Sports and capacity building

‘All work, and no play makes Dan a dull boy’. he Annual General Conference of the Nigerian Bar Association is around the corner and branches are gearing up for the big event. The technical committee on conference planning has assured members that this year’s conference will showcase a lot of enlightening sessions, including a football competition.

The star price of the competition is one million naira (N1,000,000), a big morale booster for teams planning to participate in the competition.

At this point, this writer is sure football teams of the several branches that have indicated interest in the competition ought to be ready for the showdown happening in Lagos come August 24th 2019. Competitions in the past used to be knock out straight to final, hopefully this year would be different considering the amount of money and time put into making an appearance in the competition. If you ask me, it will not be fair to teams to come all the way from their states, play one game and get knocked out from the tournament with only one game played.

The essence of the annual general conference is for continuing legal education of a lawyer, to encourage networking amongst colleagues, while bringing members up to speed with contemporary laws and recent developments in the legal profession. The football tournament is to bring out the sportsmanship in members of the profession, as a way of encouraging members to engage in sports alongside the busy schedule of a lawyer.

To achieve the excitement and participation of branches, the tournament ought to be organized in a manner that all teams can play at least three games before being evicted. This way, members don’t take the game as a do or die affair, and losing teams can show great attitude even in defeat. Imagine branches that have been training for months, facilitate the transport, accommodation, and feeding of their footballers to and from the conference, only to be informed that one game is all it will take and the effort is down the drain. This disappointing feeling has the tendency to bring out bad blood amongst teams competing against each other, rather than

Tfriendliness and connectivity which is the purpose of the competition. On the other hand, if the competition is played as a league, or teams are grouped for qualification, by the time a team is evicted from the competition, the bond, friendship and connectivity will have been established in competing teams thereby promoting sportsmanship. Truth be told, only one team is going to emerge champion as is the case in every competition, but if teams are allowed to fully express themselves on the pitch participating in two or three games before being knocked out, then the best team is sure to emerge champion.

To all the interested teams, I can only wish you best of luck, and advice we see ourselves as learned friends and not professional footballers, no matter what any lawyer will do at the moment on the field of play, I doubt if anyone of us will ever become a ‘Christiano Ronaldo’. As such, we must see ourselves as one, and play every game as a friendly, at the end of the tournament let the best team win, and losing teams accept defeat with great sportsmanship. Capacity building is defined as the “process of developing and strengthening the skills, instincts, abilities, processes and resources that organizations and communities need to survive, adapt, and thrive in the fast changing world” en.m.wikipedia.org. So we can use the football tournament to develop and strengthen our football skills in the little way we can without, however, ruining the relationship with one another as colleagues.

In sum, it is trite that some lawyers take clients’ case personal, and sometimes don’t know how to distinguish the line when it comes to relationship with colleagues, and this sometimes finds its way to the pitch when such lawyers are playing ball. It will be wise for the next player to be the bigger man and tone the heat of passion down. We are there to have fun and learn at the same time. Godspeed!

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