Pan-African footballing

During a 1986 World Cup game, Argentina’s rolling magician Maradona, dribbled past six of England’s defenders – including the goalkeeper Gordon Banks – to score a goal of vengeful humiliation against Albion – earlier bashers of Argentina at Falklands Islands. Roars of celebration by Argentineans drowned screams of thousands of radical critics of military dictatorship […]

During a 1986 World Cup game, Argentina’s rolling magician Maradona, dribbled past six of England’s defenders – including the goalkeeper Gordon Banks – to score a goal of vengeful humiliation against Albion – earlier bashers of Argentina at Falklands Islands. Roars of celebration by Argentineans drowned screams of thousands of radical critics of military dictatorship being tortured and battered to death in the country’s dungeons. They also covered up military experts in devilish techniques of torture purchased by racist oppressors in South Africa.
A Ghanaian diplomat once told me that the real name of the founding father of Ivory Coast is ‘’Kofi Boahen’’; altered to ‘’Houphouet-Boigny’’ to win a French scholarship.  The old man must have juju which beats those of Ghana’s medicine men – dead or alive – during vital penalty shootouts. In Equatorial Guinea 2015, the God of Football answered his request for Boubacar Barry, the goalkeeper from Cote d’Ivoire’s Muslim northern region, to heal hearts and wits of a people that had bled in a civil war.
When Senegal spanked France at the South Korea/Japan World Cup, I was in Nairobi.  Two Gikuyu women in an NGO were ecstatic. ‘’We beat them; we thrashed France; we showed them fire!’’. Their bubbling blood had become Wolof or Serer or Toukolor fused into a gigantic “We Africans ’’.
When Nigeria’s football team at the Los Angeles Olympics beat Brazil to win the cup, beer sellers in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya sold their magic liquids   all night long to revelling ‘’We Africans’’.  Television had used Nigerian and Senegalese legs to grow Pan-Africanism in ways politicians were yet to match.
These football legs have, however, become exports to Europe’s richer markets; like nurses, medical doctors, copper, iron ores, diamonds, gold, groundnuts and bales of cotton before them. The haemorrhage has dramatized Pele’s warning about dangers to Nigeria’s football. In his view, youths from other countries were left to watch heels of home-trained Nigerian opponents surging past them during international inter-youth games. After those same heels had been ‘’panel-beaten’’ by European coaches, their Europeanised runs become familiar and easy to contain.
Taribo West was reported to have felt ‘’ashamed’’ over the absence of an ‘’African’’ quality in matches played at AFCON 2015 in Equatorial Guinea. He was presumably recalling the rhythm and surging flows manifested by the ‘’Green Eagles’’ team he played in at the Olympics in Los Angeles; as well as Senegal’s ‘’Teranga Lions’’ in Korea. In both cases, music from electrifying bodies in motion excited spectators; winning them fans across nationalities. Following panel-beating by coaches in European clubs, reassembled members of the Los Angeles Green Eagles team were demolished by Denmark’s eleven at the World Cup in France.
Senegal’s President, Leopold Senghor, once urged Africans to contribute to the global universal culture a genius that is peculiar to Africa; emphasising the sensual and spiritual embrace of nature by Africans. He saw in Congolese music expressions of torrential rain, sunlight and vegetation; urging Congolese footballers to manifest this fecundity; open frontiers of imagination for exploration and exploitation by Africa’s football coaches.  Coaches should explore the “koroso dance’’ popularised by Kano State’s Cultural Dance Troupe for training speed, rhythm and coordination.  The ‘’atiligu dance’’ of the Igbo trains rapidity of movement of feet and would outclass running between rows of blocs currently used for training by European clubs.
The “ikpirikpi-ogu war dance’’ and the Zulu dance would train combativeness required in all high body-contact sports. With thousands of ethnic dances to tap from, an African nations’ football festival should be a carnival of gymnastics with thrills that Taribo West would be very proud of. New Zealand’s rugby team has only the Maori ritual to rely on.
Football earns foreign currencies that flow into Africa. British genius has built a vast ‘’soft power’’ by colonising emotions of devotees of her football teams; forcing Al Qaeda to detest the game. Africa must incite climbing Africa’s mountains; swimming and rowing from Mogadishu to Maputo; from Dakar to Lagos and Cape Town to train pan-African virtues like intensive struggle to conquer; sacrifice for family; climbing up slopes of skies to serve Africa.
As Africans charmed by Europe drown in the Mediterranean Sea and starve crossing the Sahara, Pan Africanism must invent its football’s green revolution.