Should honour given to a person in remembrance of the person be removed when the person’s life is later found irresponsible?
Let me start by citing a very common and recent scenario. The 2025 AFCON (Africa Cup of Nations) concluded in January, and the honour for Fair Play Team was given to Morocco, the host nation. Meanwhile, there were some disgraceful occurrences during the final match between Morocco and Senegal. The organisers stated that they were going to look into the incidents after the tournament had ended and prosecute individuals and nations that violated the rules. However, awards and honours had already been given at that point.
A few weeks after the tournament, the organisers concluded their investigations and found the Moroccan team, Senegalese team, fans, and individuals guilty of various offences. The Moroccan team was fined heavily, alongside some individual members such as Hakimi.
When the announcement was made, everyone started asking, "What about the Fair Play Team honour that was given to Morocco? Won’t it be retracted since they do not deserve it?"
A big question, but nothing could be done because the honour had already been awarded and could not be taken back. As it stands, the organisers could only justify why they refused to retrieve the honour given to the team.
Did I give you my answer to the question already? Yes! It would be disgraceful and embarrassing both to the person or group awarded the honour and to the people who awarded it (the awarders). To avoid excessive explanations that would still not satisfy the masses, the honour should be left unchanged.
In most situations, if you look closely, there is the possibility that the person awarded was actually a good person, someone who made a good name, did good things for the people, but had just one bad record. Despite this, people would still want the honour retrieved.
Now, if the current president of Nigeria, whom a lot of people don't like, happens to die, the nation will surely give him some honours by attaching facilities such as schools, airports, stadiums, and others to his name. And if, peradventure, a reason arises in the future for those honours to be taken down, you will see that although he may not have done a good number of good things in the country as a leader and president, people will pinpoint all his bad acts and never remember the good he did.
Ohhh! You want to say that the president of Nigeria has not done any good at all? Mehn, to be a leader of Nigeria is a big task, and anyone who gets that title deserves some level of honour. Lol.😂 But that is the truth, we may not know the battles he is fighting secretly just to keep Nigeria in good standing beyond what we see on social media.
In a nutshell, there was a reason the person was invested with the honour in the first place. Let the honour remain to avoid unending explanations.
Thanks for reading.
This is my entry to Week 204, Edition 02 of the Weekly Featured contest in Hive Learners Community
The image used is mine