The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Help anyone out there!

    How does one scream with written words and expect to be heard? No matter how you twist and tweak them, words remain cold hieroglyphics not amenable to tonal inflections or degrees of decibel.

    For instance, how would you know that Hardball is trying to let out a loud, ululative scream from the above title? But there the words sit – quiet, unprepossessing and tenuous. You, dear reader are not obliged to make an invocation of the above title even if you know it’s meant to be let out loud.  Why would you want to scream? To what end?

    But Hardball is screaming! Screaming at the top of his head and a weak exclamation mark is the only marker of my dire situation.

    Today, nearly all Nigerians are screaming in pain and anguish though only few can be heard.  A good number go about in ghoulish silence which is louder than any cry. And Hardball tries to cry out loud – shouting, is anybody out there!!!

    We cannot help but scream and shout because gloom overwhelms us. But worse, there is no respite in the horizon. Last week, the Federal Government threw another hammer at the people. It sought to increase the rate of telecommunications data use. Not because the current rates hurt government or even the networks, but on such dubious notes that Nigeria has the lowest data rate in Africa.

    It does not matter that Nigeria has an Internet presence of over 90 million. This in itself is higher than the entire population of most African countries, so how could anyone make that frail comparison. And the hike was so viciously and outrageously high you would think that the Nigerian Telecommunications Commission, NCC, which muted the no-brainer, seeks an opportunity to exterminate Nigerians.

    Well thank goodness that Nigerians screamed in unison throughout the week, forcing the suspension of the new tariff. To think that the world is fast migrating to a free data era with wifi everywhere in forward-looking countries. Data is actually the future of world businesses and countries that have ample availability will rule the new world. Just last week Ericsson retrenched about 160 Nigerians in their hub taking the jobs to India.

    Inflation has gone up to an all-time high of 18 per cent. Price of every commodity has shot up to the roof. Petrol price, diesel, kerosene, yet there is daily threat of additional hike. There is supposed to be a huge subsidy on kerosene, but the people still buy at crazy prices. So where on earth is the subsidy on kerosene?

    Partial regulation of the economy has kept it stymied with many manufacturers resorting to rent-seeking through the official foreign exchange window. It is a long catalogue that is so difficult to articulate. It may just suffice to scream and ask: IS ANYONE OUT THERE!

  • ‘Fix it’ can’t fix history

    It is rather amusing — isn’t it? —  the way Tony Anenih, “Mr. Fix It” of Nigerian politics, post-June 12 debacle, is gamely trying to fob off his bitter-sweet moniker.

    That formidable alias served, rather well, the Uromi, Edo State-born kingpin of reactionary politics; and his numerous clients: when an election was to be nicked, sans the electorate; when a toady candidate was to be imposed, the party be damned; and when the (in)famous “no vacancy” notice was to be hoisted, with full verbal arrogance, in incumbent presidential suites.

    Nice try, Mr. Fix it!  But not even the formidable Mr. Fix it could fix history.

    In his newly released autobiographical memoirs, “My Life and Nigerian Politics”, Chief Anenih went a whole length to deny that name, in a classic example of approbating (when sweet) and reprobating (when sour), “Fix it” fashion, under the delusion that it takes only a few written lines, or the notorious cold print, to change history.

    No, it doesn’t because, sweet or sour, there are always witnesses, either as beneficiaries of injustices or as victims of rigged processes.

    But it is rather pleasing Chief Anenih tried to shift the full blame of the criminal annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election on the self-named “military president” back then, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida.

    No tears for IBB.  As the Bible recorded, Jesus the Christ was divined to die for humanity’s sins.  Still, woe betide Judas, whose grim business it was to betray Jesus.

    Perhaps the rogue military under IBB had fore-decided to annul the June 12 election; sure the luckless Bashir Tofa would triumph. But it was their lousy luck that instead of Tofa, Moshood Abiola did.

    More ill luck: the “soft” MKO wouldn’t give up his free mandate without a fight — a fight that eventually claimed his life; but left his traducers, like IBB and Anenih, condemned to a cruel life of funny denials!

    So, serves IBB right.  He ended up dribbling himself, after dribbling an innocent and trusting people for eight long years, handing them mere chaff instead of wheat.

    Still, it is rich the way Anenih tried to portray the grand betrayal of MKO, by his own Social Democratic Party (SDP), which Anenih chaired. Yeah, IBB might have initiated the plot, as part of his endless plots to, willy-nilly, retain power.

    But let not Anenih deny that that was not sweet music to the Shehu Yar’Adua People’s Front (PF) faction of the SDP, the minority faction that seized the party’s executive, and moulded it in its treacherous image.

    Incidentally, neither MKO nor Yar’Adua survived the perfidious high drama. But the two that did, IBB and Anenih, God has granted long lives to do eternal battles with their conscience — Allah Akbar!

    Even forget June 12, as the beginning; and age of innocence. What of Anenih’s merry involvement in the Edo locust years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), when the godfathers and their clients grew gross, while the people, the supposed political masters, shrivelled?

    It took the coming of Adams Oshiomhole to right the wrong and, in favourite Adams-speak, “retire the godfathers”!

    Anenih, who will go down as the historical parallel of his co-Uromi native and ironic namesake, Tony Enahoro, young and idealist in nationalist causes as Anenih is old and reactionary, in the unending debacle of post-independent Nigeria.

    Since the MKO betrayal of June 12, Chief Anenih laid his bed.  It is only fit and proper now that he lies on it, in his winter years; instead of attempting a laughable revisionism.

     

    Pity. Not even Mr. Fix it could fix history!

  • Can Umahi rice to the occasion?

    Interesting things have continued to happen since rice became a cause celebre of sort in Nigeria. It in the heady 80s of petro-dollars and oil boom; a period Nigerians were so much awash with cash they didn’t have to farm or even roll up their sleeves anymore.

    It was the age of wild-eyed citizenry and untutored leadership when it was infra-dig to be caught eating Ofada or Abakaliki rice. It was a time when the Nigerian butterfly thought itself a bird and it was cool to sup the very best of American and European chow. Like the finest America long grain Uncle Ben’s rice; the best of French Moet champagne or the most exquisite German Mercedes Benz.

    Today, like the biblical prodigal who went to a far country to squander his share of the patrimony (on you know what), Nigeria has returned. But the devil be damned; he has no indulgent father to welcome him with the fattest cow and drumming and dancing. He is what he has made himself out to be: an orphan, lonely and forlorn.

    This is the state Nigeria has found herself today after her reckless past. Today, not only does she not have cash to import foreign chow for his now twisted palate, she has forgotten how to farm and how to produce a lot of things by herslf. But as it stands, there are few choices left: a farm-or-starve situation and a produce-or-die condition is upon us.

    Hardball makes this assertion going by a recent decree by Governor Dave Umahi of Ebonyi, one of the Southeast states of Nigeria. For a backgrounder, Ebonyi land was one of the major rice regions of the country when we still tilled the earth. In the last two years life has returned to the paddy fields; glistening rice mills dot the landscapes and even the markets crave the once famous Abakaliki rice.

    Buoyed by this extinction-invoked breakthrough, Umahi is reaching for the jugular of the problem, so to speak. He recently banned the sale of imported rice in his domain. And before the people could digest that pronouncement, the Federal Government has weighed in in his favour.

    Chief Audu Ogbeh, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, on a visit to Ebonyi last week was full of kind words to Umahi, including talks of achieving sufficiency and rice export. But it must go beyond platitudes. Government must bring more method to the rice conundrum. A Presidential Committee on Rice Production (PCRP) is laudable but it’s a non-starter being chaired by a sitting governor.

    PCRP needs be manned by a passionate and hard-charging Nigerian who understands the entire value chain and has the capacity to work it. For instance, why are there still access road challenges in the major rice zones? Massive smuggling still goes on; who is working on the Customs?

    Umahi would not have risen to this historic occasion if rice is scarce or too expensive this Christmas.

  • Adversary as teacher

    As one singer once sang, “Your best friend could be your worst enemy; and your worst enemy could be your best friend.”  Surely, it sounds strange; but it is perhaps not impossible.

    With the noise and noisemaking about the possibility or impossibility of President Muhammadu Buhari getting a second chance, meaning a second term, in 2019, the noisemakers need to be advised to appreciate the sound of silence.

    The Buhari administration is just approaching its second anniversary, and has just over two more years to go. There is high tension in the land, as the people groan under a harrowing recession. What is to be done? What is not to be done? These central questions deserve the concentration of the administration; and there should be no question of distraction.

    When Alhaji Buba Galadima reportedly declared that Buhari would be abandoned by the people in 2019, it suggested that Buhari would stand for re-election when the time comes. Let’s background the development. Galadima was a member of the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), a party to which Buhari also belonged before things changed. In 2013, the party merged with the Action Congress of Nigeria, the All Nigeria Peoples Party and the All Progressives Grand Alliance to form the All Progressives Congress (APC), which achieved a historic electoral victory in 2015 and became the federal ruling party, with Buhari as President.

    Perhaps not surprisingly, this history came up when the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, responded to Galadima’s unfavourable utterance. Shehu said in a statement:  ”President Muhammadu Buhari is far from isolation. He enjoys a very strategic relationship with ordinary Nigerians. This relationship is as solid as the proverbial rock. If Buba Galadima thinks that because he has no role and no job in this government that means the President is isolated, he is putting himself up to ridicule.”

    Interestingly, Shehu made reference to incidents that allegedly happened when Buhari and Galadima belonged to the CPC, which erected a wall between them. He said of Buhari: “Consequently he dispensed with the services, such as they are, of Buba Galadima; ran and won the 2015 elections without them.”

    In other words, Galadima’s words are the words of an enemy. That may well be the case, but it doesn’t necessarily reduce the value of the words. Buhari’s adversary could be his teacher; and there may be lessons to learn from the enemy. The useful message is that Buhari should get his act together if he has his eye on re-election in 2019.

  • Female and furious

    Femininity is second nature to gentleness, sensitivity and kindness. This soft side is more so when it comes to matters of children. Children anywhere, irrespective of their parentage ought to find succour and favour in the lush laps of fair gender. On the contrary, Hardball would probably get into trouble if he delves into what may be termed a generalised assertion to the effect that women seem to possess an uncanny capacity to become soulless, even ruthless in maltreating the other woman’s child.

    Two examples in The Punch of last Tuesday will suffice. The first report says: “Woman tortures five-year-old step-daughter for bed-wetting” and the second reads: “Policeman’s wife batters 10-year-old niece for N30.00″.

    The two stories on facing pages of 4 and 5 have graphic photographs to illustrate what Hardball would describe as feminine stone-heartedness. The five-year-old little girl has her tiny, tender back scalded and pock-marked feminine vile and hatred.

    What could be the offence of this tot? The step-mother accuses the little girl of being obstinate. “She is very stubborn. If I give an instruction, she will not follow it. She is bed-wetting and I have cautioned her several times. She is also fond of stealing meat from the pot of stew. I only beat her with brooms; I don’t use any other object on her.”

    This is the blabber of the woman known as Kudirat Oyediran. The little girl’s mother had died only three months after her birth and her father had married Kudirat to take care of her. But all Kudirat seems to have inflicted on the child are pains and psychological trauma that is bound to linger into her adulthood.

    In the other story, the picture shows the back and buttocks of the 10-year-old girl with various degrees of gashes and patches of wounds. Mrs. Caroline Akanwa was said to have brought the 10-year-old from the village to help out with her petty trading. It happened that Caroline, mother of three, beats this little girl at every excuse that her back and buttocks are riddled with scars, some very fresh.

    The little girl’s school teacher had noticed the wounds and taken her to hospital for treatment. The hospital requested a police report before treatment and the matter was referred to the Lagos State Office of the Public Defender (OPD). The two women are in ‘dialogue’ with the police.

    But the point to be made here is that what would prompt a mother to act in such furious wickedness towards another woman’s child?

    The matter of the other woman’s child obviously needs some interrogation; too often we read stories of extreme callousness like the above. Recall also, biblical King Solomon and the two women: one wanted the baby in dispute split into two! Do certain fiends overtake some women when they are charged with another woman’s child?

  • Cow-ed but alive!

    Have you ever been “cow-ed” — a euphemism for gored (or nearly), and you still live to tell the story?

    That was exactly the experience of an unnamed couple in Aba, Abia State, driving a Toyota Camry car with registration number Abuja FF 923 ABJ.

    Did you ever experience a stray cow, from nowhere, ram into your car-in-motion — gbaaaa! — smashing your windscreen into smithereens, two of its hoofs dangling awkwardly at you, even while you, on the wheels, and your wife, on the front seat, sit paralysed by fear?

    And your two children, on the back seat, of your saloon car?  Screaming and screeching away in panic, even as passers-by rushed in to free you from the snare?

    And the cow?  Some impressive scene!  Its great horns curling skyward even as its great head drooped, towards one of the front tyres; the animal itself sprawled on your hot bonnet, but is too dazed to feel the heat!

    According to a November 23 report in The Nation, this actually happened to a family, in the vicinity of 7-Up bottling plant, off Ogbor Hill, in Aba.

    “We came to clean our vehicle at the car wash; nobody knew where the cow emerged from,” an eyewitness volunteered. “We only heard a bang when the cow crashed into the car, which was approaching the junction to head into the town.”

    Just like that?

    The good thing though was that man, wife and children were saved and unhurt: “The woman and her husband were trapped (but) we managed to rescue them unhurt.”

    The Yoruba have a saying: those clear of the battle zone need not fear stray arrows.

    Many a cynical mind could argue that those were pristine times, well before the advent of stray bullets in peace time, so, so common in contemporary Nigerian urban centres!

    Still, stray bullets, no matter how bad, are a long way from stray cattle, smashing into cars and endangering people’s lives.

    But the bad news, from the report, was that cattle-related accidents appear routine in that corridor, no thanks to the nearby waterside cattle market, just by the Aba-Ikot Ekpene expressway; and cattle being led to the slaughter in the nearby expressway.

    More remarkably: this appears no nomadic cattle rearer-crisis but some more domesticated madness, of a government utterly failing to regulate the activity of local cattle dealers, thus endangering the lives of innocent citizens.

    The local branch of the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) is alarmed enough to have issued a statement, decrying the state of affairs: “CLO is worried about the dangers posed by the activities of cattle dealers,” rued Prof. Charles Chinekezi, the local CLO chair. “It has been a common sight to see stray cows, even at night-time, wandering and constituting nuisance to the environment.”

    The Abia government must act fast to end this menace. Those outside the battle zone near fear no stray arrows!

    Those who live and do business around Ogbor Hill, Aba, have a right to go about their business in safety and security. That isn’t too much to ask their government, is it?

    The government shouldn’t wait until everyone is cow-ed — and gored!

  • A-maze-ing mentality

    Why is Hardball daily assailed with images of mice scurrying in a maze? Especially so, a maze without an exit? Perhaps it comes from reading that phenomenal business and motivational book, “Who Moved My Cheese” (an amazing way to deal with change in your work and in your life).

    The book, a fable written in 1998 by Dr. Spencer Johnson, interrogates how people react to changing conditions using two mice and two ‘little’ people living in a maze. How did they react the very day they found that the cheese they had always enjoyed had been re-moved?

    But we are not exactly about the maze and the cheese today; maybe just the maze and the effect it has on people when they are caught up in it or in the verisimilitudea of its environment.

    Right now, Hardball feels caught up in a maze by the maze mentality of some members of the federal executive. Many seem to speak and act like ‘small’ people trapped in a maze and having run themselves into a frenzy through the maze, are simply wracked, if not wrecked. This situation is exemplified by their conflicting comments, disjointed actions. The other day, a minister told us the recession would be over this quarter only to be countered a few days later by another top-notch who informed that we were in for a two-year haul.

    The oil sector has remained an orchestra of back and forth movements in the last one year or so. Today, our effervescent junior minister tells us he has carried out the mother of all makeovers of that filthy old lady called  NNPC and at another turn, we are warned that the Federal Government proposes a national oil policy that will consolidate all the agencies, scrap most of them and create new ones. A – maze-ing prevarication. What about that famous Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB for short? That elixir touted for five years by the last insouciant administration.

    Just last week, a permanent secretary in the Ministry of Budget and National Planning charged MDAs to come up with PPP (public-private-participation) projects they wish to execute. Speaking at a capacity building programme organised by her ministry, she posited that the call was made because there is a huge infrastructure gap that the federal budget cannot sustain. Wow, what profundity!

    While the call is remarkable by itself, Hardball wonders if this is how government operates now. One thought there ought to be a proper framework and policy direction for PPP by now; and a crack team driving the process? One thought the cabinet would draw a list of critical and strategic projects for execution under the PPP in carefully determined phases and sequences.

    One can already see a chaotic stampede when all the MDAs are asked to generate PPP projects for execution… and that picture again of mice scurrying about in a maze won’t stop playing out in one’s head.

  • Twenty dinners and more

    Why did he need a curious narration to explain his curious narrative? Former Abia State Governor Orji Uzor Kalu was an interesting narrator as he narrated how he joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) during a high-profile ceremony to welcome him to the federal ruling party.

    According to a report, Kalu was received at the party’s national secretariat by members of its National Working Committee (NWC). Prominent among the welcoming party were the APC’s National Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, Deputy National Chairman (South) Chief Segun Oni, National Secretary Mai Mala Buni and National Organising Secretary Senator Osita Izunaso.

    The former governor, who intriguingly dumped the party he founded, the Progressive Peoples Alliance (PPA), went to great lengths to show that he was, in a manner of speaking, a hot item.

    To illustrate how hot, Kalu said:  “Let me thank my brothers in the NWC of this party for their effort. Three of them have hosted me to dinner for more than 20 times while they were trying to dissuade me from going back to the PDP because they know that I am very close to Senator Ahmed Makarfi and Senator Ali Modu Sherrif. Both of them are very close friends of mine and colleagues. In eating those dinners, the last of which was five days ago, the deal was sealed for me to join the party.”

    Kalu’s talk indicated that he had perhaps been considering “going back” to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which he left to form the PPA. It is no news that the PDP’s dominance at the federal level was rejected by the electorate in last year’s historic election, leading to the APC’s dominance at the centre. Was Kalu trying to make the public believe he had been thinking of returning to a party that is out of power and facing a “unity crisis”?  Surely, that doesn’t sound politically wise.

    It may well be political wisdom on Kalu’s part to belong to the party in power, particularly considering that about two weeks before he joined the party on November 16, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had on October 31 re-arraigned him before a Federal High Court in Lagos.

    A report said: “The 34 counts pressed against Kalu and others border on money laundering. The EFCC, in the charges, alleged that while he was governor of Abia State between 1999 and 2007, Kalu siphoned funds running into over N2.7bn from the state’s treasury. The ex-governor was accused of diverting state funds into the account of Slok Nigeria Limited, a company the EFCC claimed was owned by Kalu and his family members.”

    It remains to be seen whether joining the APC is just an opportunistic move by Kalu.

     

  • Rapprochement from LASTMA

    How do you recognise socially conscious and responsible organisations?  Gauge the length they would go to investigate — and correct — any scandal, no matter how slight, that might plague their names.

    On November 15 (last Tuesday), Hardball reported the odyssey of Citizen Folasade, who a LASTMA trooper extorted, in the Okota sector of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) operations. That sector is formally known as Zone 27, with Olatunji Olokodana as zonal head.

    Note: the key words are “investigate” and “correct”.  Though the Hardball reportage came with a rather impressive sequence of events, it was still an allegation, though he was sure those allegations were true.

    So, pronto on Wednesday, Robinson Osirike, The Nation’s advert manager, clutching a copy of the previous day’s edition, approached Hardball and announced that two gentlemen from LASTMA — Mr. Olokodana and Felix Ugbechie of Vanguard, Mr. Olokodana’s friend and informal media adviser — were in the house, concerning the Hardball LASTMA story.

    After an initial investigation in-house, Mr. Olokodana had reached out to Mr. Ugbechie, who reached out to his own friend, Mr. Osirike, who helped to set up the mission to The Nation.

    It is to the eternal credit of the two gentlemen, how they went about the investigation: Mr. Olokodana, not dismissing the allegations but still giving his man the benefit of the doubt; and Mr. Ugbechie, asking probing questions to corroborate facts or dismiss possible lies, as they emerged.

    At the end of the day, the gentlemen established the facts of the case and did the needful. Mr. Olokodana personally returned the extorted N5, 000.  Maybe, Nigerian-style, a more flippant person would have, on the cash, pleaded “forgive and forget” and moved on.

    But not Mr. Olokodana!  He realised, like Hardball, that what was at stake was the principle: the imperative to slam any sharp practices; not the quantum of money involved.  If the principle was rotten, the amount, big or small, also must be.  In any case, it is important that small infractions are punished before they become big rackets.

    Again, eternal credit to Mr. Olokodana for showing Hardball the other side of LASTMA — civil, friendly, warm and dutiful — critical areas the public often complain about the conduct of troopers that give the selfless and hardworking majority a bad name.

    But Hardball was anxious to be assured the trooper’s job was not at risk.  Certainly, it would be a shame if someone were to lose his job, for petty extortion?  Hardball pleads the officer involved should just be cautioned. He must have learnt his lessons. Besides, didn’t the Bible say God didn’t want a sinner to perish but to repent and change his ways?

    Still, Mr. Olokodana spoke of his running Okota headache, with banks and some other businesses that lack adequate parking spaces, especially after the Ago Palace Way had been expanded.  He spoke of his endless and ceaseless counselling to banks (with pretty little result); and how his troopers often had no choice but to tow vehicles obstructing traffic.

    So, maybe the LASTMA high command, with the Lagos State Government, should put heads together, with these business concerns, to solve these problems, so that troopers on ground would have less operational headaches.

    With Mr. Olokodana’s handling and swift resolution of this matter, Hardball is reconverted to LASTMA, the Lagos traffic police many Lagosians just love to hate.

    But he — and other zonal heads — should work harder on their troopers, to replicate, on the road, the organisation’s high ethos, as Mr. Olokodana so finely manifested.

    For doing a thankless job on our roads, Lagos should be eternally grateful to LASTMA. That due must not be taken away by a few reckless and overzealous troopers.

  • Messy exit for Messi

    Messi and what a mess!

    That should be the agonized cry from the vanquished Argentine camp, as the Argentina national team fell short, yet again, to clinch the Copa America, which Chile, the defending champions, retained 4-2, after penalty shootout, after regulation and extra time ended in a barren draw.

    For Argentina, with the mercurial Lionel Messi, arguably the most talented footballer of his generation, it was three straight defeats, in three straight finals, in three straight years!

    In 2014, it was at the World Cup in Brazil.  In 2015, the Copa America in Chile.  And now, 2016, it is, again, Copa America in the USA.

    The Argentine failure, in this special Copa America centenary (the first tournament was in 1916), may well underscore Messi’s epochal failure for Argentina, despite his fair personal claim as the best footballer ever, after Pele, the Brazilian great and three-time World Cup winner and Diego Maradona, Messi’s compatriot, as hugely controversial as he is hugely talented!

    To make matters worse for Messi, the tempestuous Marasona snaps at his heels.  Even before the latest Copa debacle, before Argentina made a mincemeat of the not-so-innocent hosts, USA, with a four-goal drubbing in the semi-final, Maradona had dismissed Messi as lacking leadership, to lead Argentina anywhere.

    Maradona is perhaps gloating right now!  First, he has bragging rights.  When Maradona ruled the roost in global football, he won the World Cup for his country.

    Then, the bad tempered Maradona — and perhaps, the equally hurting Argentines — would equate the fluke of a penalty shootout loss, in a crucial final, as confirmation of Maradona’s leadership charge.

    Yet, it is not clear if history would not be far kinder to Messi, than it would ever be to Maradona.  For one, Maradona, despite his prodigious skills, was at best a flawed genius.  At his first World Cup at 18, at Espana 82 World Cup, he was red-carded for viciously kicking a Brazilian opponent in the groin.  At 17, Pele had won the World Cup, at his first try.

    But even at the height of his glory in Italia 90, his first goal against England, in that great match, was fraudulent self-help.  That Maradona promptly appropriated that goal, even after TV camera evidence showed it was carefully palmed in, as some “hand of God”, showed one with an intrinsic penchant to cheat.

    Though he would later score a goal of sheer genius, after single-handedly routing the whole England team, the terrible chink in his character was established.  That would become irrevocably etched with his later doping scandals.

    Not Messi.  Though he too earned a yellow card for diving in the June 27 Copa final defeat, he has been a far fairer athlete than Maradona.  Character-wise, therefore, he would appear to tower above Maradona, despite his puny size.

    Still, Messi would lug the unenviable record of never winning , for his country, the World Cup, as the world’s greatest player of his era: a feat both Pele (thrice) and Maradona (once) achieved.  But he, at the Copa, emerged as Argentina’s highest ever goal scorer, so far, for the national team, besting Gabriel Batistuta’s record.

    But that would appear cold comfort, after the umpteenth loss, in three consecutive finals!

    Messi has turned his back on his national team by sensationally announcing his retirement.  Argentina would miss him; and so would the world, in Argentine colours.

    But his exit couldn’t have been messier, exiting on the low.  How would history capture it?  Messy exit for Messi, perhaps?

    O, what messy business, the exit of this prodigy called Messi is!