WHY IS LUCK TREATING US SO?

Nigerians need and crave luck in many aspects of their lives but, if there is one area they would want to pin all their luck on, it would be football; that beautiful, uniting and unifying game a significant (even if decidedly male) chunk of our population are so passionate about. But sadly these last few […]

Nigerians need and crave luck in many aspects of their lives but, if there is one area they would want to pin all their luck on, it would be football; that beautiful, uniting and unifying game a significant (even if decidedly male) chunk of our population are so passionate about. But sadly these last few months and weeks and days, luck has not been on our side, even though we deserve to be the luckiest nation on earth are we not being led by Luck’s first cousin? So Luck, why hast thou forsaken us?

First, we lost the chance to participate in the 2014 World Cup to be hosted by Brazil. Many a Nigerian was unhappy on this ill luck. Then again we lost the chance to participate in the 2012 African Cup of Nations to be co-hosted by Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. For this gargantuan bad luck, a certain coach, after whom a whole stadium was named in the unLucky Long John Sylva State, lost his job. Again, luck was not with us; we have just lost the first two games at the ongoing African U-23 Championships taking place in Morocco, the success of which would have assured us a place at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

To underline the importance of luck in life, the other day we quoted Aesop’s LADY LUCK fable, wherein he had said: “A traveller, wearied from a long journey lay down, overcome with fatigue, on the very brink of a deep well. Just as he was about to fall into the water, Lady Luck appeared to him and, waking him from his slumber said, ‘Good Sir, pray wake up—for if you fall into the well, the blame will be thrown on me, and I shall get an ill name among mortals; for I find that people are sure to impute their calamities to me, however much by their own folly they have really brought them on themselves.’”

Yes, Luck, we impute our footballing calamities to you. Where else do you want us to take our laments? And we ask again: Luck, why hast thou forsaken us?

By dint of bad luck, this November 2011, FIFA’s ranking of footballing nations has placed Nigeria as No. 43 in the world, behind many we have been much better than in the not-so-distant past. But our good luck seemed to hold at very odd times: by 2006, in the heat of the unlucky quest for Third Term, FIFA had ranked us the world’s 9th best footballing nation, while our best ranking ever was No. 5, back in 1994. And if you remember who was at the helm of affairs in that year, you may be right to say our football is luckiest with not-so-lucky fellows.

Luck is good, and we crave it. Like cassava bread. Or is it that one can’t be lucky twice, since we are already a lucky nation? What better opportunity, then, to recall here a story discussed on this page a few years ago, concerning this self-same luck. In the book Autobiography of Siaka Stevens, the one-time President of Sierra Leone had narrated this tale which he said he liked so much:

“There is an old Chinese story about a peasant who lost his only horse. His neighbours said, ‘Your only horse has disappeared. Bad luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ The next day the horse returned, bringing twenty wild horses with him into the peasant’s compound. The neighbours said, ‘You have gained twenty new horses. Good luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’

“Then the peasant’s only son broke a leg training the new horses. The neighbours said, ‘Your only son has broken a leg, and the harvest is at hand. Bad luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?’ Within a few days, soldiers from the Imperial Capital arrived the village and conscripted all the young men, except the boy with the broken leg. The neighbours said, ‘Your son has escaped conscription while ours are all gone. Good luck!’ The peasant replied, ‘Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?’”

Another book, Beyond Coincidence by Martin Palmer and Brian King, also contains several stories of luck, both good and bad. They say: “Take the case of Frenchman Alain Basseux, a laboratory technician working in Wiggington, near York, England. He lost his temper when a motorist cut him up at a roundabout. He chased the offending car for two miles, forced the vehicle to the side of the road, yanked open the door and grabbed the driver by the shirt. At this point he realised that the man he was assaulting was his boss.” Bad luck. We know.

Palmer and King continue: “A heart attack during a remote transatlantic flight might be considered extreme bad luck. It happened to 67-year old Dorothy Fletcher, of Liverpool, on a trip to Florida, but on this occasion good luck swiftly came to the rescue. When the anxious stewardess put out a call for a doctor, 15 cardiologists stepped up. They were on their way to a cardiology conference…” Good luck. We know.

Psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, spent ten years researching into luck, good and bad. He wrote a book The Luck Factor. Lucky people, he found, smiled more. They engaged in more eye contact. They persevere with Chinese puzzles (while unlucky people, he observed, discard them in seconds, convinced they could never solve them).

Lucky people, given a newspaper and told to count the number of photographs, spot the half-page message on page three declaring: LOOK NO FURTHER, THERE ARE 42 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER. Unlucky people, on the other hand, plough on through to the end, oblivious to the opportunity to curtail their task.

Bad luck is rather too easy to come by. Some psychologists argue that misfortune is the natural state of things. The pessimists, they say, have got it right. But good luck is achievable. It requires a measure of blind faith, a huge amount of energy and the ability to see the bad things that happen to you as challenges which will help you become a better person.

Everyone likes luck. Thomas Jefferson once said: “I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.” Added Tennessee Williams: “Luck is believing you are lucky,” while Donald Trump, the extremely lucky multi-billionaire, said: “Everything in life is luck.” Summing it all up, Larry King said: “Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.”

Some superstitions suggest carrying a rabbit’s foot around for good luck. But someone had since reasoned that there is no greater folly than that: that foot did the rabbit no good. Could someone, then, give our footballers a lucky rabbit’s foot next time they play? So then, we end today’s lesson with Jean Cocteau: “I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?”