The 2016 Rio Olympics has now come and gone. But the stupendous hangover lingers on for the host nation and arguably the most successful participant. When Santa Claus beautifies the Brazilian samba everybody wants the beat to go on forever. The Rio Olympics has been adjudged as a spectacular success, one of the most inspiring and splendidly organized ever. A week after the events, there remains the sweet scent of human triumph against impossible odds.
For Brazil, the host nation, it is the equivalent of a modern miracle; and there is a magical hint of the comeback country in all its gravity-defying essence. Given the seemingly laggard preparations, there were many who swore that the games would never take off or that if they ever did it would be so miserable and dismal, that the foolhardy Brazilians would be forced to hide their head in shame. Up till the opening ceremony, there were whispers that Brazil might throw in the towel. It was as if the endemic tropical languor was about to overwhelm this mammoth nation. But Brazil threw its hat in the ring instead.
The reason for the singularly unoptimistic and bleak view of Brazilโs prospects is obvious. In recent times, the country has been so traumatized by a series of interlocking political and economic crises that it appeared to the outside world that something was about to give. The president who was facing impeachment over allegations of corruption was eventually impeached. In the event, the feisty and indomitable Dilma Rousseff was forced to watch from the sidelines an opening ceremony which was supposed to be a personal coronation; a site of great historic triumph.
But far more serious was the fact that the economic miracle wrought by the immediate past president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, which had seen about forty million Brazilians lifted from the trough of abject poverty to the portals of prosperity had stalled. The much beloved Lula himself was in disgrace and political ruination having been found guilty of corrupt practices. The fetid Brazilian slums otherwise known as favelas normally bristling with feral violence and social implosion were rousing once again as implacable returnees lurk with intent.
So serious was the situation that on the eve of the opening ceremony workmen were still working round the clock even as harried artisans could be seen feverishly trying to put finishing touches to structures that seemed destined to remain monuments to architectural folly. And then there was a looming plague known as the Zika virus. But the Brazilians pulled off a dramatic coup. It was a feat of national redemption which will remain evergreen in the annals of the nation-state.
After the opening ceremony which completely silenced cynics, this immense former Portuguese colony and slummy backwaters of underdevelopment left no one in doubt that it intended to make the Rio Olympics an incontrovertible evidence of its arrival at the front seat of modernity and rationality. In the words of Ade Ojeikere, the fine and ever perceptive columnist of The Nation who was there: โWith the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics, the Samba land can safely be called an industrialized nationโ.
The last World Cup? It has been said that the hour of gold can also coincide with the hour of lead. If the last World Cup was a national triumph for Brazil, it was also a site of a great national calamity. For most denizens of this soccer crazy nation, Brazil failed woefully where it mattered most and that was in the department of the alternative national religion: football. For this deeply religious and superstitious people, the event is often referred to as โthe bad thingโ and it has entered national folklore as a day of dark portents.
They are referring to the clinical decimation and disembowelment of the Brazilian national soccer team by a pack of German hard boys in a historic 7-1 drubbing at the semi-final stage of the competition. The entire nation went into a grief-stricken coma. The Maracana stadium, the Mecca of soccer, had seen floods of Brazilian tears before, particularly in the historic fiasco against Uruguay in the 1950 final, but never before on this industrial scale. Men wept and women wailed even as old people sobbed uncontrollably. It was as if the nation has been hit by a major earthquake.
For this writer, the enduring symbol of this Brazilian soccer debacle is frozen in the image of a beautiful Brazilian girl who suddenly toppled and lurched forward on her seat as if shot from behind when the Germans crashed in their fifth goal. It was the most tragically sublime expression wounded national pride that one has ever seen and will remain with yours sincerely this side of the abyss of transition.
But it was the Brazilian masters who had stabbed themselves in the back. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat the past. For decades, analysts have been warning that the fluid and free-flowing Brazilian soccer template with its carefree naivety and lack of meticulous focus is very vulnerable to the relentless Panzer-like soccer of the Germans and the sublime cynicism of the Italians and Spaniards. In 1982, not even the magic of Eder, Socrates, Zico, Junior and Falcao could save a brilliant and iconic Brazilian team from the relentless goal-poaching of Paulo Rossi.
A week ago, everything, including the God of soccer, came together seamlessly this time for the Brazilians in the Olympics soccer final against the inevitable Germans. It was a Brazilian team redolent of future greatness. In an epic feat of national redemption, the Brazilians have managed to overcome the unrestrained flamboyance and lack of coordination. The soccer still flowed as if the masters were dancing to the samba. The brilliant individual flourish remained and so did the deft magical passing.
But the Brazilians have learnt how to โkillโ space going forward and to quickly fall back when dispossessed. In the event, the game stalemated into a deadly midfield duel with neither side wanting to take unwarranted chances which could disrupt the rigid militarized formation. In the ensuing penalty shoot-out, it was Neymar da Silva Santos junior, the eccentric Brazilian genius, who made the difference. Politically, economically and in the soccer department that mattered most to the nation, the Brazilians have come back from the dead.
This inspiring Brazilian double miracle commends itself to a nation like Nigeria as it struggles to overcome its internal difficulties. It is brimming with tropes of redemptive resources. Like the Congo Democratic Republic, this mammoth former colony also shares some major similarities with Nigeria. They are both domains of immense natural resources and variegated economic possibilities.
But Brazil could have been in a worse shape than Nigeria. Although Portugal was technically the very first modern nation-state dating back to the twelfth century, the ancient Portuguese were bearers of a rudimentary modernity shot through with pre-modern irrationality and superstitious fetishes. In terms of civilization and enlightenment they were only marginally better than the ancient Africans they enslaved. But they had superior firepower and a genius for global seafaring.
Yet since the Portuguese had no conception or concept of the nation-state, all their prized overseas possessions, including Brazil itself, were treated as a mere extension or ancillary to the metropolitan homeland. At a point all the colonies were incorporated into the metropole in the first tri-continental kingdom the world has seen. At another point when the Iberian heat became threatening the entire Portuguese royalty relocated to Brazil and this was the case until a series of local revolts put an end to the royal road show.
This was why all the Portuguese colonies in Africa, Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau, descended into huge infernos of war and chaos as the struggle for liberation and decolonization got underway. You cannot give what you donโt have. Portugal itself underwent a revolution to see off its ancient ruling caste only in the last quarter of the last century. But all this was mere antiquated stirring in a superannuated feudal tea cup. It was a case of the blind leading the blind.
Yet unlike their indigenous African counterparts, the Brazilian white-settler ruling class have taken the task of modernizing their colonial behemoth far more seriously. This has proved the difference between Brazil and Nigeria. In constant and continuous exertions lasting almost six hundred years, the Brazilians have seen off their colonial conquerors, their imported royalty, their meddlesome military and lately their hegemonic white master-class currently fighting a rearguard battle for a return to the retrogressive status quo. Nigeria has not even thrown up an organic and cohesive nationalist ruling elite.
So while we are ruing the paucity of medals from Rio, let us also remember that this is a reflection of the endemic Nigerian disease of confusing the symptom with the real ailment. Medals are for heroic and well-organized nations. Until a truly modernizing elite arrive that will drive accelerated development and deepen the democratic process in Nigeria, medals will be few and far between. This is the lesson of the Brazilian miracles.
