Not Winning Is Un-Nigerian
#NigeriaParticipationNotMedals is a meme that could soon trend online as a feel-good factor of compensation for Nigeria’s poor performance in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Nigerians need cheering up, lots of it. A haul of medals from the Olympics could have given Nigerians much needed respite from the hardship squeezing the life out of the majority.
It is un-Nigerian in any sense not to win – those who lose beat themselves up or explain it away. If some Nigerian men want to have sex they prepare as if going to the Olympics to bring back a medal. Let’s leave sports.
Politics in Nigeria is not about democratic participation, the contestant must be a winner, and ‘the winner takes it all,’ sang ABBA. To win elections politicians resort to use assassinations, electoral frauds, cross-carpeting, bribery, violent thuggery, and other underhand methods to win elections. Its all about winning office not democratic rights.
the only real way of making significant legitimate money in Nigeria is to secure government contracts and government issued licenses. Winning contracts and licences are a very scary aspiration. The winner ever claims to have gotten it through excellence, best costing, and connections. Such is rare in Nigeria. The winner would have used criminal, spiritual, and ghoulish tactics to win. Other competitors may die violently or mysteriously, develop strange illnesses that confound doctors, find themselves entangled in court cases honest judges should throw out, and unexplained sabotage. Its all about winning not bidding.
If two women or two men are fighting to win the hand of a spouse in marriage, the competitors will not seek resolution through attractiveness, persuasions, or offerings alone. A prophet, mallam, mystic, traditional doctor will be the best mediator visit. It does not matter if black magic charms work or not. The issue is one or both competitors will go so far to gain an unfair advantage to win their prize.
Apart from in academics, arts / entertainment, and offshore sports the rules of the challenges change. You cannot bribe people to buy your records. Those who cannot write like Soyinka, Achebe, Adichie, Habila and others you cannot win literary prizes. If you are not Saka you cannot play for England. Without the preparedness of Phillips Idowu, you cannot represent and win Olympic medals for GB. For such people winning means a strict combination of being the best, commitment to training, an enabling environment, and the necessary support. That is a combination rare in Nigeria.
Too many Nigerian talents in sports and any other field have wasted, rotted, or died in Nigeria with their phenomenal gifts. A lack of talent is not Nigeria’s problem. The tragedy is the necessary combination of needs talents require to shine do not exist. Imagine the career of Akeem Olajuwon if he did not go to the USA. Most Nigerian athletics successes live, school or train in the US or Europe. Was Anthony Joshua not rejected by Nigeria only to be claimed by Nigeria after winning Olympic gold for GB and became world heavyweight champion! The list is getting longer.
At the Rio Olympics the football team funded itself but still won a bronze medal. A Japanese entrepreneur was so impressed with the team despite the odds against them he gave them a gift of $400,000. The shameless Nigerian sports administrators who could not fund the team now demanded the money. Yet, President Buhari counted Nigeria’s football bronze as one of his great achievements. Madness in action.
Is that a nation that can achieve success at the Olympics?
In the 1980s a school for gifted children was set up by the government in Abuja, the capital. The school’s intakes were exclusively of the children of the creme of the Nigerian elite. No intake came from a poor or average background. Some geniuses come from royal and aristocratic backgrounds but a minority. The ill-fated school folded without producing a single genius. That waste happened because members of the elite wanted their children to win by power, force. High intelligence you cannot buy in the market.
Why will Nigerians not buy the meme #NigeriaParticipationNotMedals?
It does not make sense to them. Since when did contesting and not winning in Nigeria become acceptable? An angry populace that just protested against the government might be angrier still. Loss equals anger. You disagree?
A majority of Nigerian parents and guardians are unkind to their children and younger ones who lose out to their peers. “Come on! You no dey see your mate?” is the most predictable thing an older or elder one will tell the child who does not win. Unfair comparisons with other children are a pervasive norm. Be it in exams, one-upmanship, a fight, tidiness, dressing, sports etc. losing means catching hell for most Nigerian children. Sometimes the expectations are ludicrous and the punishments or psychological abuse unreasonable.
Commonly, we see mothers tell their sons who are too scared to retaliate against a bigger older boy how she used to beat up boys when she was in school. Imagine. Her son must not lose in any sense against the odds. Too many elders in the community will boast to youngsters how they always took first position in school at exam time. Who among them then came second or last? None.
A child who cannot win is with rare exceptions characterised as a fool, dimwit, or wastrel. And lazy, unserious, gullible, only good at eating, even assured not to last long. Any Nigerian who escaped such experiences, we must stand up and hail you both arms raised.
Alas, the only benefit of such pressure is that the gifted and average child works very hard at their studies. Very little else. The conditioning to cheat your mate, overcome your mate by any means necessary, to live in hyperbole to prevent disrespect, are also well honed. Real fair competition is a daunting test for many, only the prepared and the best equipped win.
And please do not ask ‘what is the solution?’ The leaders must win Nigeria’s resources for themselves to be Nigerian. That is winning too.
Be good, not Lucky
Grimot Nane