Many football fans taunt Arsene Wenger as expired football wonk. They see him as idealistic poor performer. With the coach of Arsenal Football Club set to depart at the end of the football season in England, they are asking President Muhammadu Buhari to emulate him. Wenger is a professor of football who grooms young talents into football potentates, instead of spending huge sums to buy those developed by other coaches.
His football philosophy is: don’t buy stars, make them. So he buys young inexperienced players and grooms them into stars. He is not driven by the mad desire to win at all costs, like his competitors. The result is that he has given his supporters as much excitement as he has dismally disappointed them. Despite playing entertaining football and being frugal for the club owners, many Arsenal fans cannot wait for him to go.
The past few years have particularly been emotionally traumatic for many Arsenal fans because he has not won much. So for Arsenal fans who have grown impatient, they wished he had departed many seasons ago. For them, his best was behind him particularly the 2003-2004 season when Arsenal won the premier league in a spectacular way, winning the league without suffering any defeat. Or the 1998-1999 and 2001-2002 seasons when they won the double, the premier league and FA Cup.
While on the saddle since 1996, Wenger has won three premier league titles, seven FA Cups, seven Community Shields, and overall, his time at Arsenal is seen as revolutionary in English football. To a large extent, you can use Wenger’s tendencies to judge Arsenal fans. Most Arsenal fans are orderly people, fair minded, equitable and upright. They are not people who want to win at all cost, regardless of how. They work hard and then hope to win spectacularly.
With Wenger’s sub-optimal performance in the competitions in recent years, despite teaching his talents some of the best football tactics, his fans have come to the painful conclusion that it is time for Arsene Wenger the Great, to take a bow. For his fans, his stellar achievements over the years are like in the past century. Currently he is seen as a smug and a cause to the potentials of a team that he created in his own image.
Wenger will be remembered positively, particularly his scintillating style and tactics, which I believe will be studied in top football classes for years to come. No fair-minded person can deny his enormous contributions to football. So, like many of his admirers, I wish Arsene Wenger the Great, a deserved rest from the tensions and rigorous intensity of English football. The intensity must have taken a great toll from his life, and so he should go and rest or move to a lesser demanding assignment.
As news of Arsene Wenger’s departure broke, a nephew of mine who knows my sympathy for President Muhammadu Buhari’s government, reminded me that like Wenger, Buhari’s best years of service to Nigeria is behind him. Those who know agree that Buhari was a great leader during his first incarnation as military head of state. Then he acted with despatch in his war against indiscipline, and while some of his economic policies were seen as unorthodox, there was no accusation of lethargy. He had refused the allure of Bretton wood Institutions, preferring the hard way to national economic revival.
While agreeably the circumstances are different in a democratic environment, his performance as president for many is sub-optimal. Like Wenger, the feeling is mixed. Despite accusation of being selective in the war on corruption, I have no sympathy for those who are confronted by their past misdeeds. While I will prefer that everyone who stole should regurgitate the illicit wealth, I am willing to accept the inadequacies in the fight against corruption as long as those called to answer have questions to answer.
Again while I have railed to no end here about nepotism and sectionalism in several of the appointments made by the president, which contravenes the constitution on federal character, I am willing to accommodate it, where the appointees deliver. But it is a double jeopardy where the constitution is contravened and still incompetent nincompoops are foisted on a nation in urgent need of development and quality service. Unfortunately despite the loud cry for change on this front, the president acts deaf and dumb.
The worst failing of the president is his handling of the armed herdsmen insurgency. I have stated previously on this column that the president being a Fulani must act above board in dealing with that scourge. But he hasn’t, for reasons best known to him and his security chiefs. He rather treats the matter with conceit. When the killings become routine like in the past weeks in Benue particularly, I am tempted to believe the grave allegation by the so-called wailers that the Fulani elite involved may have a nefarious game plan, to extend their culture further across the country.
But if that is true, why would they believe that a 19th century game plan will work in the 21st century? Agreed that in the 19th century Usman Dan Fodio drove the Hausa dynasties asunder and took over their kingdoms, but such exceptionalism and expansionism in present times, is one of the reasons Western powers have ruined Syria and most Arab countries. If the accusation has substance, then those planning it must be seeking to bring destruction to themselves and the rest of Nigerians.
I guess it must be harder for Vice President Professor Yemi Osinbajo and others who are working closely with the president and their supporters across the country. The federal government’s handling of the herdsmen insurgency in the middle belt of the country is difficult to defend, and the only possible reason for the inexcusable security lapses in bringing the bandits to account, is because the security chiefs are not sure where their loyalty should go. Perhaps the face-saving measures of the National Economic Council, in banning open grazing and undocumented migration of herdsmen from West Africa across Nigeria will offer some succour to ruined reputations.
The saying – better late than never, should be the watchword of the Buhari government going forward. Whether he hopes to be re-elected or not, the federal government must quickly retrieve the communities sacked by herders for the indigenes. The presidential encore that indigenes should accommodate herdsmen will continue to ring hollow, unless the murderous marauders amongst the old genial Fulani herdsmen are fished out and punished.
In the meantime those who have benefited from the Buhari mystique, through winning elections and gaining juicy appointments must show appreciation to the old man. They should help to refresh the image of the no-nonsense general, instead of the present perception of him as a senile weak leader. Meanwhile, for Arsenal, football must remain an art.
