The Nation Newspaper

Category: Tatalo Alamu

  • Okon succumbs to the Orò cult

    Okon succumbs to the Orò cult

    As the war of attrition with Okon raged on in the snooper household, snooper was also thinking of a final solution to contain the mad Calabar boy’s menace. Last Friday, Okon recorded a significant success in the civil war when the dining room section of the house fell to his rag tag secessionist army, apologies to the late Ojo Maduekwe a.k.a Ojo Onikeke.

    Since Okon has refused to cook for some time now giving as an excuse the fact that he was on some important national assignment, snooper had wanted to settle down to some fast food brought in  from the local eatery when we noticed a massive python comfortably ensconced in our favourite chair. In fright, snooper fled towards the bedroom with the mangy dog barking furiously in hot pursuit even as Okon began laughing like a deranged jackal.

    “Haba, Lamidi, you no go greet Oga, abi which kind yeye man you be?” Okon snorted amidst convulsive laughter obviously addressing the python. Inside the bedroom, snooper knew that the end had finally arrived. The next thing the mad boy would target would be the bedroom itself and by then it would all be over. There would be no hiding place. The handshake had definitely gone beyond the elbow. In frightful premonition of an impending disaster, snooper called out to the mad boy behind closed door.

    “Okon!!!” snooper yelled  at the mad boy.

    “Oga, Okon dey Kampe. But make you open dem door now as short man devil, Hundeyin, wan say hello”, Okon snorted. A chilling tremor coursed through the spine as we remembered the nasty pigmy camel.

    “Take the creep away, take away, now!!!”, snooper screamed.

    “Oga camel meat no good for take away, na abami meat be dat one”, Okon sneered.

    “Okon, I want to know who owns this house”, snooper moaned in acute frustration.

     “Oga, make you comot now, abi man dey fear for im own house?” Okon retorted as he retreated with his animal troops.

     That evening, snooper brought forward PLAN B and contacted Orowusi Jabiti-jabiti and members of the dreaded orò cult. PLAN A had been to send the mad boy on an errand to the most dangerous part of Majidun where hopefully some human spare parts dealer could pounce on him. But not to worry, the orò cult would equally do.

    In the dead of the night, they laid a siege to the house, droning endlessly and fearsomely like a thousand demons. Snooper could hear Okon screaming and yelling like a demented sheep as a vicious bee released from a black pouch fastened itself on his flared nostrils. By the time it was over, the entire house had been liberated and Okon and his animals had vanished hopefully forever. Thus ended a reign of terror that lasted six weeks.

  • The crisis of tertiary education in Nigeria (1)

    The crisis of tertiary education in Nigeria (1)

    •For Ayodele Olukotun, childhood crony and former comrade in arms

    Happy new year to all our readers. We are gradually winging our way towards a historic denouement. This is neither science nor astrology. The omens are quite puzzling. The social and political forces at play appear to be evenly poised. Rumours of requests for extra-constitutional reinforcement fill the air. Not even the most determined and sophisticated analyst can predict how things will unfold at this point.

    In modern philosophical parlance the concept of  overdetermination is often deployed to capture a situation in which several emergent contradictions jostle for preeminence and pole position at the same time. Their political wits scrambled by hostile reality and their resolve weakened by a demographic conundrum, the masters of the vine-yard have retreated behind a veil of silence, punctuated by Delphic letter-writing without oracular gravitas.

    The clouds of uncertainty should lift in the coming weeks. In the interim, let it be noted at this point that any false step will have apocalyptic consequences for the nation. The structural mess bedeviling the country has been left unattended to for too long. It is not now that those who have been part of the problem should be seen imposing an unworkable solution to what is in essence a crisis of elite consensus. A crisis of elite consensus is an organic crisis of the state which requires consensus building.

    Of the plethora of problems confronting the Nigerian postcolonial state, let us just focus this morning on the educational shambles. One can only pity those who will inherit the rot left behind by succeeding administrations. To be fair, the original problems far predate the outgoing administration. As a matter of fact, the Buhari administration should be commended for having the courage to reverse some of the policy failures.

    One of these is the reversal of the policy granting polytechnics and allied institutions in the country the charter to award degrees from 2026. Coming at the tail end of this administration, one cannot be sure whether this is binding on the incoming administration. But the official argument is unimpeachable. The Nation’s magisterial editorial of last Wednesday could not have put it better and it bears quoting at length.

    “ In the first place, universities and polytechnics were established for different purpose. Secondly, why are more and more students after university education, thus leading to significant drops in the number of people seeking admission into the polytechnics and allied institutions?… Polytechnics and allied institutions awarding degrees should desist henceforth and face their core duty of providing middle-level manpower badly needed for the country.”

    One can recall that when this debate about upgrading existing polytechnics to degree-awarding status reared its head about one and a half decades ago, many spoke vigorously and vehemently against it, warning about the unsavory consequences of the proliferation of unviable university certification in a socially challenged environment. Now that we have dumped millions of unemployable youths on the job market with multiple exit visas to the crime industry, the chicks have come home to roost indeed.

    Almost one and half decades ago at the nineteenth convocation lecture of the Lagos State Polytechnic, Ikorodu, ably and brilliantly led by the then Rector, Ayodeji Iginla, yours sincerely spoke to the issue. Below are excerpts.

    Polytechnic Education: A Recipe for Visionary Leadership and Governance in Nigeria

    Protocols. I am myself not a complete stranger to this environment. Forty four years ago, in 1967 to be precise, I lived here in Ikorodu. It was a pleasant and peace-loving town with a thin veneer of modernity overlaying what was still essentially an agrarian community.

    Four and a half decades later, Ikorodu has witnessed a huge transformation. There has been a huge explosion in population and basic infrastructure. The sleepy but socially active town has come into its own as a dynamic and rapidly developing metropolis.

    Today, Ikorodu is virtually locked in and connected to the Lagos mega-city grid as a suburban hub, a situation which presents its own developmental problems and challenges. We can imagine what the situation will be in another fifty years.  The town would have become part of Africa’s preeminent megalopolis. The Ikorodu story itself is a compelling metaphor for a rapidly developing and increasingly globalised world which requires proactive leadership and visionary governance.

    If we cast our mind back, the picture actually becomes clearer. !967 was a watershed in the history of post-independence Nigeria. It was the year when unresolved national questions led to a protracted and bitter civil war. But it was also the year when Nigeria was restructured into a twelve-state federation by the administration of General Yakubu Gowon as a direct response to the crisis arising from the national question. Ikorodu found itself as part of the new Lagos State.

    Since then, Nigeria has undergone many political re-engineering and structural tinkering but the original national question has persisted. Many leaders have come and gone. If the endemic national instability and crisis of the Nigerian post-colonial state speak to a fundamental failure of leadership and visionary governance, let us also note that there is some architecture in the ruin, as William Shakespeare will put it.

    A nation is a permanent project in progress. No leader can solve the problems of a nation at once. Any leadership that believes that it can solve the problems of a nation at once is merely delusional. Often, some of these problems are unanticipated side-effects of progress and modernity itself, particularly in nations emerging from the trauma of colonial subjugation. Sometimes, they are also product of self-inflicted folly.

    What is important is for a national crisis to throw up its organic leadership with the creative endowment and visionary intellectual wherewithal to solve the crisis. But the structural disequilbrium of Nigeria is such that it throws up the wrong leader at the wrong time leading to a perfect mismatch. It is in this aspect that Nigeria has been critically challenged and shortchanged since independence.

    Let me note in passing my profound respect and affection for the traditional ruler of this town. The Ayangburen of Ikorodu was a heroic stalwart at the vanguard of the struggle against the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election.

    At grave personal risks and against all political odds, this great traditional ruler stood on the side of truth and justice against the chicaneries and brutal despotism of military rule. His highness could see beyond his nose and without any prompting or base inducement he fought on the side of his people and his nation when it mattered most. This is a classic example of visionary leadership.

    Distinguished audience, there cannot be a better illustration and background to introduce the topic of today.  The title of this convocation lecture is: Polytechnic Education: A Recipe for Visionary Leadership and Governance in Nigeria. On the face of it, this is quite a tall order.

    Given the deliberate stigmatization and conscious inferiorization of polytechnic education in Nigeria, the very idea of polytechnic education as a recipe for visionary leadership appears on the surface to be incongruous and fatally flawed. How can something come out of nothing, we may ask?  How can the bargain basement stock of polytechnic education as it has been made out in Nigeria be a recipe for such a noble and exceptional phenomenon as visionary leadership?

    Yet as we shall argue in this convocation lecture, it is profoundly ironic that the very denigration and defamation of polytechnic education in Nigeria is a pointer to the failure of visionary leadership in the country and a practical demonstration of inept governance. A leadership which slavishly follows the trends and educational patterns of other countries however advanced without first addressing the specific needs of its own people cannot by any stretch of the imagination approximate the sterling virtues of visionary leadership.

    It may be fashionable and modish to ape western parameters of educational development but it is also instructive to note that while the systematic devaluation of polytechnic education proceeds apace in Nigeria, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientific genius of the modern epoch, was a product of polytechnic education.  When we pay tributes to this preeminent avatar of human advancement, we are also paying tributes to the virtues of polytechnic education.

    Let us clear the conceptual cobwebs along the way. What is visionary leadership?  Visionary leadership is a function of positive dreaming, of willing into existence through imaginative daring what was not there before and that which can only be conceived by the imaginary power of day-dreaming. It requires the conceptual clarity of the exceptional intellectual and the imaginative fecundity of the extraordinary political artist.

    Societies perish without visioning and it is the task of visionary leadership to forge from the smithy of their soul the tentative and hazy outlines of a new and better human society. It is a creative canvas of immense possibilities. After the imaginative conception, it requires an iron will, character, fortitude and forbearance to bring a brave new world into actual existence.

    This is the moment when visionary leadership transmutes into visionary governance. There is often a huge disquiet in the land. There is resistance from those accustomed to routine and the banal drudgery of existence. There is the bloody rupture which accompanies new births. At first, the visionary leader is at odds with the resilient forces of the status quo and hence with his society.

    But since no earthly power can permanently hold the future hostage, change and transformation are inevitable. It is at this point when there is a shift in the balance of power between emergent and residual forces that the visionary leader fully comes into his own and a new dawn is visible in all its majesty.

    We need to add at this juncture that the ultimate visionary leadership comes with the ability to nurture and sustain visionary followership. Visionary followership involves a passionate and fanatical commitment to the creed and core cause bordering on apostolic zeal.

    It is part of the gift of visionary leadership to identify and promote able, committed and talented followers who will carry the flag beyond it no matter the adversarial circumstances. No matter the subsequent betrayals and delirium of treachery, there must be a core leadership to sustain the cause.

    The most glorious example of visionary leadership in post-independence Nigeria is Chief Obafemi Awolowo. When Awolowo took over the reins of power in the old West, the Yoruba at that point in time were a fractious, disharmonious race suffering from the trauma of a century of civil wars and the dissolution of empire. But through the power of visionary imagining, Awolowo knew where he wanted to take his people. He was bent on frog-marching an essentially rural people to the frontiers of modernity and its cutting edge technology.

    Within a very short period, Awolowo , assisted by able and gifted lieutenants, had transformed this political wasteland into a modern society replete with all the paraphernalia of modernity which became the envy and the gold benchmark for the rest of the country and continent. In one brisk generation and through the power of visionary transformative leadership, Awolowo had moved his people from the farm to the factory and from medieval rut to modernity.

    For the first time in over two hundred years, the Yoruba, in a brilliant feat of mass mobilization, came under a unified leadership and began to enjoy a standard of living comparable to most advance societies. This was to give them a head start over the rest of the country in terms of quality education and political sophistication, an advantage they enjoy till date.

    It is to be noted that in achieving this epic feat of modernization, Awolowo did not summarily abolish the colonial education he met on ground. He merely improved on them, magically transforming them to serve the need and yearning of his people.

    Having critically studied the situation he met on ground, Awolowo  estabilished cottage industries, free primary education, modern schools, trade centres,  farm settlements, agricultural schools, civil service training centres, teacher training colleges, a vibrant polytechnic and a world class university to match.

    After careful selection based on merit, those deserving were sent abroad to further their education. In the event, there was a perfect congruence between the society on ground and tertiary skills on hand. In retrospect, the Yoruba race never had it so good.

    Tragically enough fifty years later, the gains of this remarkable stride in purposeful and visionary governance have been dissipated at the altar of an over-centralised administration and a stifling and suffocating unitarism pretending to be a federal set up. The Yoruba, along with the rest of the country, are back to square one with a horrid mismatch between educational structure and societal goals and an educational system that is completely disembodied and disarticulated from national aspiration.

    With the hordes of unemployed and unemployable youths who have been sent on a wild goose chase of unviable “higher education” in universities and polytechnics with obsolete curricular and even more obsolete disciplines, alienation is leading to frustration with the entire system. The social fabric of the nation is stretched very thin and anomie looms.

    The social pathologies of this educational crisis are already here with us in the rise of the phenomenon of graduate armed robbers, educated malcontents, sophisticated deviants and well-polished outlaws. The society is being set up for a huge social explosion. Awolowo would be weeping in his grave. The poor could not sleep because they are hungry. The rich cannot sleep because the poor are awake.

    This ominous background is the best context to introduce the topic of the day. In the circumstances, how can a polytechnic education serve as a recipe for visionary leadership and visionary governance in contemporary Nigeria? As it has been famously observed, the worst university in Nigeria is more recognized than the best polytechnic.  Several commentators have noted that there is an official seal to the systematic denigration of polytechnic education in the country.  This is at best the worst dereliction of official responsibility arising from a lack of visionary leadership.

    But what is a polytechnic?  As the name implies, a polytechnic is not a university. But this ought not to be a crime but a mere emblem of distinctive identity. In its classical state, a polytechnic  is a non-university higher educational institution focusing on vocational education. There are three factors at play here which often account for the erosion of parity and esteem when the polytechnic community is compared to the university community.

    First, is the false notion that because polytechnic education is mainly vocational, it is merely functional and work-driven. This notion ignores the fact that in certain disciplines, a polytechnic education is more rigorous and quality driven than their university-based counterparts.

    This explains the preference of employers in fields such as banking, Finance, Engineering, Accounting and Technology for polytechnic graduates over their universities counterparts. In these fields of human endeavour, the polytechnic graduates often arrive “perfectly tuned” and programmed for easy and immediate absorption.

    (To be concluded next week)

  • A historic epitaph

    A historic epitaph

    The last thing anybody can say about President Mohammadu Buhari is that he is a gifted writer, or speaker for that matter. There is a pained inarticulacy about his public speeches which occasionally resolves itself into a mournful grimace. But bless his heart, the Daura-born general is a scrupulously honest if profoundly flawed being. And because of this very quality, the historic moment often chooses him as the vehicle for signal reflections on the state of the nation.

      For historic comparisons one must recall good old Abe Lincoln who detested small talk and smaller chit-chat. After he was dragged to watch a play, the old Kentucky born barrister was asked for a summary of the proceedings. “You see, those who like this sort of thing will find that this is the sort of thing they like”, came the miserable summation from Lincoln.

       A parting evaluation of President Buhari’s tenure as a civilian ruler of the nation will have to wait until his departure from office in a matter of months. But there are already give-away signs that the obviously mixed legacy of his civilian administration is beginning to concentrate the mind of the former infantry officer.

      In one of the gatherings to celebrate his eightieth birthday anniversary recently, Buhari noted that although he had tried his best for his nation, it was his personal feeling that his best may not be good enough. It was an absolutely magical moment and in that terse summary, the general might have delivered the epitaph of military rule in and out of uniform in Nigeria. To be sure, Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine might have compounded the crisis, but the underlying image problem remains.

    That notwithstanding, nobody can deny that the former infantry general has kept his oft repeated pledge to preserve the nation as one single, indivisible unit no matter the cost. The cost has been truly horrendous. But Nigeria is still standing. Baring a historic occurrence of catastrophic magnitude, it is safe to assume that Nigeria will remain one under the watch of the general from Daura.

     This mantra of going on with one Nigeria (GOWON) is perhaps the greatest achievement of a successive run of military rulers in Nigeria. The messianic delusion which underpinned their war-cry of a rapid economic development and structural political transformation of the nation has long been dead on arrival. General Buhari’s political tenure has provided the nunc dimittis of that delusion. You cannot give what you don’t have. Our military rulers were simply not equipped to deliver on that project.

      Apart from the nation which has had its economic and political transformation stunted and stymied, the military itself as a corporate and cohesive institution has been the single most visible casualty of that messianic debacle. It has occasioned a terrible bloodletting within its rank and a savage decimation of a whole generation of its officer-corps.

      But as we are witnessing, it has also devastated the esprit de corps among its surviving titans which has allowed them to determine who rules Nigeria and at what point even after the cessation of formal military rule. It is useful to note that General Buhari will be leaving office with members of the club of military selectorate, or what has been famously described as the owners of Nigeria, going in different directions.

     The ascendancy of Buhari himself may be seen in retrospect as a catalyst for the creative destruction which has upended the old power arrangement in post-military Nigeria. Having driven him round the bend on three occasions ( 2003, 2007, 2011), the old selectorate might be ruing the hour they ever allowed the crusty contrarian to access the levers of power. Nigeria will never be the same again.

    In retrospect, military rule might seem a political aberration. But in Africa and the Third World, it was a fashionable aberration which has become an integral part a certain developmental trajectory or historical phase.

      Many denizens of the Third World and a certain breed of developmental theorists following the example of Latin American caudillos, particularly Simon Bolivar, aka the liberator and Mustapha Kemal of Turkey , saw military rule as a developmental shortcut away from the inanities and chicaneries of liberal democracy.

      Ataturk forged a new country from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and saw to a programme of westernization and modernization which transformed his country into an economic and military power to reckon with. General Sukarno did very much the same thing in his native Indonesia. Gamal Abdel Nasser tried very much to repeat the same miracle in Egypt.

      African countries emerging from the horrors of colonization took note and began to copy in droves. But they did not reckon with the contradictions of multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies which made them very vulnerable to colonial occupation in the first instance. In all the countries we have mentioned, the societies are largely homogenous and culturally cohesive. They also shared the same religious affiliations in the main.

      In the event, sub-Saharan Africa ended up with tribal and religious tin-gods in military uniforms. Mobutu, Bokassa, Eyadema, Idi Amin, Nguema and Idris Deby became the dismal reality of the military conquest of Black Africa. Neither economic transformation nor rapid political development was possible. In their wake, Africa witnessed momentous bloodbath, civil wars, coups, ethnic and religious upheavals.

      Military rule did not just happen upon Nigeria. There might have been some dress rehearsal and notes-comparison among members of the officer-corps who interacted with colleagues from other countries in various military institutions abroad and later in Nigeria itself. Decolonization as a project of emancipation from the clutches of colonization had seized the fancy and imagination of many young and educated Africans. The University College, Ibadan became the hotbed of anticolonial exertions.

      The idea of a military intervention in Nigeria’s political process first gained traction in 1964 during the brief constitutional impasse that attended to the federal elections of that year. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s titular Head of State, had been initially reluctant to call on the Prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa, to form a new government as a result of his displeasure and dissatisfaction with the conduct of the election. But after protracted legal consultations, reason eventually prevailed.

     It is believed in informed circles that in the heat of the constitutional crisis, a coterie of senior military officers approached Zik to canvas the possibility of a coup to break the political logjam arising from the widely discredited elections. It was their own idea of terminating the misery of the nation and ending the endemic instability that had plagued it since independence. Zik obviously declined the offer and the conspirators disappeared under the dark silhouette of nightfall.

      But if this was a respite, it proved a very short one indeed. A year and a few months after, the real thing landed on the nation. A mutiny among mid-ranking officers decapitated the ranks of the civilian leadership paving the way for the Army leadership under Major General Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi to mount a full blown coup d’etat on January 15, 1966.

      The mutiny of the majors who were predominantly of the Igbo ethnic stock decimated the military and political leadership of the hegemonic northern establishment in a vicious bloodbath which shook the nation to its foundation. Six months later, northern officers staged a counter coup which made the earlier bloodletting look like a child’s play. This time around, the savage bloodfest in the barracks was accompanied by widespread elimination of people from a particular ethnic stock.

      As a direct consequence, the country was plunged into a civil war which lasted for almost three years and which accounted for the souls of three million Nigerians. The immediate fall-out of this epic tragedy was the amputation of the third leg of the tripod on which post-independence Nigeria had stood, the forcible re-imposition of northern political and military hegemony and an endless cycle of instability from which Nigeria is to fully recover almost sixty years after.

       In retrospect, it can be seen that if a determined military challenge was going to be mounted against the dominant northern establishment, it was always going to come from the mid-ranking Igbo officers’ corps that dominated the bulk of the middle level Nigerian officers’ hierarchy at that point in time.

      Radically independent-minded, fiercely republican in outlook, heaving and seething with resentful ambition and a determination to ignore any glass ceiling based on the accidents of birth or royal dominion, their dynamic view of the world and their place in it was bound to come into a fatal contradiction with the conservative, feudal and hierarchical notion of society favoured by the northern establishment.

       It was an inevitable collision of cultural temples, ideological templates and countervailing worldviews whose mismanaged outcome still echoes and resonates in the unresolved aspects of the National Question. But it is now obvious in retrospect that in mounting their challenge to the dominant order, the  majors did not factor into their calculations the subsisting balance of force and the hobbling contradictions of a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. The result was a decisive rout.   

           Five decades after and seemingly undaunted by historic setbacks and unfazed by political miscalculations, it would appear that a significant fraction of the Igbo elite formation using Peter Obi as a proxy and leitmotif have decided to have a go at the auld enemy once again. Anybody who has closely studied the turbulent dynamics of events that led to the upending of the First Republic will not fail to find similarities with the disruptive possibilities of the Peter Obi phenomenon.

      As usual, the Yoruba people find themselves trapped between two colliding altars. If this permanent, in-between nature of their precarious existence makes them vulnerable to countervailing forces, it also positions them as the ideal go-between to broker a historic truce between the warring factions even if this makes them appear to hawks on both sides as weak, vacillating, unreliable and untrustworthy.

      As a progressive, forward-looking people sworn to their own version of modernity and the democratic emancipation of their populace, the Yoruba nationality finds a lot of commonalities with the fierce republicanism and unyielding independent nature of the Igbo worldview. But the reality of their own history as people of empire and a certain fidelity to its feudal antecedents make them privilege evolutionary stability and order over revolutionary hell-raising that only results in anarchy and chaos.

      Like everyone else, the Yoruba people have paid a terrible price in the seething postcolonial cauldron that is Nigeria. From the Ademuleguns, the Shodeindes and the Fajuyis and on to the Abiolas and Iges, the toll on their most illustrious children has been most prohibitive. Whether we like it or not, we will all have to sit down at some point to reexamine the strengths of the constituting units and how they can impact positively towards the rapid reinvention of an ailing colonial behemoth.

      General Mohammadu Buhari has returned a damning verdict on military rule in and out of uniform. It is an integral part of our national experience and traumatic transition to political and economic modernity which cannot be wished away. What is now important is how to move the nation away from the precipice in the most creative and visionary manner possible.

  • And now the true sovereign of soccer departs

    And now the true sovereign of soccer departs

    In the field of soccer, the year 2022 was full of powerful symmetries and wonderful ironies. It was the year a Third World country hosted what has been adjudged as arguably the most spectacular and the best organized World Cup Tournament in the history of the game. It was also the year the greatest exponent of the magical art, its global poster boy and wizard of spellbinding dribbling, took his exit from the scene.

      What else can be said of this man that has not been said in the past four days as torrents of homages, eulogies and encomiums poured in from all corners of the globe? It has been a departure befitting of royalties and avatars. It is just as well that this soccer prodigy was a Black person. His glittering career epitomizes how far talent and determination could carry a person in a bitterly polarized and badly divided nation.

    Edson Arantes do Nasimento, otherwise known as Pele, was a wonderful specimen of humanity, a rare breed that transcended the parlous and straitened circumstances of birth and racial origins to dazzle and illuminate the world stage with his extraordinary gifts. Brazil will never forget its favourite son and talisman for transcending its deep divides.

     Pele was born only fifty two years after Brazil abolished slavery. The scars are still too evident, but his soccer exploits provided wonderful balm for the soul of stricken compatriots. The three days of national mourning and the extraordinary outpouring of grief mixed with affection shows just how much this mammoth country appreciates its national treasure. 

      On and off the field, Pele was an exemplar of the gentleman genius. He wore his remarkable talents lightly, and there was never a hint of stuffiness or self-importance about his bearing and pleasant demeanor. For a man of his lowly origins, Pele was impeccably well bred and well comported. In a world perpetually in search of heroes, Pele’s combination of humanity and humility was a winning formula which endeared him to millions across the globe.

    It is said in these climes that no matter the parlous circumstances, a certain grace and royal equanimity never desert a true prince. Perhaps deep down his remote African ancestry Pele could have descended from a royal lineage of some long forgotten genealogy. We will never be able to find out. But the grace and equanimity he brought to bear on this magical game speak volumes for the persistence of precious genes that had survived the middle passage.

       There was always going to be a problem with Portuguese colonization in Africa. The fact that it was of early European modernity provenance led to a civilizational fiasco in the deep jungles of the Amazon River. There was only a marginal difference between the enslaved and their enslavers in terms of technological superiority and organizational nous. Poverty and immiseration on an industrial scale became the lot of many of the colonizers and those they colonized.

      The lottery fell on gifted individuals such as Pele and a whole generation of tantalizing soccer maestros to provide the binding glue for a bitterly divided and badly polarized nation. Today, Brazil is better known for its soccer than its industrial magnitude. Pele had played his part for his nation with such brilliance and élan. The whole world took note.

      It was said that the first time Pele saw his father weep was after Uruguay trounced his soccer crazed nation in the 1950 final. Eight years later, his seventeen year old son was the star of the Brazilian team that prevailed in the thrilling 1958 World Cup Final. If Pele Pere had been alive to witness the grand national spectacle laid out in honour of his beloved son, he would have shed tears of joy. Adieu Pele, the king of soccer.  

  • Lagos, the Black megalopolis

    Lagos, the Black megalopolis

    This morning, and in keeping with the Christmas season of charity and goodwill, we focus on a project of hope and restitution for the good people of Lagos, Nigeria and the entire Black race. We are talking about the inauguration of the Blue Rail Line this past week by the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu.

       It is not unlikely that hardened cynics will dismiss this landmark project as too little too late. There is already some underground grumbling about the humungous bill. But hope springs eternal in the human heart. Without hope, humanity is lost. Without longing for a better existence, there is no basis for projects of further civilization. The dream of a better society of the future is what drives human beings to extremes of heroism and political idealism.

     There would have been no modern civilization if humans had sat back in the idyllic splendor of their ancient huts. Not even derailments, failures and catastrophic tolls could abort the dream. There will always be people with the strength and energy to push on. Dreaming is the genesis of human advancement.

      Lagos, or Eko in native parlance, is a much storied African city. It has suffered several setbacks in its evolution from a mere pepper plantation to a modern metropolis. The only fate that has spared Lagos is a catastrophic earthquake. But human earthquakes abound. First was the 1861 naval bombardment from a British frigate which obliterated the old city centre.

      Second was the deliberate derailment of its metro line project which set the place back by several decades. Third was the inability to envisage that a demographically exploding human conurbation like this historic city will require an arterial network of roads rather than a single feeder express road as its population expands and as the outlying towns and villages empty their economically unviable into the city.

      This is what has turned the city into the ticking time bomb it has become in recent years in sharp contrast with the picturesque and idyllic city it was in the early post-independence period. But there are many who believe that the developmental setbacks notwithstanding, the city has been blessed with visionary and compassionate leadership in recent decades. Otherwise, the anarchic jungle of Kinshasa, the capital of Old Congo, would have been a child’s play.

      There are many others who have taken to cautionary pragmatism. These things take time, they contend. It takes quite some time, some ceaseless experimentation, some trials and errors, for a city to get into its full stride. This is not an open sesame.

      For example, when yours sincerely first journeyed to Lagos over sixty years ago even as the colonial era was winding up, it was through the old road from Abeokuta. At Agege, a distraught woman wailed endlessly upon discovery that most of the chicken she was taking to Lagos had quietly expired as a result of the massive heat emanating from the engine box of the ancient lorry on which she placed her avian ware.

      Shortly thereafter, the route through Ipara and Ijebu land unto the Majidun Bridge after Ikorodu opened up and was considered by many as a marvel of a short cut. After that, the Itoikin Road opened up a back alley route to Ijebu territory which linked up with Ore and Benin. The first time one took the new Lagos/Ibadan Express road in December 1975 in a Renault 12 TL car driven by a suicidal fresh graduate from Unilag, the whole journey took fifty five minutes. It felt like being in a space shuttle.

      And it is all in a lifetime. This is why one must learn to appreciate these incremental developmental strides however miniscule they may appear to ordinary eyes. As one was trying to access the Court of Appeal in Igbosere on Wednesday afternoon, it occurred to one that to get to Sura Market in those days, you had to go through the Carter Bridge. But the Third Mainland Bridge and its feeder access through Simpson Street has halved the journey time.

      The heart warmed immensely at that very point in time as one saw the early pictures of Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu as he undertook the maiden ride on the Blue Rail Line. The entire ride from Iganmu to the National Theatre took about fifteen minutes. It was a short hop for a historic individual but a giant leap for Lagosians.

    Lagos is the nation’s economic nerve-centre. It already accounts for thirty per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Products (GDP). One can then imagine the impact on growth and development when the line is extended to other parts of Lagos, particularly the besieged Lekki corridor. Lagos would have been rescued from the infamy of developmental regression thus liberating the tremendous energies currently invested in hunting for petrol and the needless hustle for daily transportation.

       Simply because no one appreciates what they already have, many Nigerians tend to underestimate and underappreciate the importance of Lagos to the Black psyche and general well-being.  Lagos is the preeminent megalopolis of the Black people; a potential cultural and economic Mecca for millions of Black souls tottering on the edge of despair and despondency. The fate of Black people after the epoch of physical slavery remains very concerning.

     The original competitors of Lagos in the race for the preeminent African megalopolis have since taken different developmental routes.  Only by the most generous leap of imagination can one describe the heavily Arabized population of Cairo as Black people. Despite the political triumph of the ANC which raised hope all over the Black world, Johannesburg, its miniscule sprinkling of Black elite notwithstanding, remains a predominantly Caucasian emporium.

      As for Kinshasa, the capital of the old Congo, a story, possibly apocryphal, tells it all. It was said that shortly before the epic slugfest with George Foreman in the then Zaire in 1974, Mohammed Ali asked to be taken to downtown Kinshasa. Upon beholding the seething, heaving and pulsating human jungle bristling with sheer anarchic energy, the great pugilist knelt down and profusely thanked his stars that his ancestors did not miss the slave boat.

      That was almost fifty years ago. Since then, a series of civil wars in adjoining and outlying territories have made the situation in Kinshasa even worse. No metropolis can develop or expand on its possibilities in such circumstances. War and related atrocities are not city developers. Rather they lead to a contraction of all human settlements. Nigeria’s endemic political volatility notwithstanding, the relative peace enjoyed by Lagos in the decades after the civil war has made all the difference.

      Although started by visionary predecessors, Babajide Sanwo-Olu deserves full commendation for pushing the Blue Rail Line forward towards its completion. In a developing country, there is a lot to be said for political stability and continuity which allows succeeding administrations to build on the legacies of their predecessors without any witch-hunting or hostile backlash.

      This writer has been studying and watching Lagos state governors since the advent of the post-military dispensation. Sanwo-Olu has mastered the beat effortlessly and with unobtrusive brilliance. A master of political ice-skating, the Lagos State Governor has managed to avoid the perilous banana peels which upended his equally brilliant but whimsically self-willed predecessor. Something must be said for the consummate political skills of a man who appears so diligently and studiously apolitical.

      Babatunde Raji Fashola was in the engine room of the system. Even at that point in time, he had earned a well-deserved reputation for painstaking diligence and fastidious attention to details. Having mastered the arcane rituals of governance as an understudy, he was able to leverage his visionary impetus with political common sense when and where it mattered most.

      In the case of Akinwunmi Ambode, the circumstances of his ascendancy made him to develop messianic instincts of his own which ultimately proved fatal. Normally kind-hearted and affable, he had forgotten that there could only be one grand visioner in an unfolding power project which had benefited him beyond his wildest dream. Babajide Sanwo-Olu is proving to be the ultimate Teflon technocrat.

  • The Deep State versus Godwin Emefiele

    The Deep State versus Godwin Emefiele

    Talk of a government taking itself to court!! This is the only sober, sane and rational way to interpret the action of the Department of State Security in filing a suit praying the court to declare a sitting and serving governor of the Central Bank an economic terrorist. If the DSS people have their fact, this is surely not the right way to go about it. It is little surprise then that the affronted and outraged judge wasted no time in throwing out the suit.

      This is not the first time in the life of this government when attempts would be made to drag an already traumatised judiciary into the murky waters of state intrigues and power tussles. Neither is it the first time when countervailing and mutually hostile forces would seize different ramparts of the state in a war of all against all.

     We must recall the Magu debacle and how it played out. Despite affecting an aloof and dignified distance from the mess, General Buhari cannot be an innocent bystander in all this. The trail leads back to the innermost sanctuary of power play. It reeks of the Ottoman Empire in all its Byzantine intrigues. Unless we are mistaken and back to medieval times, this is not the way to run a modern state at all.

      As for Godwin Emefiele, it appears the endgame is here. Having been used as an unscrupulous and willing mercenary in some of the most outlandish instances of state larceny that we have witnessed in recent times, there is no way the presiding deities of the presidium will allow him to outlast this presidency. He will not be allowed to sing to the new masters. Even professional musicians have their allotted time and space.

       It was not long ago when the selfsame Emefiele was the blue-eyed boy of the government who could do no wrong. He was even actively encouraged to run for the presidency in what many thought was an attempt by the powers that be to scuttle their own transition programme.

     The presidency gave it a royal stamp of assent. But it had turned out that it was an attempt to fleece him of excess baggage, in preparation for proper and befitting state execution. The piranha crowd of influencers and affluencers saw to that. Somebody must be grinning from ear to ear in fiendish relish.

      Now that the net is fast closing in, perhaps Emefiele will realize what it means to be out on a limb. Economic terrorism is an omnibus, poly-purpose state snare. The state security might have been stalking a bigger game all along. You escape one snare only to be trapped by a more lethal trap. This is the meaning of the unfolding saga about stamp racketeering with the heist said to run into trillions.

      The last that was heard of Emefiele was that he has retreated abroad to manage a threatening heart ailment. Now, take heart Godwin Boy. You see this thing they call power na digbolugi dog. Him dey bark and him sabi bite well well.

  • Okon is debriefed at Idumota

    Okon is debriefed at Idumota

    For defrauding snooper during his last trip to Papa’s Land, we have been thinking of a suitable punishment for the wayward  rogue. We decided to send him on a mission impossible, the type that Yoruba people normally send naughty children. He has been in an upbeat mood of late, wearing a superior smile and a new suit from the proceeds of his swindling racket. When snooper asked him the source of his new found affluence, he crowed, “Oga, man pikin be man pikin oo”. We decided we could no longer take his impish insolence.

       “Okon,” I called out to him one morning. “I want you to go and interview Soja Idumota for me”.

        “I sabi the yeye man”, Okon replied promptly.

        “You do indeed?” I asked in quiet amusement and amazement.

         “Abi no be dat general wey im head no correct again, wey dey talk to himself and wey dey piss for road?”

          “Yes indeed”, I replied.

          “Oga, make I ask the yeye man about  Dele Giwa becos dem say na im people come put juju for him stout?”

          “Yes, but…” I began but the excitable crook cut me short.

          On the appointed day, Okon came in with breezy confidence wearing his new suit and looking very dandy. He was also carrying something that looked like a pair of military binoculars. Before I could ask what it was meant for Okon started shooting his mouth.

          “Oga, this one na military operation. Dem assault go commence at 2pm sharp from dem Five Cowries Bridge”.

          After twelve hours of waiting and giving up Okon for dead, the rogue finally limped home without his suit and tie, looking as if he had just survived a Molue accident.

         “Okon, what happened?” I asked as I surveyed the human wreckage.

         “Oga, katakata come burst for Idumota “, he groaned through swollen lips.

          “What?” I screamed.

           “I come reach Maryland and I wan board bus for Lagos. All the bus dem dey say so te, Oyingbo, Oyingbo, Anthony ma wole oo (Anthony, don’t enter). So, I think say dem dey refer to me since my Christian name na Anthony. After three hours I come ask one Yoruba man wetin I do for dem becos dem say make I no enter. The man come look at me and come shake im head. Na im he stopped the next bus and told the conductor, “take him to Oyingbo, but I think his head don knock”.

        Snooper was by now convulsing with laughter, but had to stop himself.

            “So what happened?”

          “Na im I come reach Lagos. I ask one Yoruba man, where Soja Idumota dey and he come ask me, before or now, so I come tell him off say which kind foolish question be that one. Then he come tell me say my head don pafuka. I come waka so te I reach Idumota. Oga the man com use Yoruba juju, he come turn to stone. So as I dey talk to am to behave six area boys come grab me from behind”.

         “ What did they say?” I asked excitedly.

         “One huge funny man com roar “Ma wo ee. Ofe koni won  nwo soja Idumota” (Look you, you think you can watch Soja Idumota for free?)

       “And what did you say?” I asked now laughing freely.

        “Oga, dis thin no funny oo. I come think quickly, so I tell them I only watched for five minutes.”

        “Owo e one thousand (your fee is a thousand quid)”, the funny man come boom at me. As I paid them that one, another bunch of Yoruba crooks surfaced and demanded for my walking permit. Those one beat the Edika Ekong out of me. I come escape without my coat and shoes. Oga, wetin be digbolugi?”

         “Mad dog”, I replied.

        “Chei that’s what dem dey scream at me. Na God go punish these Yoruba people”

    First published in 2008.

  • Rumbles from the big masquerade

    Rumbles from the big masquerade

    What irks the master-masquerade, Balogun of Owu and the titan of Ota so grievously these days? It is said that a big toad does not run in the daylight for nothing, if it is not after something then something is after it. It is also noted that the King cobra does not eat yam flour, it is what eats yam flour that the cobra eats. Finally, there is a saying that if you persist hunting deeper into the jungle, you are likely to come across a hunchback albino squirrel.

    Twice, and in a matter of days, there have been some ominous emissions and apocalyptic rumblings from the old warrior and civil war veteran. First, the old man let it be known that having gone to jail and having donated blood to the Nigerian postcolonial shrine in the course of an illustrious career, he has paid his dues and he is no longer afraid of anything. This was in the course of a condolence and commemorative visit to the east.

    Second, the old man dropped the gauntlet of non-partisanship in the current presidential contest and pointedly informed his audience that nobody can query or intimidate him over his personal choice of candidate for the Nigerian presidency since he was only exercising his democratic rights.

    Oh mine, or mine. Nobody is sure of what triggered these tempestuous outbursts. Psychologists spoke about the externalization of inner conflicts or the public manifestation of private inquisition. Whatever it is, it may well be that reality is finally dawning on the ancient warrior that his current choice may not be in tandem with the public mood and current disposition of his people.

    More often than not, the Yoruba people often prove to be shrewder and more circumspect than their leaders when it comes to existential negotiations in the Nigerian postcolonial dystopia. If they are rooting for a particular candidate, it is not a blanket endorsement but the first step towards a renegotiation and redefinition of Nigeria itself.

    The strategy of randomly and whimsically picking on a particular candidate is not only faulty but arrogantly wrongheaded, more so when there is no evidence of negotiations and intricate pacting among the principal hegemonic blocs. This was the process of conciliation and compromise that threw up Obasanjo himself after the Abiola debacle. General Obasanjo might have forgotten. But we have not.

  • The rise of pidgin punditry

    The rise of pidgin punditry

    And whilst we are still on the subject of the soccer extravaganza now waltzing its way to its glorious finale at the iconic Lusail Stadium in Doha, it is meet to report on one of the impressive bye-products of the tournament. It is the rise of pidgin soccer punditry. Yours sincerely had been socially and intellectually conditioned to view pidgin language as an inferior mode of communication favoured by the lower classes and the animated hoi polloi. But this tournament shattered that elitist delusion.

    One could understand the social leveler and recalcitrant rebel in Prince Charles, now Kings Charles, lapsing into pidgin language on a royal visit to Nigeria. “God don butter my bread”, the old contrarian famously crowed to wild applause. But when one discovered that pidgin commentary had become semi-official among some of the listed channels, one felt it was a joke taken too far.

    But it has turned out that the joke was actually on the aging columnist. On a second attempt and having taken time to listen to the actual commentary, one felt completely bowled over. It was a moveable feast of rich and illuminating soccer punditry laced with social, political and historical bon mots and delivered in the racy almost breathless tempo of pidgin conversation. The commentariat demonstrated a deep grasp of the dynamics of the game and a remarkable awareness of positional play.

    It is with a deep sense of historic responsibility that one must now call on African nations to examine the possibility of elevating Pidgin English to the status of the official language of commerce, sports and politics on the continent.  Something new always comes out of Africa indeed.

  • The World Cup according to Cervantes

    The World Cup according to Cervantes

    It is just as well that the highly imaginative world of soccer segues into literary symbolism.  There are times when a living spectacle is just too good to be true; when reality strains the borders of the magical and when both chronicle and the chronicler are part of the entertainment. This week, your columnist takes leave of the political affray on ground to entertain readers of this column with the improbable soccer extravaganza now winging its way to an explosive finale in Qatar.

    For about a month, the entire world, particularly the soccer-loving buffs and aficionados of the game, sat glued to their television or phones as national teams dueled in the hot and sultry Qatari desert now made lush and sumptuously livable. The atmosphere on the field was even more electrifying. It was an explosion of soccer talents and feats of mesmerizing artistry on a scale hardly seen before.

    The jury is out. This is about the most remarkable world cup in the history of the game. It had everything: drama, suspense, excitement, class and what the Americans call pizzazz. There was also the odd sense of satisfaction one gets as an underdog when a great footballing nation is upended by one of the minnows.

    It makes the misery to go round. All in all, the Qataris have done themselves and the developing world proud. They have shown that nothing is impossible when big bucks meet high passion and higher patriotism.

    But let us not race too far ahead of the narrative. Who on earth is Cervantes? Miguel de Cervantes was an aristocratic Spanish writer of the late sixteenth century who is still regarded as Spain’s greatest writer ever and the father of the modern novel. Although of high born Spanish nobility, he was also convinced that the feudal order with its tradition of chivalry and civility was on its way to extinction.

    Accordingly, Cervantes’ greatest novel, Don Quixote, chronicles the quixotic adventures of a Spanish knight of the expiring feudal order as he tries to stop the unstoppable, tilting and fencing at the windmill. It was a doomed quest marked by much hilarity and frenzied hyperactivity. But it allows Cervantes a brilliant opportunity to showcase to the reader how history and societies evolve. No force or power on earth can stop a   people, nation, society or class whose time has come.

    Like Cervantes’ brilliant expose of the inevitability of change and the evolution of human society, the 2022 World Cup is also suffused with the telling symbolism of inevitable change in the global soccer suzerainty and pecking order. The old order changeth indeed. Like human classes on the make, the ascendant nations are grabbing and grasping, dynamic and full of energy; whereas the old soccer powers, except one or two who still have something to prove, appeared lethargic and utterly laidback.

    The soccer world took early notice of this changing order and evolving dynamics in the opening rounds of play when Saudi Arabia beat Argentina and Cameroons beat Brazil. Having been severely mauled by less fancied opponents, Germany crashed out of the tournament without as much as a whimper while both Portugal and Spain survived by the skin of their teeth but not for much longer.

    Meanwhile, the emerging soccer powerhouses of the East and Central Europe, the new samurais of soccer such as Japan, South Korea, Croatia and Serbia were behaving very much like terrorist squads unleashed upon the world. They were merciless and implacable.

    Once Brazil succumbed to the hereditary lassitude of allowing Croatia to equalize thus forcing the game into penalty kicks, many astute watchers who knew the Eastern Europeans were master craftsmen of penalty dead-balls could sense another Brazilian soccer tragedy in the air. And the samba maestros were bundled out.

    The sight of Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo crying their heart out as they slouched out of the stadium after their countries had been defeated was particularly heartrending. They tell the story of how more than any other contemporary sports, football has emerged as the new leitmotif of modern nationalism.

    During the 1982 World Cup tournament, Brian Clough, the eccentric but gifted manager of Nottingham Forest club, was asked on prime television what he thought were England’s chances against the highly regarded German team which played with Teutonic thoroughness and Robot-like precision. The rogue contrarian retorted that he saw no problem since England had already beaten the Germans twice. He was not referring to football but the two world wars.

    And who can forget the infamous chortle of Diego Amanda Maradona who insisted that he enjoyed his first goal against England better because it was akin to picking the pocket of the English? His country having been humiliated by England in war over the Falkland Islands, the former pick pocket from the slums of Buenos Aeries, thought the best way to get even was on the other front. And boy, did he not.

    In its extreme manifestation, men have been killed in the name of soccer and for committing what was deemed as treason against their nation.   Two Latin American countries have gone to war over soccer disputes. In Africa, it was said that Emperor Bokassa, the madman of Ubangi-Shari, once ordered the entire football team of his country to be stripped and publicly caned for daring to lose a match against the national team of his arch-enemy across the Ubangi-Shari River.

    In the seventies, the losing Italian finalists had to be hurriedly ferried across to a military airbase for safe disembark after it was discovered that a hostile crowd wielding cudgels and sticks was waiting to receive them at the main airport. Surely, if they knew how to lose effortlessly, they must also learn how to endure punishment without much ado. It reminds one of the film, Divorce: Italian Style.

    Despite Neymar’s torrid tears, history and experience have taught one never to be unduly sentimental about the fate and fortunes of the brilliant but eternally disappointing Brazilians, the world’s favourite soccer nation. Its 1982 World Cup soccer squad was arguably the most outrageously talented Brazilian team ever.

    The team of Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Junior and Eder—he of the magical looping and dipping shot which left goalkeepers stranded and bemused— needed only a draw against Italy to proceed. But thinking that they could always overcome any opposition and outscore any team, they allowed Paulo Rossi to roam freely in the box. By the time the rogue goal poacher finished with them, it was a bridge too far for Falcao’s heroic interventions. They went home with nothing.

    Now the same fate has overtaken their descendants four decades on. But with France and Argentina, two ancient soccer power-houses, squaring up to each other in what promises to be a memorable climax to the 2022 soccer fiesta in Qatar , one might be tempted to agree with cynics that nothing much has changed in the world of soccer, or that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

    But that will amount to a superficial scratching of surface realities without disturbing the sizzling and heaving realities below the surface or the profound dynamics of accelerating globalization and momentous changes in the world of soccer. Players, coaches and national teams now wear multiple identities and complicated super-hyphenate nationalities. It is a chiaroscuro of motley colours or the soccer equivalent of a rainbow coalition.

    Some national teams, particularly France, England, Germany, Belgium and now Switzerland and even Austria, remind one of a garment of many hues. Many players come with dual or even multiple nationalities. Kylian Mbappe, a French hero, is of Cameroonian and Algerian parentage. Walid Redragui, the coach of the outstanding Morocco team which was the revelation of the tournament, was born in France and could claim French citizenship.

    Incurable racists who are sold on the notion of the inviolable purity of races often pooh-pooh this development as akin to the mongrelization of soccer. This is why some players are still subject of racist attacks particularly when their team loses. But we dare say that that they have seen nothing yet. The world renews and rejuvenates itself true such arcane and daring recombination and re-permutation.

    It was said that after Switzerland overpowered their country in the opening round series, some irate Cameroonian fans went over to the Embolo homestead to demand from the mother why her son should be such a source of national misery. The outraged woman was reported to have ticked them off for disturbing her peace of mind.

    The end of a trend cannot be predicted from its beginning. Soccer is not native to Africa or South America. African soccer has benefited tremendously from the current wave of globalization and the forcible incorporation of the continent into the global orbit. In soccer, this demographic volatility and its compulsory dispersals has engendered a cross pollination of techniques, vision and players in a way that was not thought possible in an earlier epoch.

    It has allowed economically backward nations of Africa to play first violin in soccer as Engels famously noted of philosophy and literature. It has allowed Africa to catch up and to bridge the gap between Africa and the leading soccer nations of the world. It looks like a long time ago when bootless and scantily clad teams from African first played exhibition soccer in the stadia of England.

    In 1974, the Congolese team, Africa’s lone representatives, were snootily reported by the global press to have arrived with their private supply of monkey meat and witchdoctor. But this did not prevent them from receiving a resounding nine goals to zero walloping by the merciless Poles.

    Sixteen years after in 1990, a beguiling Cameroonian witchdoctor known as Baba Bamenda spread his grisly ware with much pomp and pomposity and was still mumbling his mumbo-jumbo even after it became more than obvious that Gary Lineker’s goal was sending England to the Quarter Final. It was all in a day’s work for Baba Bamenda.

    The brilliant and compelling performance of African teams in the about to be concluded Qatar fiesta has erased the history and record of shame and idiotic superstitions for Africa. Africa has finally come of age in soccer, with an African team reaching the semi-final of the World cup. It has been long in coming, with Nigeria in 1994, Senegal in 2002 and Ghana in 2010.

    After Morocco saw off both Spain and Portugal, the historically minded must recall that there once was a sub-group of Berbers and Moors from the present day Morocco which invaded the Iberian Peninsula and occupied most of what is currently known as Spain and Portugal for almost five hundred years before they were driven out and sent back to Africa by the Castilians in 1492. Eusebio, Portugal’s greatest footballer ever, came from originally from Mozambique.

    Miguel de Cervantes would be chuckling in his grave.