The bids are in. It is going to be Glasgow or Abuja for the 2014 Commonwealth Games. The one is a nest of corruption and inter-religious factionalism, with abject poverty, elections nobody trusts and an oil wealth that has been shamefully squandered and scandalously expropriated. But that’s Scotland for you.
I have a thing about the sporting event formerly known as the Empire Games and have done ever since they came to my home town, Edinburgh, in 1970.
I was nine and all that stuff about the 2012 Olympics inspiring kids resonates, because those games had a big impact on me. When I am relentlessly pounding the streets of South London (jogging like Jimmy Savile), I still think of Lachie Stewart, his face contorted in agony, hurting for his country, reaching deep inside and winning the 10 000m gold for Scotland.
It’s a niche memory, I grant you, but many’s the time it has got me out of the park, past the launderette, round the corner and home in a blaze of glory.
So how do the two bids and the two cities compare? In standard, they are much of a muchness. They both look magnificent. Glasgow is vibrant but venerable, a green games, forward-looking but steeped in tradition. Abuja is purpose-built and steeped in chrome and bougainvillea. The Nigerian capital is a stunning cityscape — Ridley Scott meets Richard Rogers.
It may or may not trouble you, however, to know the government Minister Nasir el-Rufai said, after bulldozing some ”illegal” housing, it was not a city for the poor. He later clarified: ”We are not saying Abuja is not for poor people, but it is definitely not a city for idlers either.”
There’s another contrast with Glasgow then.
My Edinburgh prejudice notwithstanding, Glasgow must be in pole position. You see, there are one or two problems with Abuja in particular and Nigeria in general and I don’t just mean demolition men.
I might best explain by adducing Article 2 of the Commonwealth Games Federation Constitution, which earnestly promotes ”gender equality and tolerance”; or Article 7, which says ”there shall be no discrimination against any country or person on any grounds whatsoever, including race, colour, gender, religion or politics”.
That is clear enough, then, and that is Abuja scuppered, then.
Nigeria’s criminal code states that anyone who has ”carnal knowledge of any person against order of nature, or permits a male to have carnal knowledge of him” is liable to 14 years in prison.
Currently going through Parliament is the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, which slaps a five-year sentence on anyone who ”performs, witnesses, aids or abets the ceremony of same-sex marriage” and also on anyone involved ”publicly or privately in positive representation of or for same-sex relationships”.
Sharia law, operating in many northern states, holds it is God’s requirement that gay people should be stoned to death but, to be thankful for small mercies, Abuja is not in the north. Frankie says Relax.
Homophobia seems to be all the rage in Nigeria.
The Lagos Guardian makes the Daily Telegraph letters page look like the Gay Times.
How’s this: ”From what I can see, the law attempts to prevent the decadence of Western societies on the issue of homosexuality such as gay marriage [a contradiction in terms] and adoption of children by gay couples [a travesty; if people want children, let them marry people of the opposite sex]. What is wrong with that? Tomorrow, if the Western world decides that paedophilia is OK, must we agree with them?”
There are, of course, myriad and labyrinthine arguments here about moral relativism, double standards, sport, politics and boycotts.
After the cancelled cricket tour, is Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Australia right when he says politics has no place in sport? Of course he isn’t, but what about Beijing? And remember the 1980 Moscow Olympic boycott.
Was that not over some superpower invasion of Afghanistan? Moving swiftly on, the fact is that, by its own hardly lofty but merely perfectly reasonable principles, the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) has disqualified many of its own members from ever holding the games. What a world.
Mike Hooper, the chief executive of the CGF, was rather short with me when I asked him about Nigeria’s human rights problems. ”As to the final decision-making of our membership and whatever issues they take into account and how they cast their vote — that is a matter for them.”
With respect, it is not. It is surely a matter for the Constitution, and the Constitution says ”no”.
I rang Ben Summerskill from Stonewall. He said: ”The games are meant to be a celebration of high ideals, as well as sportsmanship. To invite people to a country where they are liable to be imprisoned, seems inimical to any claim they’re keen to engage them in competitive sport.”
The games belong to Glasgow. Can I be the first to congratulate them? — Â