Many Nigerians are so frustrated. The economy is not fair to us, there is insecurity and a litany of bad news from nearly every corner. Some relief came in the Nation’s Cup tournament going on in next door Cameroon where the Nigerian team started on an exciting note, offering loads of emotional relief.
Then we crashed out of the tournament too suddenly, and the frustration erupted like a multi-headed volcano. But that’s really the problem with emotions – they change with situations.
And our frustration has its tap root in our politics. Everything is politics by default. Arrest a man for pilfering from the public till and watch how his kinsmen, party members, religious congregation unite in condemnation – not of the crime, but of the law enforcement authority or the whistle blower.
We saw this in bold relief when former governor of the Central Bank, then Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, blew the whistle about $20 billion unremitted funds from oil sales. Rather than task the then ministers of Petroleum Resources and Finance to explain the whereabouts of the funds or resign, it was the CBN Governor who was asked to resign and failing which he was fired. The government of the day wasn’t bothered about missing money, it was only disturbed by an activist treasurer whom any president could sack and appoint at the snap of a presidential finger.
These absurdities are assuming more interesting and more parochial colourations every day. There are not a few Nigerians for whom everything wrong with the Nigerian system is Buhari’s fault. It’s getting to a point where men with erectile dysfunction will blame Buhari. No one remembers the other layers of government. Buhari is responsible for market fires, road accidents, poor match results and traffic hold-ups.
Nigeria’s exit from the African Nation’s Cup has been attributed to the President’s gesture of encouragement when he phoned the players before the match to encourage them to bring the trophy back to Nigeria.
Whether the team played well or not, they lost the match. Then our scientific babalawos went to town. How can a team which beat almighty Egypt and had a 100 percent record in the opening round suddenly lose its very first match in the knockout phase? It must be that phone call from Buhari, that Sudanese who doesn’t want anything good for Nigeria. He exacted his revenge against Nigeria for beating his country Sudan 2-0 in the group stage.
Otherwise serious-minded people even engage in verbal fisticuffs in the taxi, bus stop, and even more vehemently, at the newsstands. Folks even phone-in to radio programmes to spew that belly-aching absurdity. And you wonder: like seriously?
We are sore losers any day! We never come to terms with the reality that a game is just a game and that many games are won even against the run of play. But was this particular game against the run of play? Did Nigerians on the pitch play the game like the potential champions they were expecting to become? It’s an open debate.
There is this haughty, overconfident Nigerian vibe that thinks prayers and sanctimonious posturing even in football, can make up for shabby preparations and half measures.
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Watch the Nigerian team “pray” before the start of every match, pray at the end of half time; pray at the beginning of second-half and waltz around the pitch to the blares of “miracle-working god” from the trumpets of the Supporters Club.
Compare that ecumenical indulgence with the business-like engagement of the Europeans and South Americans who will always make it into the knock-out stages, then you can understand the difference between who played and who prayed.
It is usually the faithless westerners or unholy South Americans that make away with the scudetto. It has happened in nearly every tournament if we discount the cadet competitions where we have made it to the very top in a few cases. And in such cases, it was good-playing and hard-fighting teams doing their best and leaving the rest…
The best emerge best by dint of hard work. The world champions and runners-up are always those countries with thriving domestic leagues and well-organized FAs making preparations for the opportunities that come. They have set up football academies and have feeder teams from where kids graduate to boys and boys to football professionals. Our local league is completely local and rudimentary – most teams are owned and run under the whims of state governments and suffering from the caprices and corruption that goes with such ownership status.
So, in order to win tournaments, there is need to lay the strong foundations which we always try to bypass in our obsession for short cuts and quick results.
Moreover, there is need to realise, as a matter of urgency, that work is prayer, and that good work and hard work is what answers prayers. Problems are never prayed away, but they are tackled and with prayer, they are overcome. This habit of even our leaders asking us to pray where they have failed to work is a disease that needs to be exorcised.
The Westerners and Easterners who brought us the two religions have never stopped working. Dubai, London or New York were not prayed into existence. They are meticulous and conscious efforts by forward-looking people. We have abandoned our schools and hospitals to rot while crowding into foreign hospitals – much of the time to be treated by the same doctors we frustrated out of our own hospitals.
One sector in Nigeria suffices for lamentations to go round. Agriculture! We abandoned food production because we could sell oil and import even foreign toothpicks to remove foreign food stuck between our teeth. The groundnut and cotton pyramids, the timber and palm oil trade, the hides, skins tanneries and ginneries all slowly asphyxiated when petrodollars started rolling in – and look at where the country is with all the oil and gas!
Now our footballers are trooping into well organised and competitive leagues in other climes because the home leagues are mediocre. At the eve of every tournament, a scramble begins…and when the inevitable happens, the poor players and coaches are there to chastise. And of course, this time Buhari was available to blame as well!
Success is an investment and a commitment. Western Europe in particular, invested heavily in sports as a source of generating revenues, creating jobs and boosting their economy.
The proficiency of European and South American countries in sports is principally as a result of the business model they adopted which has seen football clubs evolve to the status of multibillion-dollar super corporations drawing people and investors from across the globe.
For Nigeria, the Qatar 2022 qualification matches beckon. Are we going to wait and pray as we prefer, or work pragmatically for a change? Sure, Buhari will still be in the equation when our well-honed skill of appropriating a scapegoat is called upon. This thing called frustration…!