But he departed in peace because his eyes beheld the return of the progressives before his last breath. He stood for a counterfoil to the domineering principle that Saraki embodied.

Shuwa was a general, fearless, focused, ruthless. He did not draw any panegyric from Chinua Achebe in his tempestuous book, There was a country. Shuwa led the first army division that pulverised Biafra, his men accused of rape and rapine, and violations of the Geneva Convention. Those who know him call him honourable. He inspired fear and respect from his fellow soldiers, and the story is told of how, armless, he subdued a mutinous army in Kano in the throes of the civil war.

But the exploits of his army cannot but remind us of the locust years of the military in Nigeria, with scores of impunity that our civilian democrats apply without reserve. All the false show of power witnessed at every level comes from the disdain for order and process the army foisted on the Nigerian soul. Our failure to resolve outstanding issues of the war led to the crisis of today.

Esho departs when the nation grapples with the absence of justice at every level, from the classroom to the presidency. He stood as a matador of good versus evil in the psyche of a nation conquered by what Joseph Conrad described as shortsighted in matters of good and evil. He stands against the corruptible legion of judges accused openly of beggarly bribes and surrender to the supine folly of a political class dining voraciously with the devil.

In spite of the prevalence of evil over good in today's Nigeria, we cannot accuse these men of standing idle. Some patriots would have preferred some of them to redirect their energies. In his novel, Les Miserables, Victor Hugo writes, "it is nothing to die; it is frightful not to live." They lived according to their own lights. On that note, good night to them all.