Described as one that sees the glass as half full and speaks with straightened tongue! Father, Brother, Friend: Lawyer by trade ⚖️ & elite athlete by passion 🏏
@UgandaRugby@piratesrugbyUG Absolutely gutting news to hear the passing of a sporting titan of his time…Gone waaaaaay too soon 💔
Prayers of strength to his family…🙏
Nike sponsored Roger Federer for 24 years, and then let him go.
A Japanese tailor’s son paid him $300 million dollars, and launched a global, multi-billion dollar clothing megabrand.
In 458 BC, Rome was on the brink of collapse.
An invading army had trapped the Roman consul and his legion in a mountain pass. Panic spread through the city. The Senate did the only thing they could think of:
They sent messengers to find a 60-year-old farmer plowing his field.
His name was Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus. He had once been a senator, then lost his fortune paying his son's bail. Now he worked his own four-acre plot just to feed his family.
When the Senate's envoys arrived, they found him sweating behind a plow. They asked him to put on his toga so they could deliver an official message.
The message: Rome was making him dictator. Absolute power. Total command of the army. No checks. No oversight. No term limit.
He accepted.
Within 16 days, Cincinnatus had raised an army, marched out, surrounded the enemy, and forced their surrender. The republic was saved.
He had legal authority to rule for six months. He could have stayed. He could have expanded his power. He could have done what every other ruler in human history did when handed unlimited control.
Instead, he resigned on day 16.
He took off the toga, walked back to his farm, and finished plowing the field he'd left half-done.
Twenty years later, when Rome faced another crisis, they called him back. He was 80 years old. He took command, crushed the conspiracy, and resigned again, this time after just 21 days.
He died poor. On his farm.
2,200 years later, when George Washington was offered a kingship after winning the American Revolution, he refused and went home to Mount Vernon. The reason he was hailed as "the American Cincinnatus" is because Europeans literally could not believe a man who had won would willingly give up power.
King George III, on hearing Washington would resign rather than rule, said: "If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
The lesson isn't that Cincinnatus was humble.
The lesson is that for most of human history, the people most qualified to lead were the ones who didn't want to. And the moment a society starts rewarding those who chase power instead of those who flee from it is the moment the republic begins to die.
Cincinnati, Ohio is named after him.
Most people who live there have no idea why.
If you’re a corporate lawyer or you engage in corporate litigation, you need to read the case of F.C.M.B. v. Abdul Gafaru & Co. Ltd. (2026) 6 NWLR (Pt. 2038) 179.
In this case, the Supreme Court held that although a registered company upon incorporation becomes a legal entity and acquires a separate and distinct personalty from its owners, such company cannot claim damages for injured feelings and emotional distress like a natural human being. The implication is that when seeking damages on behalf of a company, you restrict it to pecuniary or proprietary damages but not anything that has to do with feelings and emotions.
The court held as follows:
“Upon incorporation, a company becomes a separate and distinct legal entity, different from its shareholders, who are its owners and from its directors who are its managers. Such a company enjoys perpetual succession and continues to exist notwithstanding any changes in its shareholders or
management. As a legal person, it can own property, enter contracts and conduct business in its own name. The Directors of the company are its human
managers but they are distinct and separate from the personality of the company. The respondents who were the plaintiffs, being registered companies are not natural persons with body, mind, feelings or emotions. Therefore, they cannot suffer pain,
humiliations, trauma or emotional distress in the human sense. They, as companies can claim other pecuniary or proprietary damages but not anything that has to do with feelings and emotions. This is apt because they are artificial personalities without
flesh, blood and soul.”
The above position is logical considering the fact a company is an artificial entity without flesh, blood and soul. In fact, this remains the law until set aside.
Learned colleagues, just for academic purpose, if a company has been given rights of a natural human being and it subsequently acts through its officers and directors, why can’t the same company, “through its directors and officers” claim emotional damages? Kindly share your opinion on this.
Thank you.
Kindly follow for more legal tips and contents.
Nike spent ten years trying to break the 2-hour marathon. They named a project after it. They built special shoes. They paid the greatest marathoner alive to chase it. Yesterday, a Kenyan runner finally did it in 1:59:30, wearing Adidas.
Sabastian Sawe used to be a pacemaker. A pacemaker is the kind of runner you hire to set the speed for the first few miles of a race and then drop out before the finish. In January 2022, Sawe got booked to do exactly that at a half-marathon in Spain. He'd never raced more than three miles in his life. He stayed in for the full 13 and won the whole thing. Adidas signed him not long after. Four years later, he became the first human ever to run an official marathon under 2 hours.
Nike, meanwhile, started this whole project in 2016 with a public goal called "Breaking2." They paid for the shoes, the pacemakers, the science labs, and Eliud Kipchoge himself. Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in Vienna in 2019, but the event was a closed-course exhibition with rotating pacemakers and a pace car projecting a green laser line onto the road. The sport's governing body never recognized it as a real race. It didn't count.
Then Nike's running business cratered. Digital sales fell 26% in one quarter. Their share of footwear sold at Dick's Sporting Goods went from 39% to 32% in five months. On Running grew from $330 million to $1.8 billion between 2020 and 2025. Hoka nearly quadrupled. Roger Federer left Nike for On. Nike's board fired the CEO in October 2024.
Adidas spent the same period building a better shoe. The new Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 took three years to develop. It weighs 97 grams, about 3.4 ounces, lighter than a deck of cards. A Wall Street Journal-cited study found that wearing a shoe 3.5 ounces lighter saves a runner around 57 seconds across a marathon. Sawe beat the third-place finisher by 58 seconds.
Adidas also did something Nike never did for Kipchoge. They wrote a $50,000 check to the official anti-doping body for track and field, asking it to test Sawe more aggressively than any other runner alive. He got tested 25 times in the two months before last year's Berlin Marathon, and Adidas signed up to fund this for the length of his contract. The logic: the moment Sawe ran a marathon this fast, the world was going to ask if he cheated, especially after his countrywoman Ruth Chepngetich got a 3-year doping ban in 2025. Adidas got out ahead of it.
The shoe retails at $500 and is barely available. Adidas's Adizero shoes won half of all major marathon races in 2024. Yesterday in London, four of the top five finishers wore the same Adidas shoe. Yomif Kejelcha crossed the line 11 seconds after Sawe and also broke 2 hours. The top three runners all beat the previous world record.
Nike's only response was an Instagram post. Three sentences long: "The clock has been reset. There is no finish line." That was their entire public reaction to losing a 10-year moonshot to their biggest rival.
What a month…from officiating the toss between USA v Uganda alongside the ambassador, a surprise birthday treat from my FUFA family to giving the keynote address on behalf of the sports sector at the celebration of 20 years of NTV…blessings galore 🙏
In 2004, LEGO was on the brink of bankruptcy.
A $230 million loss the year before. Global sales had fallen 29% in a year.
The board brought in a 34-year-old to save it.
His first move was not a strategy deck. It was something most CEOs would never do.
@SideOutAfrica It’s humanly impossible to satisfy everyone…unfortunately not even Jesus was able to do so.
But a just ruling could’ve been sought requiring a lot of accountability, objectivity, hearing of all parties; but more importantly IN THE INTEREST OF THE SPORT TODAY & TOMORROW…
@SideOutAfrica Operational inefficiencies arise from inexistent robust systems heavily relying on human input…once proper systems are in place, human interference gets limited thus reducing both actual & implied bias…