WHY CELEBRATE YOUR BEST?
The cabin was stirring with the early morning sounds as passengers began to awake prior to the descent of the long distance flight from Singapore. I picked up the Newspaper I had been reading before drifting up to sleep and flicked through the pages whiling away the few minutes before
JULIET OLANIPEKUN touchdown when the picture of a very jubilant black family caught my attention. The headline wasn’t the usual doom and gloom associated with News but one of celebrating outstanding A’level results in the UAE.
As I read the opening lines of the article, I wasn’t surprised that the name of the overall top student in the UAE, with 4 A*s and a math score in the top 50 globally, was distinctly Nigerian. Time and time again, I have found Nigerians to be in the top echelon of every school they attend in every geography of the world that Nigerians, in their quest for quality education not found at home, have sought out in the far corners of the world. Sadly though, neither was I surprised that the words Nigerian nor Nigeria were not as much as whispered in the article that hailed the excellence of the UAE education system and the brilliance of its students but rather this bright 18year old is a ‘British National’.
The Almighty Creator understanding the power of words brought all the animals He had created to Adam to name. We are told that whatsoever Adam named them was what they were called. There is power in what anything is called and so it is that when anything negative occurs, usually crime related, the headlines will carry British National of Nigerian descent or Nigerian born British citizen but never when the cause is for celebration, winning a sports world title or topping the world of academia. Indeed it is only those nations that understand the power of the spoken word who use it to perfectly to boost their global profile while those who don’t care carry the toga of negativity upon whom other nations dump all their unwanted character profiles.
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