Philosophical Musings
In Nigeria, life has been extremely difficult for most. Managing the challenges in the land is an arduous task for everyone. Yet, the people survive and even thrive, ending the year 2024 cushioned by the hope of a New Year with better tidings. This is wisdom anchored to spiritual appreciation of the Giver of life.
People, generally, therefore, prayerfully enter every new year with a shopping list of expectations and spiritual demands for better fortunes.
So, here I am, a few days to 2025, performing my own special end-of-year ritual, a fervent prayer of gratitude to the Creator of all Things for the unearned privilege of experiencing all that the outgoing year offered me, as well as for everything the New Year will present me.
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At this time, I would always retire into the safe haven of philosophy, deploying SPORT as my Safe and Special Delivery Vehicle in the journey of my existence in a ‘world without end’.
Within the realm of my extremely limited knowledge of anything, what I generally accept is that, although life is complex, it follows a simple order of things, a universal polarity, of two sides to every coin, of action begetting reaction, of sowing and reaping.
In our world, this works, evidently!
So, in a ‘world without end’, it makes sense, therefore, that life, or existence, does not have a beginning. It has always been. That’s why ‘It is’.
I hold that as my simple truth. The rest of my life takes flight from that foundation for the sake of making sense of this chaotic labyrinth. Time is a point, neither a horizontal or a vertical line. That means, time exists in the eternal moment of NOW. That means everything, past, present and the future, derives from that eternal moment of NOW, where there is No other Time. Think about this.
From that premise, many things start to make some sense when I look back and think. Existence is the handiwork of a master craftsman who created a world without end. There isn’t, therefore, some likely unfolding grand master plan in the universe of things. What we see and experience are infinite moving parts too complex for human comprehension. That’s why there has never been and may never be answers to knowing the cosmos.
So, why bother? Humanity will NEVER know anything as an absolute certainty.
These thoughts keep me humble as I perform my annual New Year’s ritual of hopeful resolutions and prayers to the Supreme Being, the Creator of the Universe.
I pray that 2025 be better than 2024 for humanity! Amen.
2025
In my small corner of the cosmos, I feel it in my spirit that 2025 will be a good year for Nigerian sports.
With the barren chest of any major achievements in 2024, going any further South will be a ‘disaster’. The early signs from the tail end of 2024 point northwards.
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There may be a change in focus of attention, from winning at competitions to developing talents. That means improving the facilities for talent discovery and development. That means, building capacity for the talent hunters and developers, and improving the facilities and infrastructure for development.
In the lessons that were hopefully learnt from the African Military Games’ experience in 2024, facilities around the country can actually be fixed without breaking the national vault. The military have shown us how – a good Public, Private Partnership, PPP, arrangement for all the State and Federal sports facilities, infrastructure and institutions. That should be the next way forward.
A wind of change has started to blow – the MKO Abiola National Stadium in Abuja, the Liberty Stadium, Ibadan, the Muda Lawal Stadium, Asero, Abeokuta, and some others are to be concessioned to prospective private sector developers.
The return to institutional sports shall require a national sports policy in place to enforce its adoption. The empowerment shall start with a recognition of places for School, Collegiate, Military and para-military Sports on the board of the new National Sports Commission. That is my major prayer for 2025 empowering the NSC.
Beyond that, my sole resolution is to support that cause by making my own special project, the Segun Odegbami International College and Sports Academy (SOCA) to fulfill its mission-mandate of becoming a model for the rest of the country, and taking school sports development to heights that no institution like it has ever been before.
May 2025 yield bountiful fruits for everyone!
