alse sense of magnitude:
You can only walk so far facing backwards; that is an Igbo street saying. Stretching that a little, you can also only fly so high on a wing and that applies to our senior national football team, the Super Eagles. Even though the team managed to snatch a win from four matches last Wednesday, this team of ours cannot go much farther even if it faced forward. This team is not yet the great Nigerian team. If the truth must be told, it is still a patchwork; a tapestry of worn, tattered old pieces of clothes.
Never mind that they managed to win over the Sudanese in the last match and wiped off the murk of humiliation from our face (and their own faces too); never mind that they may even go on to qualify for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), it is still not morning yet for the current African champions. And talking about champions, this column is of the opinion that that victory in South Africa last year was a fluke that has only compounded our problems. The chance winning of that trophy has only afforded us a false sense of magnitude and importance on the African and world football arena.
Bringing some perspective on the matter, our senior football team has been dismal for quite a while. Before the coming of the current coach, Stephen Okechukwu Keshi, the AFCON trophy was 19 years in coming. That meant a span of almost 10 tournaments without lifting the coveted silverware. That is thoroughly dreadful for an African giant and continental football powerhouse as we used to be known in the 80s and early 90s.
By the time Keshi arrived about two years ago and started getting some results with an assortment of not too talented foreign crew and a sprinkling of home based players, a famished mob of Nigerian soccer-crazy fans went over the moon with ecstasy. And when the AFCON trophy came eventually, we simply cracked up.
This team is wrong: Who can convince Nigerians that there is still a lot wrong with its senior team or that in truth, we do not have a team yet. What is the trouble with Nigeria’s team and by extension, its soccer? Plenty: first, Nigeria is unfortunately in an era in which it is not blessed with first rate soccer talents. As many commentators have noted, we are in an unexciting age that boasts of no Jay Jay Okocha, Rashidi Yekini, Kanu Nwankwo, Segun Odegbami or Christian Chukwu.
Yes there have not been exceptional talents around which teams are built and to compound it, we have not been able to hire a quality coach either, who can imbue an average team with discipline, sound technical and tactical know-how. That is what Congo has today, a good coach who can get results even with mediocre players.
Third, the harsh truth that we do not want to hear is that most of our players are jaded, aged and far out of their prime. No matter what they may claim to the contrary, I wager that 70 to 80 per cent of our Super Eagles’ players are way beyond 30 years. What this means is that no matter how experienced and skilled they may be, once they are matched against any team of young and fit boys, the Eagles huff and pant aimlessly on the pitch for 90 minutes! They are often lucky to win or not to lose.
Why do we always do well at the age-grade level yet flop at the top. Simple, we are serial, incurable cheaters. And we are smart by half all the time. For instance, the so-called under-17 boys who won the world last year are mostly in their 20s and they ought to form the crux of our Super Eagles today. But they will never get a chance to feature in the senior team until they are almost 30 and wasted. This has been our vicious cycle. Those days we used to be certain the super Eagles would maul some national teams; today, even the least teams in Africa like Namibia, Rwanda and Benin give us hell. Monkeys in the Glass House: Another ill of the Super Eagles is that the nation’s football house, the Glass House, has long become a monkey colony where all manner of primates engage in all sorts of monkey business. Though not unlike we have in all segments of our national life, it is a glass house of woes from where no good report emanates. We never hear about long-term strategic football development; we never hear about programmes to develop youth talent or the local league; our referees are perpetually pariahs, despised and ineligible for CAF and FIFA football fiestas. Our coaches are treated with disdain even by so-called administrators in the Glass House, preferring to go into dubious schemes with cheap, mercenary white skins they call expatriates.
The so-called Glass House comes across as a place of intrigues, touting, gangsterism and skullduggery. It surely is not a place where the beautiful art of soccer can thrive. So long as our football is run by a semi-illiterate mediocre gang who neither have integrity nor care about it, our football will remain an abiku.
Playing football under a rubble: Football is one of the largest sub-sector of sports in more organised places, not only for its immense capacity for employing the youths but for engaging them and veering them away from trouble. But football is a joke here because it is in the grips of charlatans. One pointer to that fact is our football facilities across the country which are in ruins. All the six federal stadia have been long dilapidated. A visit to our premier national stadium at Surulere, Lagos, will evoke tears.
The stadium in Calabar is probably the worst of all the stadia in countries playing the AFCON qualifiers. And we deign to be playing football like the rest of the world; but if we must face it, we are not. We are merely clowning around yet. Not until governments at all levels hands off football and allow it run on its own steam; by private individuals, like the business it is and the way it is done in other serious climes.
Until then, we can fool around all we want pretending to be playing football. We are not.
Hassan Lawal: Adoke must answer
IT is perverse and criminal for the state to abort a criminal case in a matter relating to the stealing of huge taxpayers’ money. The use and abuse of plea bargain under this administration has reached a level of utter brigandage and psychological assault on the populace. The current matter of former Minister of Works, Dr. Hassan Lawal is a test case.
Mr. Mohammed Adoke, the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, must explain to Nigerians how and why the trial of Lawal was discontinued.
Lawal and 11 others were under trial by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for the past three years for stealing N6.4 billion. It was a 47-count charge for which over 130 exhibits had been tendered. This sum was part of the fund for constructing a bridge on the Benue River to link Nasarawa and Kogi States.
One day late September, the counsel to the EFCC, Mr. Wahab Shittu, simply walked into the court and announced that: “Without prejudice to the merit or otherwise of the matter, I have firm instruction that the case against the accused persons, all of them, be discontinued.”
Several other criminals have been sprung from facing the law in the recent past and under Adoke but this case is singularly preposterous and an assault on the collective psyche of the people of this country. It is an assault on the judiciary and it is utterly unjust to all other denizen of the land standing trial under the EFCC today.
Since the EFCC is supervised by Adoke, he must explain. He must also tell us why any other Nigerian must continue to stand trial before the EFCC.
