Today commences that week, now observed with religious
punctuality every four years in Nigeria, of scheduled grief and
acrimony.
It is the week following the Olympics. In comparable countries the
world over, it is one of national pride. The nation’s top
sportsmen return home triumphant, and are celebrated with pomp and
circumstance.
Not in Nigeria, where the week, and those celebrations serves only to
remind us of futility not just in sports, but in virtually every field.
It is the week it is clear we are our only enemy.
The Olympics collapse which we mark this week, like the last one and
the one before that, is at the immediate level traceable to the simple
fact that as a people, we have no place for orphans, and sportsmen are
orphans.
Yes, we have deep regard for sports, which is why every leader who
comes along quickly appoints a sports Minister or commissioner.
But we have a psychological resentment of a sportsman, especially
when he requires support, sometimes for years, before he can bring us
glory.
Why this conundrum? Well, for us sport is different from the sportsman.
We enjoy it when “our” sports star brings us glories and conquests,
but we hate it he or she is an actual person, requiring time
and attention.
Our refusal as a people to set in place those institutional elements
that enable the athlete to grow to the best of his ability received full
testimony in Rio. It was no surprise that the mention of our
athletes in the Nigerian press was nearly always in
connection with falling short, sometimes far short. They are an
appropriate barometer of our futility.
The biggest mistake this week would be the dangerous notion that we simply failed to do well at another sporting event.
No, we didn’t. What we actually did was go out and remind ourselves,
and the world, of whom we are: proud underachievers. Again at another
importantinternational contest, we were found out when openly tested
against nations who take themselves, their name,and their
people, seriously.
This is whom we have become. Our sportsmen and women are unprepared
largely because for 60 years, it has remained the character of
the Nigerian elite to prioritize its interest over the national good.
From hypocritical heads of government to their conniving wives;
from thieving Ministers to rapacious civil servants, 60 years
of so-called independence has left us not better, but worse; not richer,
but poorer. These 60 years have left us with wealthy former and
current public officials alongside public institutionsincapable of
serving 160 million people, let alone produce one gold medal winner.
Where other nationals in the public sphere seek and are proud of the
emergence of a special talent, athletic or intellectual, our elite
ignore or even try to crush them. On several occasions in the past 30
years, I have reported on my personal experiences of supposedly
respected Nigerians who think talent is special if it is their child.
Why are we so blest? Jealously, for one thing. We like such
potential to belong only to us, or ours. Shortsightedness, for
another. Why groom a poor child who would go out and excel?
That is why Nigeria is strewn with tens of thousands of unfinished
projects, along with thousands of former officials who returned with
looting expeditions in governments vastly richer than their own local
government area.
But there is also a different kind of shortsightedness: those who
really want to do the right thing, for some reason. But they dilly.
And dally. Time passes, ormaybe they then do.
And so, poverty—and poverty of spirit—gained a 60-year headstart in
Nigeria. The “wealthy” have grown wealthier, while the powerful have
continued to make speeches.
Could that historic embarrassment for Nigeria’s Olympic soccer team
in Atlanta been prevented? Absolutely. But it is too late now, and it
will exist in infamy in the rear-view mirror because those who could
have prevented it put their nation second.
That thoroughly-Nigerian story naturally made global news. But the
football players were hardly the only Nigerian athletes who went through
torture simply to compete for Nigeria.
The real story is that in four years in Tokyo, we will do it all over again, as has become our character.
But all of this can be changed, with a new mind-set. If I were
President Muhammadu Buhari, here is how I would handle that reset.
I would invite all of the athletes who went to Rio to a meeting in Aso Rock this week, and celebrate their efforts.
I would then announce that at the 2024 Olympics, eight years from
now, Nigeria would be going for 50-100 medals. And I would say that
preparations begin now.
Is such a turnaround possible? Yes.
The reason that we are underperforming in sport, as in
science; infrastructure, as in human development; abroad, as at
home; has everything to do with our limited ambition.
We are doing little things in dark little rooms in fear of dark
little demons. Instead, we should be standing on the rooftop declaring
our ambition, and imposing menace and mayhem on naysayers along the way.
At their most ambitious, President Olusegun Obasanjo
and Goodluck Jonathan dreamt only of a handful ofgold medals, something
Kenya or Jamaica do with just a few people at the Olympics.
Hindsight affirms that when you think small, you
accomplish even less. Foresight confirms that when you acknowledge and
empower your best, you achieve your best.
This is why so much Nigerian talent flourishes everywhere outside
Nigeria where people seek true quality. At home, our best and
brightest are served the same diet of disinterest or discouragement,
leading to many who refuse to grovel or offer bribes either to abandon
Nigeria, or abandon their talents.
The same Nigerian officials who perpetrate this betrayal then go out
on the eve of important international competition to beg anyone with a
Nigerian name to come and take a shirt. It is no surprise that the more
accomplished of those Nigerians choose to compete for others.
If Buhari wants to leave a legacy different from the shame and defeat
of his predecessors and of our recent history, he will attend the first
half of that meeting with our athletes with only the Vice-President,
and take his cues from them. He will commence re-organization of the
second half by firing the Minister of Sports.
We do not really need to invent anything, for there is nothing to
invent in preparing and training athletes, or in the building and
maintenance of facilities.
With reference to funding, I would advise a review of sectoral
budgeting in favour of the kind of five and four-year cycles Mr.
Jonathan proposed for development and road construction in 2011, with
suitable adjustment for the annual budget, and with a re-designed
private sector involvement.
We simply need to implement the same playbook by which others have
thrived, and the first item in that playbook is desire, not funds.
The irony is that many of those many others lack the many gifts we
have across Nigeria but have failed to take advantage of. We have
access to bilateral relationships throughout Africa and the world we
have failed to take advantage of.
A lion which thinks it is a rat cannot complain when it is trampled on.
No comments:
Post a Comment