It may look or sound like a joke, but it’s not a joke. This is serious stuff. And it should begin to focus our individual and collective attention:
Anthony Joshua is taller than every Nigerian he meets. Ouch! That hurt! Next to Joshua, as you probably can see, Tinubullion is a pebble, a grain of sand. But not only is Anthony “head-higher” than any compatriot in his view field, he is also bigger and stronger, finer and fresher. In brief, he has more flesh than most.
But that would easily be explainable. He is rich, very rich, even though he deliberately presents an austere presence; he is famous, very famous, but likes to disappear into crowds – perhaps hoping for anonymity. So he has so much to eat.
Plus, he works those meaty muscles through the pump and iron grid of sparring routines and wowing weight works.
So, the Goliath presence is to be expected. However, the same Anthony Joshua could be walking on the streets of London or New York, or even Johannesburg, and only his famous face would stand out in a crowd. His Brobdingnagian preponderance would almost go unnoticed, diminished or eclipsed by the swarms of well-fed humanity around him.
Which raises large questions, and even larger concerns, about the genetic and nutritional content of the Nigerian population. Are we naturally petite and we haven’t really noticed, until a giant came to town? Or are we brutishly underfed, undernourished, hence, totally unbeknownst to us, covertly rendered smallish?
The latter looks more tempting for an answer.
From crowd pictures of Anthony Joshua in Nigeria, even our soldiers and police – people who should pack copious punches in heights and weights – are like Lilliputians miniatured by Gulliver.
The explanation for it could be as simple as ABC. You don’t need geneticists or nutritionists to filter it or figure it out. We are seeing disturbing evidence of the ongoing, unrelenting, brutal and savage assault on Nigerians’ living standards by the ruthlessly avaricious and mean Criminal Enterprise Of Nigeria (CEON) – that foul and filthy fraternity of vultures, vampires and Komodo dragons we erroneously call our “leaders.”
Years and decades of their relentless strangulation, suffocation and asphyxiation of the Nigerian people – using their bare hands, virtual garrottes and other improvised instruments of cold-blooded mass murder – have quietly kept Nigerians from growing in height and weight.
The sad thing is that we are totally oblivious to it. We don’t even know it. Oh dear! Oh – My – God!!!
