SPORTMANSHIP IN NIGERIAN POLITICS
3 min read
We have all seen good sportsmanship, whether on the basketball court as players greet each other at the beginning and congratulate the winner at the end of the game, or a football player extending a hand to help an opponent off the ground. Even in boxing, a sport I find particularly brutal, opponents touch each other’s gloves at the start, fight hard and ultimately embrace one another in congratulations after the fight.
Politics in Nigeria is different. It is not played like a game of football or any of the games enumerated above. it is winner takes all. The winner is not always magnanimous in victory, while the loser always lick their wounds.
Good sportsmanship grew with parliamentary democracy. As a kind of mimicry of liberal institution, learning to lose graciously is part of living in an equal-opportunity political world. Good sportsmanship implies the enduring legitimacy of the other side and the natural oscillation of winning and losing as something normal.
The idea of shaking hands with the other side after a loss, is fundamental to our democratic morality. A handshake is expected because it demonstrates your commitment to the rules of the game.
Democracies have a huge stake in inculcating such values. Particularly important to civil society is how to be a good loser—as we see in countries like Zimbabwe.
At no time is the civic importance of good sportsmanship more on display than during a post-election transfer of power such as we are now living through. We expect politicians and political parties, like athletes and athletic teams, to play by the rules. We expect losing candidates to abide by the outcome, however distasteful, rather than resort to violence. We even expect losers to congratulate the winners. And we expect rivals to resume the contest only within carefully contained and structured arena of engagement.
These democratic values all find corollaries in principles of good sportsmanship. Such civic virtues are not innate, they are learned “habits of the heart,” in Alexis de Tocqueville’s phrase, constitutive of democracy in America. As such, they should be reinforced on every playing field in America. For learning to be a good sport doubles as a civics lesson in learning to play by the rules and learning how to accept defeat.
No one likes to lose—especially to a rival. The ashes of defeat leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Some defeated persons compliment their opponents, accept responsibility for their own performance, and generally act with civility and respect. They exhibit good sportsmanship in defeat.
Learning to lose well is one of the most important lessons taught by sports, which has long been justified in school as a laboratory for character education.
The Duke of Wellington is famously reported to have said: “The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” The battle for civil society is also being won and lost in part on our playing fields. American democracy succeeds, in no small part, owing to lessons learned on baseball, soccer, and football fields across the land. At their best, sports can inculcate crucial democratic values—including deference to the rule of law; the ideal of fair play; practical experience with rivalries constrained by time, place, and impartial arbitrators; and the peaceful acceptance of defeat.
The greatest obstacles to Nigeria’s political advancement which assumed a conceptual historical trend in the country since 1964 Western Region election crisis which culminated in the 1966 military coup was handiwork of opposition politicians who had always demonstrated a high degree of Intolerance and lack of sportsmanship to accept defeat at the polls.
Nigeria’s political parties should learn to imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship in order to emulate the legacy of former president Dr. Goodluck Jonathan in the 2015 general elections, who accepted defeat and also to close ranks to move this country in to the league of the world’s medium powers and Industrialised nations.
Bello shehu Shuni 08035114465
