Super Eagles: Sport imitates life

Take the Super Eagles’ performance in the ongoing world cup in Brazil. As we say in street lingo, they are the true sons of their father. They can break your heart when you least expect. Against Iran, they played like 11 players who were hired a few minutes before the match to represent Nigeria. The […]

Take the Super Eagles’ performance in the ongoing world cup in Brazil. As we say in street lingo, they are the true sons of their father. They can break your heart when you least expect. Against Iran, they played like 11 players who were hired a few minutes before the match to represent Nigeria. The result was a disappointing draw.
Many people gave up on them, not just because of the barren draw, but especially on account of their uninspiring display. But within a couple of days they resolved to play as one team — and, see the result! Bosnia Herzegovina, a good team by all standards, bit the dust. Nigeria had chosen to come to the party just when Bosnia was nursing the idea of qualifying for the next round given Nigeria’s lacklustre performance against Iran. Sad day for Bosnia; great day for Nigeria.
Our football imitates our national life. We have underachieved in many respects but anyone who writes us off does so at his own peril. Like the Super Eagles at their first match in Brazil, we often demonstrate lack of cohesion. At times we sound as if we are a coalition of six countries. At the worst of times you’d think we were a group of 250 atavistic groups perpetually at war. But just when you thought we would step over the brink and break up into many puny pieces or worse, we manage to come to our senses as the Super Eagles did and realise that we are better off as a strong team under the banner of a federal republic than as individual mini-states.
A couple of years ago in this column, I did contend that this house called Nigeria would not fall. Proceedings at the ongoing National Conference have so far proved me right. The confab started in typical Nigerian fashion with a lot of negative grandstanding and centrifugal hard-line agendas. You would think the conference would descend to fisticuffs at any moment, especially since some veteran tribalists and ethnic jingoists had told us that they would sabotage the conference if they didn’t have their way. But like the Super Eagles the confab members have since realised that Nigeria is stronger than its constituent parts.
The year 2014 had already been predicted in some quarters as the terminal date for Nigeria as presently constituted. Those analysts took an insightful look at our penchant for self-destruct and reasoned that all things being equal, the house that Lord Lugard put together in 1914 in the service of his Queen would fall apart before its 100th birthday. Well, in Nigeria, all things are never equal. And, as the inimitable former Vice-Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University – Prof. Roger Makanjuola – would put it, water can run uphill.
Somehow we tend to come together at the nick of time when our collective wellbeing is threatened. The Super Eagles were heading for disgrace. Football fanatics were already threatening on the internet that they would physically storm the airport to boo and humiliate them if they didn’t raise their game in the remaining matches. Our socio-political graveyard is full of carcasses of many unwary men who transmogrified from hero to zero overnight.
It was a frightening pros-pect for anyone familiar with the power of soccer in Nigeria. We can play our ethno-religious politics all year round but when it comes to football all the ethnic and religious bigots queue behind the national flag. We don’t have Muslims, Christians or African religionists in the Super Eagles, just one Nigerian team. I wish it was like that on the political stage.
Even if ideologies and regional aspirations differ, perhaps our political elite would someday come to the realisation that they needed to have a peaceful country first before their varied aspirations could be fulfilled. When you listen to soccer enthusiasts, you would think we had 170 million coaches in Nigeria. Every fan is an expert in coaching techniques. There are often as many views about a soccer match as the number of people watching at any given spot. Same with our politics. It is part of our vibrancy.
Whatever happens going forward, the Super Eagles have redeemed themselves somewhat. They still have to qualify for the next round of the world cup. Nigerians are however savouring the last victory for now. And it was fitting that the goal was scored by Osaze Odemwingie, the stone which the builders almost rejected. It is truly astounding how 11 young lads running after what the inimitable cartoonist, Bisi Ogunbadejo, would call ‘a bag of wind’ can bring so much joy to an otherwise fractious nation.  
Some lesson there!

Death of History

I have often wondered how and why History was removed from the syllabus of schools. Now our young people don’t know where they are coming from and have no idea where they are going. That must be why the narrow-minded youth who markets hate in blogosphere thinks he invented wisdom. Without access to the history of his ethnic nationality and that of others he is e reed in the mighty ocean and is tossed hither and thither by the waves of life. Our policy makers are probably ignorant of the fact that no nation achieves greatness by ignoring its history.
Some creative humorists have made a meal of this type of development which indicates that we often do not give a deep thought to policy reversals and therefore the society itself winds up with the wrong set of people to steer its ship. One of such humorous pieces was this one which I couldn’t resist sharing:
“African educational sys-tems have surprising outcomes. The smartest students get admission to medical and engineering schools where they make 1st Class. The 2nd Class graduates get MBAs and LLMs to manage the 1st Class graduates. The 3rd Class graduates enter politics and rule over the 1st Class and 2nd Class graduates. Those who dropped out of school without valid WAEC school certificates enter the underworld of crime and control both the politicians and the businesses.
“Best of all, those who did not attend any school become prophets and marabouts and everyone consults and follows them”.