Once in a rare while, there occurs, even in the life of the most fractious nation, a moment when fragmentation yields to concentration and convergence, when an entire nation rides high on the outcome of a single event or series of events that eclipses the problems and difficulties of the moment and invests that outcome with almost limitless possibilities.
That event may be victory in a war, or in international sporting competition.
As examples, think of the euphoria that greeted Biafra’s surrender in Nigeria’s civil war. Think of the triumphalism that washed over Britain when it defeated Argentina in the war for the Malvinas. Think of the explosion of joy that marked India’s winning of the World Cricket Cup. Think of South Africa clinching the World Rugby Cup. Think of Brazil winning the World Soccer Cup time and again.
Think, finally of the wave of joy and expectation worldwide that greeted the release of Nelson Mandela after 27 years in an apartheid South African jail.
Nigeria came tantalizingly close to such a sublime moment in the final stages of the African Cup of Nations Competition which was concluded last Sunday. It inched closer to that moment with each match, surviving a nerve-wracking penalty shootout with South Africa to qualify for the final.
Victory in that encounter was the only thing standing between the coronation and convergence, between remaining mired in self-doubt and being jolted out of it with a burst of energy and dynamism. It would signalize, however fleetingly, the end of pessimism and the birth of optimism.
Up to that point, few things seemed possible. From that point, everything would seem not only possible but splendidly attainable.
But that was not to be. In the event, the host country Cote d’Ivoire pipped Nigeria 2-1 and shattered the possibility of a convergence that Nigeria sorely needed.
In years past, qualifying for the final would have been greeted with, among other markers, a one-day public holiday. The eve of the final would have been accorded a public holiday to enable Nigerians make arrangements to watch the event live on television or other platforms.
Clinching the championship would have been accorded another public holiday during which the team, led by the Vice President, would formally present the trophy to the President, appropriately attired in in the costume of the Super Eagles, before a national audience.
Each member of the team would have been given or promised a handsome present in cash or kind. Each would have had a street named in his honour. Since the gift of a house in the most exclusive neighbourhood in Abuja had become de rigueur on such occasions, the time to bestow an oil well on each member of the victorious team might well be judged to have arrived.
Parades and carnivals would have been staged at state capital, at which there would have been a great deal of dining and wining and wenching. The absorbing spectacle would have provided not a little relief, nay diversion, from the tyranny of an economy in which the currency is calibrated by how much rice it can buy in a market governed by caprice.
In the absence of bread, nothing succeeds like a circus in difficult times. That is the wisdom of the ages, from ancient Rome to modern times. The arena was already being readied by the media. One newspaper proclaimed that the Africa Nations Cup was “coming home.” Nigeria has probably won that trophy more times than any other nation, but it would be doing violence to fact and idiom to proclaim Nigeria its home.
At that point, I began to worry for the safety of the player or players whose wild shot in a penalty shootout might be judged to have cost the nation the trophy, or the player who might flub the penalty kick that would have taken Nigeria to an unanswerable victory. They might need protection.
I was reminded of the sing-song of the jingoistic British press in 2021 in the run-up to the final of the European Cup of Nations tournament that the trophy was “coming home.” And can one ever forget the foul, racist abuse, to say nothing of the threat of physical violence, to which black players who courageously stepped up to take but lost penalty kicks that their white colleagues would not attempt even with one million pounds of offer?
A second-place finish in the tournament is no mean achievement but winning is everything. And so, Nigeria was spared the excess, the flight from the facts on the ground that victory would have entailed. That view probably belongs to a very small minority. Nothing less than outright victory would have satisfied the yearning of Nigerians. And that yearning was almost intoxicating while it lasted.
Now, victory has bequeathed to Cote d’Ivoire a sorely-needed convergence, a respite from the strains and pangs of partition into a predominantly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south, and the third-term ambition of President Alassane Ouattara, a divisive figure of dubious legitimacy. One must also reckon with the endemic problems of the ECOWAS, the 15-member regional group in which it ranks as the second biggest economic actor, after Nigeria.
Nigeria must now confront the hard facts on the ground. Among them: the heightened wave of kidnapping across the nation, and the blood-curdling violence often deployed to that end; the pervading insecurity and national paralysis; the run-away cost of everything, and the poor functioning of the national institutions and service providers still standing,
I have saved for last the brazen corruption that is choking the system and creating super-abundance for the few while pauperizing the many, including those who had taken for granted over the decades a lifestyle that guaranteed the basic comforts of life.
From our grief might yet emerge a different point of convergence, one that sees every citizen as a leader in his or her own orbit; one that assigns the tack of national development and regeneration to the citizens as a collective and tasks the elected or appointed leadership with providing example and inspiration.
