NIGERIA: I CAN EXPLAIN

JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA argues that there is a cost to every action or inaction

You could sum up a population in two ways: they are playing for the immediate gratification of short-term rewards or they are doing the work knowing that whilst the reward may not come immediately, it will some day come. Short-termism often benefits a few at the expense of the lot. In the long term, other things being equal, more people benefit.

Can you name the country where live Premier League matches aren’t shown in the afternoon, especially between 2:45pm and 5:15pm? Chances are that you’d probably name a North Korea. And even if you were given options, say to choose where there is a blockade of showing live Premier League matches on TV in that time belt on Saturday, amongst one of say Cuba, Vanuatu, the United Kingdom and Mongolia, chances are that you’d pick anyone of those countries apart from the U.K. itself.

You cannot watch live Premier League matches in England on Saturday afternoon, but you can watch same in virtually every city and country around the world. That sounds like an anomaly until you dig a little into it. If you are thinking the matches aren’t shown because they want people to go watch in the stadiums, then you probably do not know the depth of the English people and their obsession with football. No, the blockade isn’t so people won’t choose to watch on TV over going to the stadium. There are more than enough bums to fill the stadium seats whilst the pubs are simultaneously filled up any given Sunday.

There is something bigger at play here that should teach any serious people or country how to protect their own from being destroyed by their inability to see beyond immediate gains.

Bizarre as it may sound, majority of live Premier League matches are not broadcast live on a regular football weekend. The football establishment reached an understanding with broadcasters to do things this way to protect the attendance of amateur and other forms of non-professional football. In essence, those who would have been home to watch say Arsenal whack Chelsea on TV have to make do with watching Hereford Pegasus play Highworth Town at a nearby pitch.

The unintended consequence of having the league live at the same time as most non-league and other such level of football is that football in the UK would have been killed by the Premier League itself. Can you imagine what it must have taken to reach that understanding? Because take it or leave, that decision comes at a cost to some businesspeople, especially in the short-term, but it does benefit virtually everyone in the long term. That includes the businesspeople that’d have immediately benefited from having the people watch the live games on TV.

I posted a casual tweet about someone who was on a N60,000 salary spending N1.7m on a wedding, who then came to me to ask for a N300,000 loan. I asked the person, why they spent such an amount on a wedding considering their monthly pay. They said it was part of the traditional requirements where they come from. I asked if those who married but never had to spend such money have since been buried. In the end, I gave a loan I’d never look back to see if it gets paid or not. This clear note on judgment and decision making took a different turn on Elon Musk’s X.

There was an unusual number of people who insisted that it was fine to have the wedding because it only happens once in a lifetime. Shocked as you may be to read this, this was not just a few people. As far as they were concerned, it was just fine to spend N1.7m on a wedding if you are on a N60k salary and whoever was going to loan you money after such a self-defeating decision should dare not ask you about your sense of judgment when it comes to spending money.

This is not unusual. We are breeding quite an unusual number of people who cannot connect their decisions today to the kind of life they will live tomorrow. They’d rather enjoy now, and then hope that tomorrow rescues them from their poor decisions.

And that thing about “societal pressure” is just an excuse for your own lack of judgment. The only pressure there is the one you assume on yourself. People who cannot connect their decisions today to their reality tomorrow will always be on life’s receiving end.

Nigeria has had challenges with corruption through the years. That act itself is on account of a culture that elevates immediate personal satisfaction over the collective good. That the people in government have changed through the decades and the culture remains suggests that there is something in our society that indicates that corruption is not just the disease of those in government.

That said, whilst corruption has cost and bedeviled us, at no time did we literally elevate it into law. What we made law are policies that sought to pacify us today that in truth we end up reeling from their consequences tomorrow. The cheaper dollars and their many effects, the free train and bus rides, the endless privileges for office holders, the endless subsidies. We engage in these pastimes, pretending that the future will handle itself.

When the future does, it reflects in the poverty we continue to see entrenched. Countries that could not compare to our per capita income and GDP have now become examples for us to follow. Amidst this, we still have not come to any realization; that there is a cost to every action and inaction.

We destroyed our schools; we now pay out of our noses for foreign education. We destroyed our health care system, to the point we now prefer medical care abroad…in a nutshell, we destroyed our country and now everyone lives or hopes to live abroad. That’s not as much a tragedy as the fact that many still cannot connect today’s realities with yesterday’s poor decisions.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing