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As an experiment carried out on Manchester United Football Club fans demonstrate, patriotism thrives when we all have a "Common Ground". In the experiment, psychologists in the UK recruited fans of Manchester United Club for a study. When walking from one building to another, the soccer fans saw a runner slip and fall holding his ankle and screaming in pain. Did the fans help? It depended on the T-shirt that the man in pain was wearing. When he wore a Manchester United T-shirt, 92% helped. Yale University Psychologist, Jack Dovidio calls this "Activating a common identity". "If we help people who belong to our group, we are also helping ourselves, as we are making the group better". But there were very interesting dimensions to the experiment. When the man in pain wore a Liverpool FC T-shirt, only 30% helped. Why? Before the staged "accident" the Man U fans had been made to write about why Man U was their favourite team, how long they have supported the Club, how often they watched them play, and how they feel when the team won or lost. So, the fans were thinking about themselves as Man U fans, hence the vast majority of them didn't want to help their enemy. (Can you even imagine if the man in pain was wearing the T-shirt of "Noisy Neighbours", Manchester City?). But still of more interest was the following variation. Instead of writing about why they loved Man U, another set of fans wrote about why they were soccer fans, what it meant to them, and what they had in common with other fans. When these fans encountered the man who twisted his ankle and in pains, 80% helped him if he was wearing a Man U T-shirt. 70% helped him if he was wearing a Liverpool T-Shirt. But imagine this: Only 22% helped him if he was wearing a plain T-shirt! Here's the lesson for Nigeria at 100 as we continue to struggle to build a UNITED country: "When we look at a rival (someone from another tribe or religion, etc) as a fellow soccer fan (as a fellow Nigerian) rather as an enemy, we can identify with the person". "Oftentimes, we fail to identify with the people because we're thinking about ourselves - or them - in terms that are too specific and narrow". Warm regards and I wish you the very best in the New Year! HAPPY New Year!