These acts diminish us

The games we play help us to understand our institutions, one; the games we play also help to sustain our institutions, two; so, when the games we play do not coincide with our commanding institutions of democratic governance, what are the consequences? There is no connection between our governing institutions and the games we play and enjoy.

All games teach, no, all games preach the supremacy of rules and regulations. All games preach obedience to the rules of the game. All games respect the referee who sees that the rules of the game are obeyed. Not only that. The referee punishes those who break the rules. They are cautioned. If they persist, they are sent out of the field. They withdraw in shame and disgrace. Games preach and teach fairness.

Open Ayo is a game we do not play as much as we should. This African board game survives in the Caribbean as well as the other geographies of our diaspora. Basically open Ayo inculcates the skill of accumulating seeds until one player has more than the other and wins the game. The instrument of maximum accumulation in playing Ayo is ‘odu’ which can be rendered as capital plus interest. When you apply your ‘odu’ correctly, your opponent is done for, finished. Your opponent is weakened by great loss.

But he has enough seeds to continue the game to its end. This is because the cardinal point of the opon Ayo game is that you cannot take every seed from your opponent even if your ‘odu’ has earned such an outcome. Because the game must go on, and your opponent must have seeds to play with you cannot ‘je odu run’, you cannot ruin the game and make it impossible for the game, for life, to go on.

There is another game played when I was growing up in Akure. It is called ‘arin’ . Seeds as large as pigeons’ egg are arranged in rows of three lines and sets of up to six. Each side would take turns sending its collection of seeds after the seeds of their opponents to knock them off and capture them. The art was in the dexterity and the fluency of sending the seeds to knock off the other seeds. The attacking seeds must dance, weave, sail to its objective and hit it! The side that knocks off the seeds of their opponent wins. The playing of ‘arin’ provides a praise name for anyone named Ojo which says Ojo fights as the fluid and smooth playing of the game of ‘arin’. Does this description of ‘arin’ remind you of billiards?

Cheating is diminishes the cheater. Those who watch a game wish and hope that they are watching a game in which the rules and regulations are operating. They expect, those who participate in the game expect to be participating on an equal access to the rules and regulations of the game. But there is still cheating. There are prescribed punishments for those who cheat. There are no situations in which the captain of a football team would make a case for having two or three players more than the regulation eleven because the members of the other team are taller or heavier than the players of his or her team. Ken Saro Wiwa wrote a short story of this nature where a Nigerian side wanted such immunity. The referee would not hear of such. When Nigerian politicians cheat the Nigerian public, their cheating acts diminish us.

Stealing diminishes the thief. Those who steal far more than what can satisfy their need or want are the more diminished until they are merely dwarfs. By a deft movement of the hand you could collect more than your share of the seeds in opon Ayo. By other more open acts of aggressive accumulation it is possible to steal more than we should in a place where stealing is the norm, governed by stealing rules and regulations. Still we are diminished if the only way we can earn our daily bread is by stealing.

What is stolen ultimately goes to waste as illustrated by the little story of the three thieves. Having thieves the neighbourhood to nonsense, in their surfeit, they send one of them to get sumptuous food and drink to consume while they share their loot. The one sent to buy food and drink poisons the victuals and the two left behind shoot the one who brought the food before settling down to each the poisoned food and drinking the poisoned champagne.

Greed diminishes the alajeju’, which should translate as ‘greeder’ as someone who is greedy but English does not have a word for it and not versatile enough to coin one, up till now. There used to be an English saying that said there was enough in the world for our need but not enough for our greed. The English of today holds its nose and say Greed is Good. Billions of physical naira, dollars, euros, pounds buried in farms, piled into soak aways, stuffed into water tanks tell of the uselessness of greed. A man who buys cars for his grand children stands fooled by greed: who says cars would be alive when his grand children live?

When the day comes that a player asks for immunity to break the rules and regulations of the game that day is the end of the game. There is nothing more to play. We are getting to the end of the political game in Nigeria. Yet, everything we know tells us that rascality, pomposity cannot be the game. Rather, contrition and a readiness to repent, take the punishment that reconciles us to our fellow men and women, this is the way to the game of life. Returning a fraction of what we stole, hiding the fruits of our cheating in broad day light, and singing the praises of greed is the path to perdition. We may giants but we are diminished by cheating, by stealing, by greed. We are dwarfs. Moral dwarfs.