Guardian

JUST what does success mean? Is it the unquenchable desire to accumulate more and more material goods, to gain ascendancy by whatever means, to rise above all else in pursuit of a selfish goal, to be acknowledged and acclaimed by all? Surely, success must mean much more than that. So, just what translates into success?

Success is the conquest over adversity. It is to keep plodding on, in spite of obvious obstacles. It is to be driven by the strength of the human spirit to attempt heights unknown. It is to believe that it is possible. It is to triumph when none expects it. And then, it is the deep satisfaction, when all is said and done, of knowing that, “I did it.”

And so it was that 2012 was the Olympics year in London, the greatest celebration of humanity, the display of dazzling talent and sheer grit, the pursuit of pride for every fatherland. And there was the Olympics, and there was the Paralympics. The Olympics came and went and our large contingent came home literally, empty-handed. Then came the Paralympics, and the gold, and silver, and bronze medals rolled in. Few paid attention; after all, it was the Paralympics, the inferior relation of the grand Olympics. But the Paralympians, men and women living with diverse physical disabilities, rose tall above all that; adorned in our national colours, they became a Nigerian success story, our latest heroes in a land that is increasingly ever more sparsely dominated by men and women of competence, character and patriotism. Their return was not heralded by pomp and ceremony, and they have since gone into customary anonymity.

But today, we at The Guardian rise in salute to these men and women who made us smile, who made us proud, who showed us what true success is, and who as a team, has been chosen by our Editorial Board as the Man of The Year, 2012. Editor-in-Chief Debo Adesina tells their story.

From The Tethers Of Life...  Glory Unexpected

By Debo Adesina

Sorrow. Tears.  And blood. There was an abundance of those and Nigeria was largely in a kind of perpetual mourning for much of the year gone by.

Joy, any reason whatsoever to feel good about anything, seemed alien.

A naturally optimistic people had much reason to doubt their own being and worry about their future.

The latter-year tragedies: aircraft crashes that killed or injured governors, leaders, ordinary men, women and even wiped out entire families like the Anenes who died in the Dana Airline plane crash; the rage of nature through the floods; the carnage on the roads and many more, in retrospect, were all prefaced by a certain cruel foreboding early in the year.

It had begun with a shocking assault on the sensibilities of the people. In a brusque display of tactlessness, the government had removed the so-called subsidy on petroleum products, increasing the pains of living to unbearable heights. A revolt by a people who had had it to their noses forced a semi-reversal of the decision but did not do much to assuage the anger. A regime that came to power on a huge crest of national goodwill had turned its back on the same people it swore to serve and the ill-will against it was unmistakable.

A consequent revelation of the extent of the rot at the heart of the nation’s oil industry , the level of corruption in high places, which as it turned out, was what the people had been subsidising, could only have depressed the national soul  even further.  Shackled in the legs by corruption in government and held in the jugular by the collaborators in the private sector, the economy gasped and dragged.  Living standards of the majority worsened while a few people with access pillage the nation’s resources.

Whatever little faith people had in their leaders was eroded by the greedy swashbuckling ways of the representatives in the legislature and the not-so-hidden nestle corruption has also found in the temples of justice. In the executive branch, a certain absence of genuine leadership was the most present phenomenon. The presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, never the most assertive on any matter, shrank even further in the face of substantive national challenges and, even in style, seemed to deteriorate beyond understanding.

On its watch, the security situation worsened by the day with innocent Nigerians getting bombed off in their homes or in places of worship by yet un-apprehended extremists. Discontent with the abusers in politics and their collaborators in business was compounded by the premium placed on the lives of Nigerians: none. Life had never been so cheap.

When the Games of the XXX Olympiad, otherwise known as the 2012 Olympics or London 2012 began and ended with Nigeria, parading perhaps the largest contingent of officials and jobbers, failing on all scores in all sports, the humiliation was total. The most disastrous outing on the world stage by the nation generally acknowledged as the hope of the black race had brought a pall of anguish to the souls of all and cast a shadow of despondency on the nation.

Not even one medal for Nigeria at the Olympic Games?  Too much to live down.

The mourning was then not just of what had become of Nigeria but what next might yet befall the giant.

Then came, a few weeks later, the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games otherwise known as the Fourteenth Paralympic Games, the Olympics for the physically challenged.

4294 athletes from about 100 countries participated. 29 Nigerians competed and won 13 medals, including six gold, five silver medals and two bronze medals.  Team Nigeria broke four world records in powerlifting and is now the world’s number one in that sport. A rainbow, as the saying goes, appeared in the clouds just when anyhope of a sunshine seemed forlorn.

The Guardian’s Person of the Year is usually the one who has most affected the course of human events – for good or for ill – in the just-ended year. Barack Obama, the American President, originally the front-runner for The Guardian’s honour,  won a historic re-election by historic margins and rewrote the history of the black man and that of humanity. His victory was a triumph of hope and the human spirit.

But against the backdrop of the dismal performance of the team representing the hope of the black man at the Games of the XXX Olympiad, the achievement of the athletes at the Paralympic Games was significant in an Olympian way. Its redemptive value, for Nigeria and what the country represents in the world,  is not only in the level of success but also in the odds the victors scaled. Indeed, it may seem a stretch to say those athletes are in some way like Barack Obama, but there is something Obamaic in their conquest.

An advertisement of the limitless capabilities of the human spirit.

A triumph of the human will.

Against all odds.

Unexpected.

They seemed to have taken Obama’s mantra to heart and moved from chorusing ‘yes we can’ to actually   ‘doing’.

Sports is a tool of politics. Sports is big business. Sports is a tool of international diplomacy. Nothing engenders national pride like sports. And, in Nigeria, it is widely acknowledged as the most potent  unifying  force in an otherwise fractious nation.

Because they gave a nation cause for cheer and the citizens reason to hope; because theirs was the ultimate triumph of the human spirit; that the completeness of man is in the soul and not just the body; because of the emblematic significance of their conquest for a nation in search of self-belief, pointing the way to the possibilities that abound if such a nation, in spite of challenges,  would just run a good race, members of Team Nigeria to the Paralympics are The Guardian’s Persons of the Year.

They are the Persons of the Year because, even with the restrictive challenges of their physical bodies and from the confines of their wheelchairs, they succeeded in putting a nation’s hope in high gear.

These are no accidental victors. They all had a record of winning in their backpack en route London. And their narrative is incomplete without emphasis on their commitment and preparation before victory.

Obiji, a polio victim who started competitive sports in 1996 won a gold medal at the London Games. Before then, she had distinguished herself with a silver and two golds at the 2006, 2009 and 2011 National Sports Festival.

Joy Onaolapo, also a polio victim, won a gold medal in London to cap an impressive run that had seen her winning a silver medal at the 1998 National Sports Festival, a gold in 2000, a silver in 2002, and another silver medal at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in India.

Victoria Nneji  had won a gold medal at the 1996 National Sports Festival in Makurdi, a gold at the 1998 edition and another gold in 2006. She won a silver medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, a gold medal at the 2012 World Championship in Dubai and a bronze in London.

Folasade Oluwafemilayo, who won a silver medal in Women’s Powerlifting in London, had picked up a silver at the National Sports Festival in 2002 while Ikechukwu Obichukwu has a silver and a gold from the 2009 and 2011 National sports Festivals. He the collected a silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games before his silver in London.

Grace Anozie, crippled by polio too, began her run of wins in 1998 with a silver medal at the National Sports Festival. She won gold medals in 2000 and in 2002. At the Olympics in Athens, Greece, in 2004, she won a silver medal. She picked a silver in Beijing and finally a gold in London. Their stories can only be an inspiration to a nation.

Anozie was driven to sports by unemployment.  With a degree in accountancy and hobbled by polio, no one gave her a chance at a job. She hobbled around in tears till a friend encouraged her to get into sports.  She is the world record holder today in women’s powerlifting.

Yakubu Adesokan not only won Nigeria’s first gold medal in London, he set a new world record in the men’s powerlifting — 48-kilogramme category. Yet, he almost abandoned the sports following a shoulder injury he sustained at the local festival in 2004.  Abandoned to his fate by the state he represented at the sports festival and with a huge medical bill and hunger gnawing at them, his family asked him to shift his focus and concentrate on his cobbler’s shop.

“I was always in pains and frustrated by my disability. I had spent all the savings I made from my shoe-making small business on medical treatment and the business had collapsed while I went into sports.”  A certain determination and faith in his own abilities kept him on track, banished the crippling fear of what might be and made him struggle daily to the stadium in Ibadan for training. Until glory came. For him and for country.

They have emphasised to us all the paradox that is Nigeria. Nigeria, The Valiant. Nigeria, The Errant.

Their victory is made more significant in that they scored the victory in spite of Nigeria, a nation not known for the best thoughts for the weak.

God has placed upon our heads a diadem and has laid at our feet wealth beyond definition or calculation. But we must take these gifts on the condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power and that the upward avenues of hope shall be free for all people. Those words by Benjamin Harrison, a former President of the United States about his own country best describes what Providence has done with Nigeria and what is expected of the nation so blessed.

The tragedy of Nigeria is that the profligacy in governance, the corruption and the waste are symptomatic of the failure to take the blessings upon Nigeria with His fear in the hearts, with humility and a thought for the ordinary and less privileged. Justice and mercy do not hold the reins of power, of course. And the upward avenues of hope are often closed to the generality of the people.

Which is why the athletes who went to London should occupy a special place in our hearts: they not only created an avenue of hope for themselves, they opened up one for the rest of Nigeria. Nigerians’ moment of joy did not come from insensitive leaders or governors who travel the world in private or chartered jets. It has not come from representatives who live off the public purse or the buccaneering business elite whose stupendous wealth has its roots not in tangible production but in official corruption. It has taken a few men and women of courage to slip the tethers of their seemingly weak bones to strive for glory and bring same down on us all.

Therein lies a moral and spiritual lesson for Nigeria, or, at least, the leadership.  No nation can make meaningful progress with exclusion. Her arms must be open to embrace all her sons and daughters. Able or disabled. Jesse  Jackson, the African-American civil rights activist and politician once said something to the effect that the disabled merely have their handicap openly revealed but their incredible genius concealed; while the so-called able-bodied merely have their genius revealed upfront and, far from the naked eyes, their debilitating disabilities concealed! Ultimately, people would be judged on account of their values and contributions.

Team Nigeria emphatically showed the world who, truly, is able!

A troubling prospect is that the integrity deficit in leadership, a greater malaise as it is, than the economic deficit, may prevent Nigerian leaders from picking the appropriate lessons from The Guardian’s Persons of the Year.

The unquestionable valour of Nigerians and the considerable resources at the nation’s behest suggest a given greatness. But greatness remains un-manifested as a national attribute. Scuttled by leadership incompetence and corruption of immense proportions.

Courage and patriotism, as exemplified by members of Team Nigeria to the Paralympics, continually show themselves present with pulsating potency in the hearts of Nigerians. But in vain do we search for same in the leaders despite their public exhortations. Which is why even the sports management lesson taught by Team Nigeria may be lost on them.

When Peter Victor Ueberoth was tapped to chair the local organising committee of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, he set himself a target: that not a cent of American tax-payer’s money would be spent, no government, local, state or federal, would be involved and, wait for it, no donations would be taken from any body, individual or corporate. It would be business and pure business. Under Ueberoth, the Los Angeles Olympics Organising Committee, non-profit and volunteers-run, organised  the first privately-financed  Games and made a profit of about 250 million dollars at the end. His message and the template he thus created was profound. He shunned government patronage and corporate sponsorship, settling instead for investment seemingly in the belief that investment would be monitored for returns while free money would always be frittered away. If it is free, it has no value.

His example has since been copied all over the world. Except, maybe in Nigeria where officialdom continues to run sports to the detriment of sports but to the pecuniary gains of a few. The result is the monumental failure epitomised by Nigeria’s participation at the 30th Olympics, decaying sporting facilities and destruction of the nation’s potentials for glory.

Ueberoth taught the world that honest private enterprise works. The type that partners with the people, not just with government. Private enterprise that invests in the people will get good returns on that investment. Because his committee never relied on any government for anything, not one single policeman provided security for the Games! Instead, Ueberoth and his committee used volunteers. 70,000 volunteers worked in different capacities including security. And herein is the lesson. Nigerians, more than any national, are their brothers’ keepers.  The pride in their country is deep and their loyalty to it is total. As exemplified by The Guardian’s Persons of the Year, who got little if any government backing in preparation for or during the Games, Nigerians will give a limb for their country.  They will serve with their mind, body and soul but are often discouraged by the examples they see of those in power. Why break a limb when the leaders are breaking the treasury!

A real fear, once again, is that Nigerians, leaders and the led alike, may nor appreciate the emblematic significance of the victory of the Paralympians. Because our ordinary decencies have been eroded by materialism and the value not placed on values. The tenor of theses times are not even understood by Nigerian leaders since they do not have any song of hope to inspire the people.

But for Nigeria’s political and economic climate to improve, the moral climate must first change. Jesse Jackson, ever the master of rhyme, once said a public servant need not be a perfect servant. But a genuine focus on true service will make for perfection in service.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, himself a victim of poliomyelitis, who served the United States of America as President for a record four terms and was such a high achiever at his posts despite his disability was once summed up thus, a line that also captures our heroes of 2012:  “So passionate a faith in the future, so untroubled a confidence in one’s power to mould it..”

Given the harrowing experiences of the past year,  Nigeria, to use the poet laureate, Maya Angelou’s words, has ‘arrived on a nightmare’. As the nation hopes for a dream, beginning from this first day of the new year, the example of the Paralympians should teach a nation and her people to grow a faith in their future and be untroubled in their confidence in their own power to mould that future.

From the ashes can arise untold glory. The disabled have their handicap revealed but within them, the world  has witnessed, is an unbelievable genius. With a will to triumph, against all challenges, the Paralympians’ story could be Nigeria’s story.