The Nigeria Kit and the price of cool.

During the 2018 World Cup, on the day Nigeria’s World Cup kit had released, I overheard a conversation about it between two enthused fans.

The first guy, like Jay from The Inbetweeners, boasted: ‘’Got the Nigeria Kit mate, buzzing.’’

His friend responded: ‘’What’s the capital city of Nigeria?’’

Jay replied: ‘’Laos? No, no, Lah-Gos’’

The friend laughed off his ignorance and their conversation continued.

I connected that to something I was told earlier in the day. A colleague of mine (another copywriter) described my personality as my ‘’USP’’.

Bit of a moot point pal since everybody’s personality is their USP.

I didn’t take offence to the comment, because I have a strong personality. But I’m a copywriter — not a TV presenter. (That week, a name I had created was initially chosen by a huge corporation to brand a new product of theirs.) So mentioning my personality as my greatest asset, not my penmanship, was in keeping with the typical tropes attached to being black: being cool before all else, being expressive, being entertaining, standing out, being a personality. Having traits others seek, and go out buying products (like Nigeria’s World Cup shirt) to leverage and to feel they have a bit of, too.

Remembering that conversation, then watching the proud new owner of a Nigerian football shirt mistake the capital of Nigeria (twice) with a south-east Asian nation, confirmed a dark truth. The truth that our cultures and our presence will only ever be skin deep, to the masses. It’s a pick and mix attitude to culture. Plucked and peeled at will, with the least interesting parts taken as emblematic (the look of it; a football shirt) and the interesting parts - the actual culture this product signifies - left to be mistaken as Laos.

The incredible design of the collection should really act as a gateway to learning about one of the world’s richest cultures.

Hold on bruv.

It’s a football kit, after all. It does successfully reflect Nigeria’s vibrancy, individuality, attitude and enterprise, though. Traits which all Nigerians proudly carry. Nike have done an excellent job of translating this.

Returning to the office, a place in which I find myself re-educating people about black culture and black people all the time, the Kendrick track playing from the all white start-up company who share office space with us, that day especially, was giving me a headache. Not the music, but all the rest attached to it. I wondered, if I, a 6’’2 black man wasn’t present, would these guys stop going silent when the N-word came in and actually go the whole five words and say it?

Who knew a football shirt would deepen my levels of cultural inquiry?