My love of sport never goes beyond enjoying the entertainment of contests and confirmation of who was best on the day. So, it is interesting that I find proceedings at the Athletics World Championships of 2015 and other sports related developments providing backdrop for my take on the whole year.

Beijing’s Bird’s Nest became a frontline in the enduring war between good and bad in August 2015. On the 23rd day of that month, good faced bad in the Men’s 100 Metres Final. Good came as Usain Bolt. The “two-time drugs cheat” Justin Gatlin represented bad. Technology confirmed Bolt had taken his frame from the starting gun’s bang to the finish line in 9.79 seconds – a mere one hundredth of a second quicker than Gatlin. This gave hope that good can conquer bad. Four days later, they lined up again for double the distance – the 200 Metres. Like the first time, speed was needed; but this time, endurance was a major factor. In not a lot more than nineteen seconds after the bang, good crossed the finish line with a margin over bad that didn’t need technology’s sanction. Good had prevailed over bad twice – and did so more convincingly when endurance counted. What a shame all the battles between good and bad couldn’t be as quickly and decisively resolved.

In 2015, good locked horns with bad more frequently and in more situations than I can remember. There was no shortage of calls on our humanity, our sense of duty, our moral courage and our physical bravery by events from which hope couldn’t emerge in less than ten seconds or good’s endurance be confirmed in under twenty.

The year started with thousands of us placed in the Mano River Union region in a face-off with the scariest health emergency of my lifetime. The latter months of 2014 had seen humanity, courage and utter bravery place many in a part of the world some would have struggled to point out on a map. As 2015 settled in, hope came through stabilising and then falling rates of new Ebola Virus Disease infections. Unfortunately, progress didn’t happen without the odd tussle with badness. In the midst of unimaginable suffering and undignified dying there were still deliberate acts of badness and silliness of the sort that blights much of Africa. Challenging the “carry on regardless” footing of some became a task in its own right. Nonetheless, remaining mission-focussed, we progressed quicker than projected and some of us were even recovered from the affected region earlier than expected. Today, Sierra Leone has been “Ebola Free” for nearly eight weeks. Guinea, where it all started two years ago, has just been granted that status this week and we hope Liberia will join her neighbours in three weeks so the region can be declared Ebola Free. I feel great pride and deep satisfaction from knowing that Sierra Leoneans, based in country or from abroad, have ended 2015 doing the family reunions and unions of families they always save for Christmas time but couldn’t do twelve months ago.

Welcoming me back to the United Kingdom in early March was a general election campaign. The rights to represent the people, govern them, and even influence events in places very far away from home were at stake. This is what the constitution, albeit unwritten, dictates should happen and that is what was going to be. Unfortunately, what should be is not necessarily what does be and in Sierra Leone there were changes very close to the top and much arguing about whether it was all constitutional. Yet another African constitution was being made fit for a place on a shelf at ‘Toys R Us’. Hope for good disappeared as the profession charged with defending and projecting the law sheepishly capitulated. Able people had failed to become good people. It was difficult to understand that after all the country had been through, all the pain and all the devastation, Putinesque type machinations were to became the order of the day. Students of Sierra Leone’s history will appreciate the similarity to the repeat offender at the Bird’s Nest starting lines. More so, akin to revelations by the recent World Anti-Doping Agency report on Russia’s doping programme for athletes, people who could have stood up for good had chosen to do otherwise or nothing.

It would come to pass as the year rolled on that lessons had either not been learnt or were just being deliberately or callously dismissed, and this did not only apply to my mother continent.

The recurring themes I see in discussions and analysis of threats to us all include poverty, terrorism and crises of leadership. For me, the greatest crime remains poverty because it has always seemed fixable but faces a wall of resistance in the damn-right unwillingness to do something about it.

The world’s resource-richest continent has the greatest degrees of poverty and depravation while it’s leaders play games with the rules, fly around the world to get services their people cannot even dream of, and then blame everyone else for the hard time they are supposedly going through.

Going back to that epidemic, you don’t need to have been cloned from the DNA of Einstein or Solomon to appreciate that capacity and capability issues in the health service were largely to blame for Ebola’s grip on that region. Yet, much of the recent chatter in Sierra Leone is about a new airport that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars with hardly audible mention of hospitals, sanitation systems, water management infrastructure, investment in education or improvement to electricity generation. I can only think of this as placing a noose of debt around the necks of children in whose education and welfare there has been no investment. That sacred duty, that each generation facilitates a better life for the next generation is being abdicated with breath-taking ease. The next generation is being trained for the high jump using the Western Roll and a sandpit while all else will be doing the Fosbury Flop onto a nicely cushioned pad.

What about Nigeria? Twenty months on and the Chibok girls are still missing. Despite claims of a “technical victory” by government forces, Boko Haram still disrupts, dislocates and destroys at will and Africa’s giant, with all its riches in natural and human resources, struggles with the basics of reliable power generation and has been found shockingly wanting in matters of national security. Of course, there was much praise for the hapless Goodluck Jonathan when he conceded defeat to General Buhari at the presidential elections. I saw in this a huge problem? Why so much praise for doing what he had to do but no calling to account for failing to do what he had promised to do and was elected to get on with? Imagine what would happen if we praised football managers for simply selecting a team and didn’t hold them responsible for the team’s failure to win matches.

In South Africa, Jacob Zuma continues to demonstrate he is a man out of his depth and irrelevant to his time. His best act remains breaking into liberation struggle songs with a swagger of his well-nourished body. Mr Zuma, the people got freedom from political oppression a couple of decades ago. What they need now is for you to stop playing games with the country’s affairs and coffers so they can find hope and security through economic growth and jobs. South Africa has potential to bring so much good to Africa but has since Mandela relinquished the presidency been cursed by issues of leadership – leaders who turn up for soccer matches carrying oblong balls.

Let’s go global now. We have the threat of Daesh, the so-called Islamic State, and all the other extremist groups who have hijacked a whole faith for their wicked purposes. These groups have decided to act on God’s behalf on earth though the book they supposedly get guidance from places sole responsibility for judgment and punishment in God’s hand. In the process, they have given new meaning to intolerance as well as given opportunity for others to preach intolerance. They have beheaded charity workers and museum curators, gunned down people in public places and blown up others at thousands of feet above the ground. As many flee this violence, humanity has kicked in to offer relief and strangers have been welcomed into communities far away from home. However, we have also seen bigotry from some who would have you believe they are more civilised than the religious extremists while, often for personal ambition, latching on to narrow-mindedness not dissimilar to what they supposedly condemn. Imagine turning up for the Olympics only to find that the only sport will be weight lifting… and only in one category for that matter.

So, the USA’s Donald Trump and France’s Marine Le Pen can spew bile as they seek power and claim superiority to peoples of other faiths and races. In Trump’s case, he has in addition to attacking Muslims, had a go at Africans, been disrespectful to women, and mocked disabled people. It’s OK when people with more money than sense buy gadgets. It becomes a lot more serious when they can buy airtime and reach into and poison the minds of millions. The media and world leaders have seemingly chosen which of his utterances to find revolting just as they have decided which of the world’s problems to find shocking. We therefore hear not a lot about Anti-Balaka in the Central African Republic whose only purpose is to exterminate Islam; or of Uganda’s Lord Resistance Army which enables a self-licking lollipop of a leader to terrorise and abuse people for no defined reasons; or of the violations of human rights of some of the supposedly acceptable countries we have to do business with. Real politik is the apparent order of the day and beheadings or other violations of rights are allowed to pass if the victims are carefully chosen or the ideology that carries them sits comfortably with whoever’s approval is needed. Suddenly, we have referees going into football matches with definitions of foul caveated by who played the tackle.

In the final analysis, it seems crises of leadership have to different extents afflicted much of the world. Leadership has become a need for its own sake rather than for the power to do good. No matter what the problem, the leaders of the world’s nations have seemed increasingly unable to inspire their people or been too focussed on vague agendas to appreciate the bigger picture. With the current migrant crisis in Europe, we acknowledge Daesh as a real and present danger at the same time as we are suspicious of people trying to flee its campaign of terror. Of course, we change with the headlines. We suddenly accept there is a problem when the body of a three-year-old gets washed up on a Turkish beach because we couldn’t see that so many wouldn’t choose to up sticks and face the dangers of open seas just for the sake of benefits elsewhere. At the same time, we fail to act or dither about doing something when challenged to do so – which leads me on to the whole debate about bombing raids in Syria – an example of the penalty spot’s position and the size of the goals changing between and even during matches.

Whichever side you are on, there was to me absolute confirmation of the crises of leadership in the world when it came to the business of what to do with Daesh. It had been agreed in 2013 to conduct air assaults against the groups positions in Iraq but not across the border in Syria. Pretty interesting and not very clever to compartmentalise your efforts on the basis of international borders against an enemy who doesn’t recognise or restrict itself to these borders. When it came to it, shenanigans within the British opposition Labour Party couldn’t be more worrying. The Party was walloped at the May general elections after entering that contest with a leader many believed had the right surname but wrong first name. Ed Miliband incurred the wrath of so many when he challenged and then defeated his brother David for the leadership of the party in 2010 and couldn’t shake off what looked like punishment for disloyalty to his older sibling. The man couldn’t even eat a sandwich without making all of us laugh. Changes he made to the party’s leadership election rules helped thrust Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the party. Corbyn is anti-war and we know that. I am also anti-war but, unlike Corbyn, not at any cost. So, a man whose supporters are known by the explosives-like sounding term – Corbynites – was totally opposed to action against Daesh in Syria considered dragging his parliamentarians into the same voting lobby as himself. It all got messy and the resulting ding-dong in parliament was not fitting for a debate on a matter as serious as this was. The team arrived at the stadium not sure of which sport they were there to play.

Meantime, leaders in other places were playing their games. Mr Putin was as angry with Daesh for bringing down a plane with Russian tourists as he was keen to keep Bashir Assad in the Syrian Presidential Palace. Turkeys Mr Erdogan dislikes Mr Assad, wants to look after ethnic Turks in Syria, and also keen to be part of the alliance against Daesh. Once all these agendas were put in combat aircraft traveling at more than the speed of sound, we got the accident many experts had warned was waiting to happen. Here they were, supposedly playing in the same match and not so bothered about who won; Who took the ball home seemed the main concern.

I cannot go without mentioning that gathering in Paris to talk about what sort of planet we were going to leave the next generation. Never mind the many threats we cannot even get consensus on tackling together, there is the not so minor matter of Climate Change. They talked and talked and had reminders of the consequences of inaction shown to them. The consensus came down to a certain number of countries responsible for a certain proportion of harmful emissions signing up to some agreement anytime in the twelve months from April 2016. Yep, the wait of less than half-a-minute for technology to confirm Bolt had won the 100 Metres Final didn’t seem that long after all.

Having said all this, what matters most to me is the lessons we learn and the attitudes we take forward. At the start lines in the Bird’s Nest, one man was depicted as bad though he wasn’t the only “drugs cheat”. Unlike other cheats who publicly expressed regret and even offered to help the authorities make athletics drugs free, Justin Gatlin has shown no contrition and has even tried to be clever with excuses that couldn’t hold water. We live in a world that isn’t perfect because we who make it up are not perfect. There are rules we need to play by in order to build trust and allow space for all of us to peacefully co-exist. Much of the bad I observed in 2015 came from some people thinking only they and their ways should be allowed space to thrive. They were therefore willing to take extreme measures to have their way. Where good prevailed over bad, the evidence is of hard work and determination to make that the case. The struggle is an enduring one but I still believe good can and will conquer bad because I actually do believe in us as a species…

Happy New Year to you all.