Relishing our bulletproof soccer glory

Our shameless public officers have no qualms enjoying the exotic offerings of Dubai only to sneak back into the hovel they have reduced our country to. When the air at home gets too suffocating, they simply emplane to the United Arab Emirates. I wonder if they would have faced that direction if the UAE had […]

Our shameless public officers have no qualms enjoying the exotic offerings of Dubai only to sneak back into the hovel they have reduced our country to. When the air at home gets too suffocating, they simply emplane to the United Arab Emirates. I wonder if they would have faced that direction if the UAE had frittered away its oil wealth as we have consistently done. When one looks at the eye-popping developments in many countries in the Middle East where the desert has been transformed to the Garden of Eden, one cannot but reach the conclusion that most of our so-called leaders and their acolytes – including the civil servants who have helped bastardise the system – are nothing but enemies of their fatherland even if, for now, they are still being addressed as Excellencies.
The Golden Eaglets positively laundered Nige-ria’s image as nothing else could have done. I telephoned people in Europe and America as the game was going on, and they all confirmed that their eyes were glued to the television. They all said the Nigerian spirit would triumph.
Now, what is that thing called Nigerian spirit? It is the thing that makes a Coach Manu Garba assemble and train a pan-Nigerian team which, for once, looked truly under-17. We all witnessed situations in the past when some players claimed to be within that age bracket but had junior brothers who were in their late 20s. One boy who was invited for trials at a time told a friend of mine that his roommate was, by self-admission, 12 years older than him. Unfailingly each morning, the roommate would wake up early to shave his beard and spruce up to look the part he was playing.
But we did shun the temptation to cheat this time. And it has paid off. Football is a game for young people. Never again must we assemble elderly young men or young old men, some of whom would have secretly fathered their own children, to wear our age-group jerseys.
By winning the World Cup at their level, our children are showing us that the future of Nigeria belongs to them – and that future is rosy. Their victory came at a time when the age-mates of their parents were misusing public funds to buy armoured vehicles to shield them from imaginary enemies; when a Civil Defence officer was reported to have over 62 houses in Abuja alone; when the system is systematically trying to exculpate or at least forgive oil subsidy thieves who are children of prominent political personages; when a police DPO routinely humiliates a gathering of governors by ordering them to disperse and end their meeting on ‘orders from above’.
Our children have shown us that all these fleeting things that make the older generation go crazy will never add value to Nigeria. Wouldn’t the hundreds of millions spent on importing armoured cars have been better spent on a football academy to enhance the skills of our teeming youths?
Throughout the tournament, we all saw how an Alampasu threw the ball to a Mohammed who tailored his pass to an Okon who flicked the ball to an Iheanachor who in turn shook off three opponents before releasing an Awoniyi running in from the flanks to make hay! There was genuine team effort in the Nigerian style which made every player in the team a potential scorer and the team invincible. If only our politicians were capable of learning a thing or two from their children!
It was in high spirits that I flew out of Abuja for a conference in Miami. There was so much back-slapping at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport after the Golden Eaglets’ victory. Though tribe and tongue may differ, in football brotherhood we revelled. But as we transited in Frankfurt, I couldn’t help but recall what a much travelled colleague once said about Nigerian not having even one single international airport worthy of the name.
The standards of our political leaders must be so low that they spruce up a glorified motor part with gilded aluminium and affix a signpost, “International Airport” to it. Not one of our so-called international airports will stand the scrutiny of civilised local and foreign evaluators. The only airport that actually looks like an airport is the MM2 Airport in Lagos – and it is not government-owned. The local airport in Abuja is still under lock and key even after being rehabilitated. Other air garages scattered all over the country but which have recently been pasted with their own quota of paint and aluminium panes are “international” only in name. All you have to do to prove that assertion is visit other airports in serious countries in Africa and the rest of the civilised world.
It is good to have some-thing to celebrate. Nigeria shouldn’t be one teary litany of barefaced stealing and bloodshed. Our 17-year-old lads have done us proud and the authorities are within their rights to milk the achievement for all the goodwill it can engender. As one soccer fan enthused on the queue at the Abuja Airport, the performance of our lads was bulletproof all through the tournament; which reminds one of the unfinished tasks ahead. We must get to the bottom of the bullet proof cars scandal and other such scandals in the land.
Then we must commence in earnest the business of working towards the emer-gence of truly nationalistic political leaders who will follow the path blazed by the Golden Eaglets: Engraving our country’s name in gold and making several Dubais of our gang-raped cities.