Nigerian sports – frustration and then hope!

I have been trying without much success since last night to put something down. Although there are a thousand things racing through my mind none is crystalizing into articulate and joyful thought. I came out of a conference yesterday in Abuja that was organised by the Federal Ministry of Education in conjunction with the British […]

I have been trying without much success since last night to put something down. Although there are a thousand things racing through my mind none is crystalizing into articulate and joyful thought.

I came out of a conference yesterday in Abuja that was organised by the Federal Ministry of Education in conjunction with the British Council and UNICEF. It had participants drawn from the education and sports sectors discussing the way forward – how to deal with the twin issues of education and sports. The conference left me in a state of confusion about what to take away from it.

On one hand I was frustrated. On the other it left me challenged.

To be frustrated meant to give up because of the seeming hopelessness of the state of affairs eruditely presented by passionate and brilliant experts during the conference. The common denominator to all the presentations is a lamentation about how a potentially great country like Nigeria got to this sorry and pitiable state.

To be challenged meant to listen to the presenters as they laboured and struggled, against common sense and the tide of past experiences, to give a glimmer of hope that things could still be turned around if the government had the political will.

The educational sector is in total shambles. The sports sector is in even worse state. And here is a conference trying to marry both to drive the emancipation of our children, tens of millions of them out there groping in the dark, wasting like flowers in the desert. It was depressing to say the least. It was like depending on the blind to lead the blind!

A few days ago I was at the public hearing of the Senate Committee on Sports. I had sat through several brilliant presentations – all lamentations of the state of our sport. There was nothing new said that had not been said before at other fora, on other occasions, by the same set of people, the same small passionate army of sports experts, permanent members of the unofficial club of ‘committee of sports problems’ repeating the same things over and over again like a broken record. I made my own modest contribution and left only to be told later by those that had waited till the end that the conference ended on the note that I was indeed one of the major problems with Nigerian football with my unwillingness to embrace peace!

I am reeling. I do not even know what to make of such thinking. Me? How? Where? What? I am flustered. So, let me think other thoughts.

General Henry Adefope is to be buried this weekend. He was the first of those that laid the foundation of Nigerian sports in the early 1970s, a foundation designed to make Nigeria a world sports power. He passed on a few weeks ago a ‘pained’ man in the aspect of sports, watching helplessly their handiwork derailed by a generation of administrators that did not know what they were doing, leading the country into the dark alley of planlessness and visionlessness. I pray that his soul will rest peacefully!

The news I get from Ibadan is not cheering at all. Joe Appiah, my colleague in the victorious Shooting Stars team of 1976, the first Nigerian team to conquer the African football club scene by winning the Africa Cup winners Cup, has joined the queue of ailing players. I am told he is critically ill in a hospital needing urgent help to stay alive.

I recall the case of Samuel Ojebode a few months ago whose life was saved only by the intervention of good Nigerians, particularly the Oyo State government.

I am forced to ask about so many other former footballers of my generation and even before, who were part of the great history of Nigerian football through the ages. The stories I hear about them make me weep. What do we know about the present condition of Rashidi Yekini, Niyi Omowon, Harrison Mecha, Sule Kekere, Alabi Essien, George Omokaro, Peter Ali, Sebastian Broderick, and hundreds of other great past heroes of Nigerian football? You do not really want to know for the pain it will cause. They are all struggling to survive the health situations brought about by age and flogging their youthful bodies for the game of football. Most of them are languishing in the despair of neglect by a system that should have cared for them if only things were done right.

I can imagine what life is for heroes of other lesser sports.

I am taking a closer look at the condition of present day footballers. Do you know that easily 90 percent of those playing for clubs in the various national leagues in the country are enslaved. They are coerced or blackmailed into sign meaningless contracts that make them prisoners to the clubs. Poverty and the desperation to play dulls their senses and make them sign away their futures for pea nuts. Do you know that most football players in this 21st Century, in this great, big, rich and proud footballing country called Nigeria earn less than the equivalent of 200 Dollars a month? That is even flattering, many earn less than 100 Dollars!

These players traverse the country, week after week by road, risking their lives, driving through dangerous areas, without adequate insurance, made to play and to ‘win’ under impossible conditions, or be sacked! There is nothing but hunger and anger amongst footballers in Nigeria. The lower the level of the league the worse the situation. Yet, these players have no choice – it is either this enslavement or poverty! What can we do? What future lies ahead for them if the present is this bleak?

I am in the national sports space. I cannot see much in the horizon about how life can be made better for the youths interested in pursuing careers in sports except if somehow we manage to present sports as an integral part of the educational reforms that must take place if this country is to survive and become great.

The comforting thing is that conversations at various levels and at various fora are on-going.

We shall not tire of proclaiming until we are heard that sports can provide an umbrella of emancipation for the youths. Government should take it more seriously and provide the platforms for discovery, development and empowerment that will make the youths be the best they can be, do well for self and for country, and live well beyond their careers.