All Quiet on Non-Aligned Front
The first time I heard that Africa Cup of Nations [AFCON 2024] was about to start was when I saw a photo of the Super Eagles national football team at the airport, about to depart for the tournament. It was three days later that I asked a young boy, who was watching one of the matches with the keenest interest, in which country the tournament is taking place. He was taken aback; how could I not know that AFCON is taking place in Ivory Coast, which countries are represented there, how many matches the Eagles have played already and the progress they are making [or not making] in the tournament?
I quietly asked the boy where the 19th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement is taking place right now, at the same time as AFCON. He looked at me in amazement; he has apparently never heard of the Non Aligned Movement. Or for that matter of the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where it is currently taking place. I didn’t blame him very much because three decades ago when, in the course of teaching a university class of
over 200 students, I mentioned Mount Kilimanjaro, they said they never heard of it. One of the students said, “Sir, we are biologists, not geographers.” I was a biologist too, so how come that I ever heard of Olduvai Gorge, Ngorongoro
Crater, Lake Bosumtwi, Awbari Sand Sea, Mariana Trench, Manchuria, Lake Titicaca, Death Valley, Niagara Falls and Galapagos Island?
Anyway, it was my turn to be amazed that any Nigerian will know about the score tables at AFCON but did not know that the Non-Aligned Movement, the largest bloc of nations in the world after the United Nations, with 120 members, twenty observer nations, ten international organisations and 55% of the world’s population, is meeting at the same time, right here on the African continent, but he never heard of it.
Really, things have changed so much on the communications front that important things are happening without most Nigerians not knowing about them. In the 1970s, at the height of African liberation struggles, Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman chided Nigerian newspapers for “regurgitating the standard imperialist line of Moscow-backed, Luanda-based MPLA government in Angola.” At least they copiously reported foreign events. As a member of the old generation who completely lost interest in football 30 years ago, I forgive myself for not knowing that AFCON was at hand, but the newspapers of today also failed to give it saturation publicity, as was done in the past.
Before the 2nd All Africa Games was held in Lagos in 1973, everybody in this country heard about it, even though there was neither internet nor social media then and relatively few people had tv sets. When FESTAC was taking place here in January 1977, every Nigerian heard about it at least three years in advance, including in General Murtala Mohammed’s first speech as Head of State in July 1975 when he announced a two years’ postponement to allow more time for preparation. In the 1970s we used to have the Nigeria-Ghana Games, and the newspapers made sure everyone heard about it. We heard about the powerful male Ghanaian sprinter Ohene Karikari and his equally powerful female counterpart Alice Anum. They became as well known in Nigeria as the Egyptian female swimmer Faten Afifi, who bagged the largest number of medals at the 1973 All Africa Games