We open with Super Eagles cast-away Lukman Haruna, who talks about his fine season so far with Dinamo Kyiv, the pain of his three-year exile from the national team and disputed claims that he is stubborn. It’s as heart-tugging as it is defiant.
How hard is it to maintain the kind of consistency you have shown so far?
The most important thing is to work hard. I’ve been working every day of my life to make sure that I am in the first eleven.
I want to play, I want people to see, me to see what I can do on the field. I work hard on the pitch; I work hard outside the pitch.
When you work, you play. That’s the most important thing.
Your coaches must be very happy with the work you’re putting in?
He is the coach, he will decide. If I am not doing what he asked me to do, of course he will call me aside and say Haruna, you are doing this or you’re doing that.
You have scored a few more goals this season. Is that something you have worked on? Or it just comes?
Well, I don’t think in my brain that I want to score. I only think to myself that if I will score, my goal will come. Mine is just to go there and do well.
If I have the opportunity to shoot to score, I will do it. But if I don’t have it, and I have the opportunity to pass the ball to somebody else to score, I will give it to him.
Does it help that you have someone like Brown Ideye with you at Kyiv?
Well, we’ve been here for two years now me and Brown and we know each other very well. He’s a good brother to me, and we know what we need to do and what we don’t need to do when it comes to football.
For him to speak so well of me in the press means that as a brother he wants me to play in the national team because people always ask him why both of us are not coming to play.
But he is not the coach, he is just saying that he wants me to get a chance to play and I thank him very much for saying all those things about me and I’m shocked.
How does it make you feel when you see the likes of Ideye go away during the international break and you are back there at your club?
For me, I feel bad. I’m not happy that I am not going to the national team. But the most important thing like I said earlier, if I am playing well in my team and training hard, I don’t have anything to worry about.
Of course I will not be happy that if other players are going home. I’m supposed to be playing for the national team.
But I am not the coach, I am not the staff. They might have their own plans and their own things to do. But for me I know I am still young and I have a long time to play for the national team. If God says it is now, it is now. If God says Haruna wait, I will wait.
I am not worried. If I am doing well in my team and everybody sees that I am trying my best, I will get there.
Do you think you deserve a chance to come to the Super Eagles and fight for a place in the squad?
I don’t think I will come to the Super Eagles to fight anybody for jersey. For me I believe if they give me a chance to participate I will be very happy.
That is just what I want. I just want to be part of the team. I just want to go to the national team. I just want the respect. I want respect because if you play in a team in Europe, when you go to the national team, they respect you because of that.
It’s been three years now I have not played for the national team. I’m not happy. You know, I’m not happy. Three good years now that I have not put on the green white green, so I feel pained.
Other people go to the national team and I am left behind here, I am not happy. But I am not the coach.
I have been working every day from January to December just to be among them. So why can’t I get a chance to be among them?
I just want to be a part of the team. Everybody wants to be a part of the team, everybody wants to go to the World Cup and I want to be there too.
There is the general belief that perhaps your stubbornness might be what is keeping you out. Do you agree, or you feel that you are misjudged?
Everybody in life can say whatever he thinks about players. Fine, we have stubborn players. Gattuso is very stubborn, but they respect him today in Italy for that. He is stubborn because it helps the team.
There is no player that is not stubborn. You can ask all the players in Africa, we are all stubborn. Because if you’re not stubborn, you won’t have the character and the determination to be a winner when you play.
For me, I don’t think I’m stubborn. People are just misjudging me. I trained under Yemi Tella, I wasn’t stubborn. I trained under Manu Garba, I wasn’t a stubborn player, I played under Ben Iroha at U17, U20 and U23, I wasn’t stubborn.
Whoever sees me as a stubborn player or my attitude is misjudging me. I’m a good person. People talk about my character because they don’t know me, they’ve never been with me.
I try to keep to myself, I don’t speak about other people.
What are your objectives for the rest of the year and going into next year?
My aim right now is to go to the World Cup, to be a part of the team and achieve because there is nothing God cannot do.
Stephen Keshi took these players to South Africa and won the Nations Cup and I believe that we can have a chance to go to Brazil and do the same, win the World Cup.
There will be big teams there, but we don’t care about them.
We can definitely go far in the World Cup. There is nothing that is impossible. There are good teams coming but we have good players too and most of them play in Europe.
It was a privilege for me to play at the World Cup as a young player. I just went there to sit on the bench and watch other people play and learn from them.
But I went there, I started, I played games against big players and I gained experience and confidence and knowledge and motivation.
It was a big learning process for me and I thank God for the opportunity.
