National delusion of grandeur
BY KADARIA AHMED
July 5, 2010 03:36PMT
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President Goodluck Jonathan put the cat among the pigeons when, together with his cabinet, he took a decision to unilaterally suspend Nigeria’s participation in international football competitions for the next two years. Since then, FIFA has issued an ultimatum to Nigeria to rethink her stand or face sanctions. As I write this, that ultimatum has not expired. But if the reaction of people in government is anything to go by, it is unlikely that the federal government position will change.

Some people believe Mr. Jonathan and his team were wrong, others say this is a necessary move and gives the country an opportunity to overhaul its football. Regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the decision, what struck me was part of the statement made by presidential spokesman, Ima Niboro. He said “… there is need to withdraw from all international football competition so that we can put our house in order”.

Traditionally, we are not a self-critical nation. We don’t seem to have that ability to look inward and examine openly that which is wrong with us as a people and as a society. Instead, what we seem to specialize in is over hyping the very little that we achieve.

Listen to Nigerians speak about our golden age of sports and you would think we dominated the world during this period. However, all those moments glowingly discussed amount to a couple of gold and silver medals won at various times by outstanding individual athletes. Chioma Ajunwa‘s medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics springs to mind. Yes, we also got the football gold medal that year and a handful of other medals, and maybe another couple here and there in a few other Olympic tournaments and Commonwealth games. While these represent monumental achievements for the individual athletes who won them, they cannot and should never be seen as great feats. At least, not for an oil producing nation of 150 million people.

In the almost 50 years we have existed as a nation, we have for too long been ever ready to extol to high heavens our miniscule achievements. This may explain why complacency seems to settle very quickly into everything we do. Minor becomes major, and ok becomes excellent. We therefore do not expend the time, energy and resources necessary for greatness. Instead we hype and over hype.

What this does is to give us a confidence – others call it arrogance – that is not rooted in anything solid. But we, as a people, do not seem to have any problem with that; not just in sports but in all facets of our national life. We regularly boast of being ‘the giant of Africa’ and not bat an eyelid doing it or even feel a sense of shame. This, despite the fact that our oil wealth has not translated into developing a country with functional infrastructure and institutions or even an economy that would give regular people a chance at a decent life.

In all this, we don’t even have the self awareness to realize that we were involved in grand self deception. For the few that realized what was going on, perhaps there was a sense in which we felt if we talked loud and long enough about our greatness, it would somehow become manifest. It is clear to me that, as Nigerians, we have for a long time suffered from what can be termed national delusion.

We seem to typify that adage of constantly ‘blowing hot air’; except this time it was up our own ass. Even now, some Nigerians retain a certain cockiness and self belief that is not based on anything concrete or tangible, except a warped and unrealistic sense of our own importance.

Of course the twin evils of corruption and ineptitude have contributed greatly to our inability to realize our potential as a nation and, it is the context of all of these issues we must examine the decision taken by President Jonathan. If those two years, in which we are not taking part in international footballing events, are used for critical examination of the state of football and an overhaul and as a result, real and lasting changes are made to the way sport is run, only good can come out of it.

What would be really monumental, however, is if the government extends this same decisiveness to our other problems. Corruption, epileptic power supply and electoral reform, would all benefit from bold actions, similar to what has been done for football. Only then, can I be convinced that this government is capable of much more than populist decisions.


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Originally Written By Kadaria Ahmed for NEXT