The Nation Newspaper

Tag: triumph

  • Beyond the AFCON triumph

    Beyond the AFCON triumph

    The credit for Nigeria’s first win of the Africa Nations Cup in nearly two decades is essentially Stephen Keshi’s. For riding a cloud of skepticism after his team stuttered in pre-tournament tune-ups and standing up to apparently meddlesome football officials to get a result, he is in the running for my Man of the Year, so soon. I watched, with interest, as all, from President Goodluck Jonathan to the man on the street, hopped on the feel-good bandwagon as the Super Eagles flapped tentatively before searing through the championship like some phantom unleashed from a dungeon of self-inflicted mediocrity. Progress by the Eagles tallied with his administration’s reform agenda, remarked the president. Many a citizen thought the cup as good as won.

    But I chose, and still choose, to look beyond the cup. While the party lasts, allow me, dear fan, to sour the mood a little – for the greater good. First, the victory, however deserved, came at rather average expense. Imagine the resistance Egypt sanspolitical revolution or Cameroon minus infighting and administrative malaise would have put up. While Nigeria ultimately avoided confrontation with West Coast rivals Ghana in the final, even the Black Stars reflected a shadow of the side that trounced the Eagles at the 2008 quarter-finals in Ghana and registered a derby drubbing on February 6, 2007 in London.

    Is it not possible that since great teams rise and fall, Nigeria could be on the ascendancy while major rivals are in decline? For evidence of dynamism in sports hegemony, compare Zambia’s success at the 2012 edition in Gabon/Equatorial Guinea with Nigeria’s in terms of weakened opposition. As they did last year, Ivory Coast and Ghana fell short this term while Egypt and Cameroon bowed to upstarts on the road.

    Nigeria also benefited from the fortune of having a‘son of the soil’ willing to soil his hands in the morass that typifies Nigerian football. With the national team failures of predecessor Samson Siasia probably ringing in his ears, Keshi rolled up his sleeves and went to work. Issues with accommodation and salary? Official car delayed? None was reason enough to stymie the project. Tellingly, players from the once derided domestic league shifted through a revolving door that shooed six on the train to South Africa. A few found tactical expression in South Africa, but more significantly, Keshi’s near-faultless selection squeezed out off-form captain, Joseph Yobo, for the plucky Godfrey Oboabona and promising Kenneth Omeruo.

    Hindered by poor officiating, the sandy Mbombela pitch on which Nigeria launched out and Keshi’s experimentation with the First Eleven, the Eagles laboured to prey until the Brown Ideye-Emmanuel Emenike spitfire attack worked by Victor Moses and Mikel Obi strafed all and sundry. Ivory Coast took unexpected flak in the quarter-finals as a more mature Elephants yielded to the eager young guns in green. Afterwards, Russia-based Ivorien striker Lancina Traore parried insinuation that his team lost because they underrated the Eagles. He said: “… once on the pitch, Mikel Obi and his mates quickly seized the midfield, cutting off the link to our front men,”adding that his team wondered whether Nigeria “was the same team that drew 1-1 against Burkina Faso in the group phase”.

    Whether Mali succumbed more to fatigue after an epic quarter-final shootout with host, South Africa, we may never know, but goalkeeper Mamadou Samassa thought his Eagles played against “Brazil”. “From my post I saw more than 15 green shirts pouring forth against us and not the usual 10 players. They were strong, slippery, focused and pacy.”

    And the mood portrayed by a Burkina Faso fan before the final could not have been more ominous. “…the Super Eagles now seem like a wild beast unchained. They are devouring and the general fear here now is that they could do the same to us like they did to Mali.”

    Such superlatives to make the head swim!

    In the event, the Nigeria attack blunted by Emenike’s absence through injury after his semi-final exertions in pursuit of the Golden Boot managed to douse the opponents’ patriotic flame with a goal from impressive local lad, Sunday Mba. It would have been more but for the forward line’s profligacy, a development that should task Keshi going forward.

    In South Africa, nonetheless, the Mikel we long sought emanated. Mikel, the tentative and mellow in green turned Mikel, leader and magician. Overall, he was the best player by any yard and certainly the best Nigerian by a mile. Why the Confederation of Africa Football (CAF) differed, crowning the Burkinabe trickster Jonathan Pitroipa, is a mystery of political proportions as suggested by the referee’s admission of error and official rescind of the striker’s red card from the semi-final. In fulfilling all self-righteousness, CAF may have set a precedence to be cited again and again.

    Considering the rave reviews, Africa had thirsted for typical Nigerian flair for a while. Remarkably, the fear induced by the Eagles in South Africa evoked a bygone era. And in deference to the Eagles heyday, I propose a change in cognomen to reflect conquest and domination – something with ‘Lions’ in it, perhaps. No, that’s taken – by Cameroon and Senegal. How about ‘Devils’? Well, the Eagles bore that before ‘Green Eagles’. Besides that is also taken: it’s Manchester United’s world-famous epithet. So, ‘Green Devils’? ‘Predatory Eagles’? Anyway, you get the picture; a petrifying appellation wouldn’t hurt.

    But to the Brazil 2014 World Cup finals we must turn our heads in earnest. Nigeria top African Zone Group F with four points from a win and a draw, and the next qualifier comes up against Kenya next month. With the current squad, Nigeria should pick a spot, but is Keshi truly up to the bigger task? He triumphed by selecting his team on merit but what happens when the players earn greater exposure, with profiles expanding spheres of influence? How Keshi fares against swarming player agents is of consequence, for they have been known to ruin a promising coach or two by their machinations. While we might trust Keshi’s massive ego to supersede any player’s, the coach must be more tactful in dealing with super brats and the establishment. To do otherwise would suggest impetuosity and unprofessional conduct, both elements of a tragic career.

    The Mundial is a different ball game, more demanding and technical. In the event of qualification, can Keshi supervise the tactical annihilation of the elite teams of Europe and the Americas? On the basis of his substitutions and tactical discipline, I think not. But that is no reason to call for his sack. Should we tinker with the technical bench to improve technical input? Yes, of course. Do we bring a foreign technical expert, director or adviser to fill the chasm? Yes, with urgency. And how would it work? With Keshi as immediate assistant to an accomplished coach or as immediate boss, if the expat is less accomplished? Samson Siasia’s sustained association with Dutch match analyst Simon Kalika here refers.

    At any rate, let us not forget that Keshi succeeded because he thrived within a deficient system, experiencing the same factors that affected the players, leading to a synergy in mentality. He didn’t work out of Europe as Berti Vogts and Lars Lagerback were excused in unremarkable spells with the national team. The 2014 dream therefore begins with efficient administration from team welfare and discipline to kitting and logistics. Financial motivation should not be a challenge for a government adept at throwing money at problems, but if smaller countries achieve significantly more at less expense, then fatter bonuses do not necessarily translate to better results.

    In the end, Keshi’s record as the second man, after the late Mahmoud el-Gohary of Egypt, to triumph as coach following his Tunisia 1994 gold as captain is secured as is the prestigious ticket to the FIFA Confederations Cup in June following CAF’s selection of the 2013 and not 2012 champions. The Eagles would do well to exploit the subsequent window to continental domination and find eternal relevance in 160 million hearts.

  • Triumph of spite?

    Triumph of spite?

    No one can accuse any electorate of spite.

    As John Milton argued in Paradise Lost, God has given Man the free will to choose; when queried on why God “allowed” Satan to steal into Man’s paradise. But a caveat: good or evil, Man reaps the consequences of his choice.

    And so, it is with every electorate – not the least the Ondo electorate that just returned Olusegun Mimiko as governor. They would greatly rejoice at their choice, if the governor delivers the el-Dorado he promised. But they would gnash their teeth and lament to no end if they found they had sold themselves a pig in a poke. It is nothing spiteful. It is just desert for wise or foolish voting.

    But if the electorate is quite blameless on the question of spite, the various gatekeepers that drove the dynamics; and helped shape the outcome of that election were not.

    In “Ondo and the limit of spite” (September 25), Ripples x-rayed the Ondo gubernatorial election as no more than a proxy battle against Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) national leader, by a coterie of embittered interest groups: failed ACN gubernatorial aspirants, the Afenifere grandees who sought with gusto a last ditch chance to unhorse their perceived nemesis and, of course, Governor Mimiko himself, who was fighting the political battle of his life.

    A sub-set of the Ondo “battle plan” was elite hostility and conspiracy, as hallmarked by political irritants like Pastor Tunde Bakare and co; and by how the media aligned themselves in the fray (“Ondo: now the crunch”, October 16).

    Also, fatal to the ACN cause was its politicisation of South West economic integration, as distinct from making it a clinical electoral issue. If it had demonstrated it was the most committed and, given its governments’ record of performance, was best placed to swing South West integration, perhaps the outcome could have been different.

    Instead, its insistence that all South West states must belong to one party (hardly a partisan crime, but costly electoral gaffe) before integration could succeed fired the brainless but devastating primordial counter-emotion that propelled Mimiko back to office, despite a hugely suspect first term performance, considering the N600 billion trove at the governor’s disposal.

    Victory, therefore, went to the most ruthless blackmailer and the most cynical manipulator of emotions. That is hardly salutary. But the good thing is that in Mimiko’s victory have come seeds of his self-destruction; just as in ACN’s defeat has come seeds of its self-redemption. To learn the right lesson, therefore, is crucial.

    That takes the discourse to the gloating that has greeted the result. The Afenifere grandees’ holy bile and Pastor Bakare’s holy spite have morphed into reckless triumphalism, leading to a lot of gibberish, hasty attributions and crazy projections, as to be expected of a camp that got a rare victory over a perceived perpetual nemesis.

    It is all so reminiscent of Leo Tolstoy’s classic, War and Peace. After the Russo-Austrian alliance inflicted a rare defeat on Napoleon Bonaparte, in a minor battle at Schon Grabern, the Austrian part of the alliance and the cocky Russians thought of galloping from victory to victory over a now subdued French Emperor Napoleon. It took the alliance’s comprehensive defeat at Austerlitz to smash that illusion!

    Still, in the midst of all these grandstanding, clear moves are there for the politically discerning.

    Goodluck Jonathan, the man that won the 2011 presidential election by good luck, has started dropping political IOUs for 2015. After Adams Oshiomhole won re-election, the Edo governor went first to Aso Rock, praising the president to high heavens, for “allowing” his re-election – was Jonathan supposed to do otherwise?

    Then after Mimiko’s win, his first port of call, with his wife Kemi in tow, was the same Aso Villa, the Jonathans’ special guests to celebrate with First Lady and birthday dame, Patience. Of course, wily Jona and his media managers ensured the photo of that celebration hugged the choicest pages of newspapers the next day!

    In due course, en route to 2015, the pair of Oshiomhole and Mimiko, no matter their respective parties’ stand, would pay back Jona’s IOU!

    As Jonathan manoeuvres to secure a future political fortune, the Afenifere grandees swoon to secure a past (and lost) glory, putting their titanic fate in the hands of Mimiko, their new champion. “To be thus is nothing,” the evil Lady Macbeth told her regicide husband in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, “but to be safely thus …” As Lady Macbeth goaded her husband to inevitable doom, so would the Afenifere titans goad their new charge to over-reach himself.

    But even without the titans’ prompting, Mimiko probably harbours enough hubris to go after Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti) and Rauf Aregbesola (Osun), when their own elections are due in 2014 – and why not? Didn’t this twain align against him in his own re-election? In doing this, however, Mimiko would be part of such improbable alliances, which would only expose his empty ideological core, outside a survivalist instinct; and manifest seeds of his inevitable self-destruction.

    The ACN governors therefore have their jobs cut out for them. Fayemi and Aregbesola may be beginning to stamp their developmental vision on their two states, much more penetrating than what Mimiko has done in his oil-rich state in four years. But they must do much more, and present a score card that shows a clear and marked difference. Only such clear-cut quality and excellence can withstand the three-pronged conspiracy to come: from Jonathan, fighting for 2015, from Mimiko, seeking his pound of flesh and from the Afenifere rump, on a quixotic quest for lost glory.

    Ogun and Oyo states, though not due for election until 2015, must press hard their party’s record of solid performance in government – and bond with their people as they do so. And so must Lagos which, after the Tinubu and Fashola years, would be transiting into a new government.

    But beyond partisan gains and losses, the greatest casualty of the Ondo election is clearly South West integration, ironically the most crucial agenda for Yoruba welfare and development in a neither-nor federal Nigeria. For the umpteenth time, awry politicking has put the Yoruba at a crossroads, with Nigeria itself at a fearful juncture.

    In the First Republic, from the Action Group (AG) schism sprouted the Ladoke Akintola centrist forces, which slowed down the old West’s pre-independence developmental head start. Now, 52 years after independence, with the national question still potently unresolved, the Trojan horse is wily Mimiko and his LP, backed by a medley of embittered elite, many of them close to the grave, but who hate and spite have blinded to the future of their offspring.

    The ACN must therefore rouse itself. It must consolidate its governments’ development charter, fix its vexatious candidate nomination dynamics, and kick-start the economic integration process, if only as a model of what to expect. On this score, a progressively insular-looking Lagos must take the lead.

    If ACN does all these and does them well, it may yet win the big war, after losing the battle with the Ondo debacle.

  • NFF: Nigeria will target Cup of Nations’ triumph

    NFF: Nigeria will target Cup of Nations’ triumph

    NIGERIA returned to the African Cup of Nations in emphatic fashion when the Super Eagles pounded the visiting Lone Star 6-1 at the U. J. Esuene Stadium, Calabar on Saturday.

    And at the final whistle, NFF President Aminu Maigari pledged that the Federation will deploy all resources to ensure the team is well prepared to lift the Cup of Nations trophy in South Africa in fourmonths.

    Following a 2-2 draw in the first leg in Monrovia last month, the Liberians could afford to dream and set about the countdown for the return leg with a touch of comedy.

    Having informed the Nigeria Football Federation that they would arrive in a chartered flight on Thursday evening, they accused Nigerian aviation authorities of denying their aircraft landing right, when in fact, they had not concluded arrangement with the airline.

    After they somehow managed to seal a deal with another airline on Friday, the arrival time kept changing, and eventually the contingent landed in Calabar at midnight and wanted no Nigerian near them.

    They opted for a different accommodation other than the Channel View Hotel reserved for them, shunned protocol assistance and transportation and generally kept to themselves.

    Before the match, superstition was in the air as all previous matches involving Nigeria handled by South African centre referee Daniel Bennett had ended in draws.

    All that counted for nothing as Scotland-based defender Efe Ambrose scored in the first minute, and then Ahmed Musa increased the tally eight minutes before half-time.

    The match was, to all intents and purposes over after Victor Moses swept in a great pass, and further goals by John Mikel Obi (penalty), Ikechukwu Uche and Moses himself only underscored the gulf in class and enriched the Eagles further with Pamodzi, official marketer of NFF, paying $1000 for each goal.

    An overjoyed Maigari, who was in company with Cross River State Governor, Senator Liyel Imoke, Minister of Sports/Chairman, National Sports Commission, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, Chairman of Senate Sports Committee, Senator Adamu Gumba, Chairman of House Sports Committee, Hon. Godfrey Gaiya and members of his Executive Committee and Management, simply said: “Words are inadequate to express my delight.

    “We will do everything to ensure that the team prepares well, very well to go to South Africa and lift the trophy, which is what His Excellency, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan (GCFR) has charged us to do.