If the truth be told and I see no reason why it should not be told, until I sat down this morning to write, I had no intention of talking about football or any such frivolity. There are however times when the writer’s hands are tied in the matter of deciding what to write about on any given day and many will agree that the events which unfolded in Abuja in the aftermath of a World cup qualifying match between Nigeria and Ghana forcefully demands that the subject of what I should write about must concern that match. This is of course to the exclusion of other matters which on the surface appear to be weightier than an event which all told, occupied no more than two hours.
At the turn of this year the Super Eagles turned up in Cameroon to compete for the African Cup of Nations cup which, as far as Nigerians were concerned, was to be won handsomely by the Super Eagles. After the scintillating performance of the Super Eagles in the qualifying round, expectations were high; so high that they could not be matched by the performance of the team and their coach in the first knockout round. This is partly because the brand new coach had not been given the time to settle into his job before he was exposed to the competition offered by the best teams in Africa. The spoilers as Nigerians were concerned were the Tunisians who had stumbled through the qualifying round only to stun the Super Eagles with a smash and grab performance which was as unexpected as it was painful. Thereafter, Nigerians hauled unprintable abuse and curses at the players, the coach as well as the multitudes of people who were only remotely related to the team in any way or fashion. The country’s first citizen, the President, was not protected from censure by his exalted office. The poor man made the mistake of sending a message of encouragement to the team in expectation of a victory with which to enhance his reputation as a talisman. Unfortunately, whatever plan he had fell flat, as the subsequent and wholly unexpected defeat was laid at his door and there was no way that any of his aides could come up with any spin that could extricate the President from the stickiness of his position on a matter which he did not have to involve himself and so there has been a heavy silence from his camp.
When Nigeria was so unceremoniously dumped out of AFCON, many of the disappointed fans found consolation in the fact that Nigeria was going to be involved in the playoff for the World cup and surely the Gods of soccer were not going to be so unkind as to look on unconcernedly as the Super Eagles were dumped out of the global football tournament that came around only once in four years. Nigeria had qualified for the World cup so often in the last seven or so editions that most Nigerians had come round to the assumption that Nigerian qualification was a done thing and the last hurdle to be crossed was, as we have come to say in Americanise, not a big deal. All we had to do was to beat Ghana over two legs and we could begin to pack our bags for Qatar. And why should we think that Ghana was not just going to lie down and play dead so that we could pick up the ticket which surely had our name inscribed on it?
I have been a football fan all my life and from bitter experience, my heart was full of trepidation at the thought of getting past our very noisy, not to say pestilential neighbours. A lifetime of serious heartache inflicted by various generations of the Black Stars of Ghana weighed very heavily on my mind and although Nigeria has managed to defeat the Black Stars on recent occasions, the default result against Ghana remains a loss as has been the case over several decades. Those of my generation cannot forget those early days of the Nigeria – Ghana rivalry for the emphatic nature of Ghanaian superiority. I have no personal recollection of the 7 – 0 thrashing we received in 1957 but there is no way that I can forget the 3- 0 drubbing we received in 1960 because I was at the National stadium on that day. I was the only member of my primary school class to have had the privilege of having a firsthand account of that match played on a Sunday, making me to look forward with great eagerness to Monday when I could regale my less fortunate classmates with an eye witness account of what had taken place at the stadium. But I had to sit through the match first.
That match was historic in many respects, not least because it was the very first international football match to be played at the National stadium which was not even completed at the time but was used for the match as part of the celebration of Nigeria’s independence. It was the first match that Nigeria played in her new national colours of green and white to celebrate the transition of the Nigerian team from the Red devils as they were known in their now discarded red shirts, to the Green Eagles as they were to be called after the eagle on the Nigerian crest.
That match was anything but a celebration as the Black Stars had not turned up with the intention of giving the new Nigerian nation any manner of satisfaction or even to take any prisoners. They had come to teach us a lesson in the acquisition of nationhood and remind us that they had been independent for more than three years and were on that score alone worthy of our respect, never mind that there were many more Nigerians than Ghanaians but perhaps because of that fact.
On a personal note, I could hardly breathe for the excitement which gripped my tiny frame as the teams filed into the field of play at the start of the game. And the Ghanaians drew first blood from the manner of their entrance. Accompanied by their flamboyant and highly visible Minister of Sports, the kente clad Ohene Djan, the Black Stars in their silky all white uniforms, adorned at the back with a black star within which their respective number were written, waving snowy white handkerchiefs to the spectators who had thronged the stadium in the hope of seeing them ground into the soft pitch of the National Stadium. They looked supremely confident and looked more like the home team than their hosts who appeared rather strange in their unfamiliar green shirts. This entrance set the tone for the entire match as the brand new eagles simply could not fly above those elusive Black Stars whose scintillating attack was orchestrated from the right by the twinkle toed Baba Yara and on the left flank by a man called Salisu whom I saw in my nightmares for quite some time after that match. Even with the passage of years or perhaps because of it, I still regard his left foot as the most efficient that I had the privilege of watching live on a football pitch. In the middle was the giant Charles Gyamfi, a no nonsense centre forward of the old school who knew that his only business on that pitch was to score goals, never mind how they were scored. I no longer remember those who were responsible for scoring the goals on that day on which no Nigerian had the joy of scoring any goal in response to the three goals scored by the immaculate Black Stars. That was my baptism of fire as far as Nigeria –Ghana football encounters are concerned and it was by no means the last. I was so traumatized by my experience that I could not find the mouth with which to narrate that ordeal to my classmates in school the following day as I had fully intended to.
My next live encounter with the Black Stars took place thirteen years later as the Ghanaians returned to the now fully functional National Stadium to contest a place with Nigeria for the World cup tournament that was to take place in West Germany the following year. I have no reason to give for why Nigerians were so confident of success in that particular match but they were, which is why there was only standing room in the stadium even after the authorities had jerked up the price of admission. Interestingly, I no longer have any reliable memory of that match maybe because the aftermath of our defeat and consequent elimination from the World cup was way more interesting than the match itself as rioting broke out as soon as it became clear that the match was lost. And, in spite of the efforts of the Military governor of Lagos State to intervene personally, the final word was delivered by the Police who bombarded the rioters with round after round of tear gas canisters which nevertheless could not prevent the crowd from torching the beautiful bus which had brought the Black Stars all the way from Ghana for the match.
Given my experience over the years with the Black Stars, I was not going to endanger my health by exposing myself to the events which took place at the Moshood Abiola Stadium a couple of days ago by watching that match live. This is why I diverted my attention to other matters whilst the game was on, hoping desperately all the time that my worst fears would not come to pass. I hoped in vain as the default result of Ghana – Nigeria football matches was duly achieved and Ghana prevailed as a matter of course. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the unpalatable result some animals masquerading as human beings trashed the stadium so that the lasting memory of that match is once again the stinging smell of tear gas as Police struggled to bring a modicum of order to the chaos they most probably did not anticipate. Nigeria will not be represented in Qatar when the finals of that competition take place in November/December. That is tragic enough but given the infantile response of those overgrown miscreants in Abuja the other day, would FIFA even allow us to be part of the next round of the World cup competition? That is a thought which is far too sophisticated to enter the minds, if they have a mind, of those sore losers who turned the Moshood Abiola stadium into a theatre of war as the world looked on in disbelief.