Being Undeniable
A reflection on what it actually means to be good enough.
On the night of the final day of the All-Nigeria University Debating Championship (ANUDC), 2026. There I was, sitting in the dining room of one of the guesthouses at the host university, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt. The music was blasting loudly from the window, which housed a myriad of voices of people who were getting ready for the last socials of the week-long tournament. I was in between judging an online debate round and probably trying to design something for a possible deadline I couldn’t afford to miss this time — I had pushed back too many times before now — when Dutchman — former champion and best speaker (and also my union’s immediate past president) — walked up, sat next to me, and said, “Hey, man! I heard what happened. I think ‘nationals’ has been unkind to you the most”. For those of you who know about my history in debating with nationals and have watched me grow from 2023 till now, you probably know why those words matter in the way they do. For those who don’t, the next few paragraphs should probably give you a piece of context that’ll explain the weight of those words.
Hi, my name is Tivlumun Alexander, and I’m a debater who represented a certain university for 4 years consecutively at the highest national level. I’ve been a top-10 new speaker and runner-up novice champion in my first 3 months of joining the sport, top-10 best speaker twice (3rd & 7th best speaker), back-to-back semi-finalist (2025 & 2026), and one-time finalist (2024) across 4 consecutive editions of the same national tournament (ANUDC 2023–2026). And maybe that’s why those words from Dutchman have so much weight and significance, because in all these achievements, there seems to be no mention of ever clinching the trophy, of being named the champion of this very competition I seemed to have left an undeniable mark on.
It is often said that a moving man would one day find his luck; well, in my case, I moved for 4 years, and one can say that I never found that luck. But when I look back at myself, the things I achieved, the things I did, and the union I come from. I sort of realized that I had met my luck a long time ago. The issue is, I never truly acknowledged it, and kept beating myself down in a way that made me believe that I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t even deserving. I realized that across my 4 years, I substituted the fact that I was consistent, not just at showing up, but consistent at being, if not the best, but one of the best, being in the conversation, and consistently proving to those who ever thought that I was an imposter that I was anything but. And this is important because, all my undergraduate debate life, I wasn’t fighting to win the trophy; I was fighting to prove myself to an audience who already knew I was good enough, but just wouldn’t admit it. And perhaps, that is the biggest reason for the unkindness Dutchman mentioned at the guesthouse that night.
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You see, I’ve debated in numerous tournaments across the last 4 years; I’ve won a few trophies, and reached certainly higher heights than I ever did across my years at ANUDC. But there are a few reasons why I’ve decided to dedicate this “rant-piece” to Nationals:
- It is the first tournament I ever attended — well, at least physically. It is the tournament that made me, my breakout, my first introduction to the circuit, and the place where I told myself, “I probably want to be doing this for a very long time”. Some of the most crucial relationships I have — the friends, the mentors — were all born from that very attendance at Veritas University in 2023.
- It is one of the only tournaments where I always felt the most pressure to do well. The preparation and eventual competition at Nationals are usually the most tumultuous times of my life; they are the times when my mental and physical health are pushed to their very limits. My anxiety levels are at their highest; my body cannot digest food, and my brain is overloaded from hours of prep. It is undeniably the most intense moment of my very existence. The pressure here is both inward and outward. Inward in the sense that I want to prove myself and know if I still have it. Outward in the sense that I would have people like my coaches, Dutchman, and other alumni constantly breathing down my neck about why I needed to remain at a high level or else.
- And finally, it is the tournament where I had what I would call my magnum opus performance while still simultaneously feeling like the individual who achieved nothing. Nationals 2024 — also at Veritas University — in many ways defined the kind of debater many in the circuit have come to know me as. I emerged as the top qualifying team after 7 preliminary rounds of intellectual torture, made it to the finals an somehow ended up not having even a single speaker medal to show for what some would call a debating masterpiece of a performance. Owolabi, the former president of my union and the champion of ANUDC that year (we were both in the final in 2024), once described the entire ordeal as one of the “greatest mysteries of the Nigerian debate circuit”. May sound like an exaggeration, but if you truly understand how debate tournaments work and what it means to break first at a tournament where you even beat the overall best speaker twice in the prelims, you’re likely to scratch your head at what the heck happened at nationals 2024. Simply put, it was an anomaly, and whether it was as a result of a carefully planned series of hidden events, I guess we’ll never know.
The reason I wrote this essay was not just to talk about myself and the things I’ve achieved debating at a very high level. The point of this essay was to reflect on what exactly being undeniable meant to me as a debater from one of the greatest unions in Nigeria — if not the greatest union (you can make the case for your union — I’m genuinely interested in what that yields), what it means to me as a person seeking self-development and perfection of a craft I claim to love, and also what that means for you reading this essay who relates in one way or the other. I wanted to do this through the eyes of a competition that showed me what it meant to be all the way up, what determination looked like, what having people stunned at your ability to be better than the rest felt like, but also showed me what it meant to be low felt like, what questioning yourself actually meant, what being a success truly meant outside the gaze of admiration and applause.
Nationals 2026 was my last physical tournament as an undergraduate debater, and how befitting — a full-circle moment, for real. Four editions on, and look at how much has changed. I’ve pictured so many ways it should have ended, and ultimately, I wished things ended differently (with me winning the damn thing, of course). However, I’m not sad about how things have ended. In fact, I’m happy; I’m even fulfilled. Why? Because I realized that unlike so many of my contemporaries, I was never fighting to just win; I was fighting to be undeniable. To know that even if I never got to hold that trophy, it was not an indictment of my nationals’ story, but an unfortunate outcome of a lottery that is often beyond our control. At the end of the day, nationals is a big tournament, with about 500 total participants on average each year, all with the intention to win it — sometimes by any means necessary. This means the best are not necessarily those who simply come and take the silverware; they are those who distinguish themselves from the rest. That 1% who strike fear into the hearts of many just by being there, on tab, in draws, and on the list. For me, that is what it means to be undeniable. And whether you agree or not, I have a track record in ANUDC that represents that. And for that, I’m grateful — grateful to myself and everyone who has helped me see that in one way or the other.
As I conclude this rant-piece, I also realize that I am at a transitional point in my debate career. I’m done with school now, which means I have more time to myself. No more school assignments, activities, and engagements that split my attention as much. It’s just design, debate, and whatever I choose to do with my time. I hope to unlock new debating skills while further developing the ones I already have. I look forward to seeing where this newfound freedom leads. P.s, this doesn’t mean you’ll see me at tournaments as much — frankly, tournaments are becoming a tad too expensive to keep up with, and also — I’m beginning to get too tired of seeing some faces in the circuit (some of you are pieces of sh**s — yeah, I said that). Anyways, come for Word War VII, guys!
TSA — a finished man.
Thanks a bunch for reading. And if you’re really into the ideas and subject matter I share. Consider following and maybe becoming a subscriber to my essays. Also, feel free to engage in the comments about what you think of the subject of winning and what being undeniable means to you!
