If you are part of the thinking that last weekend’s defeat suffered by Nigeria’s Super Eagles at the Godswill Akpabio International Stadium has anything to do with the stadium or any circumstances surrounding it, SHAME UNTO YOU! If you are part of this thinking and above forty (40) years of age, then your shame is smaller; but if you are less than the aforementioned age, then you are an ignominy to the younger generation.
So in this age of technological revolution, a youth of my generation will see a failure that has its causes deeply rooted in a decayed foundation of a system that has stayed under a shade of depravity, but rather than deal with the embarrassing consequence(s), resorts to establishing some superstition all in a bid to discredit the administration that built the stadium.
For obvious reasons, I may ignore such blunder from those born in the 21st century and maybe those of the finishing years of the 20th century, but how appalling it is that those who existed earlier could join in this blunder.
As a youth of this generation who falls into the latter category, I am a witness to the diminishing years of the Nigerian football system, especially as it concerns the Super Eagles. The best I can recall of the Super Eagles’ performance in international football was in 1994 at the USA-hosted world cup, where we featured as African champions, after beating Zambia by two goals to one earlier same year to clinch the African soccer trophy.
Four years later, we could only struggle to put up a near similar performance at a succeeding world event in France, except for the humiliating defeat by Denmark which got us ousted at the same round of 16 we were sent packing by Italy four years earlier through a Roberto Baggio converted penalty kick.
In the space of the four years in context, the Nigerian senior soccer team had gone under four (4) technical advisers- Clemens Westerhof, Bonfere Jo, Philippe Troussier and Bora Milutinovic who were all hired and fired with no genuine reasons.
For Westerhof, not even his efforts in raising the Stephen Keshi led team that had so much luminous prospects with world class stars like Rashidi Yekini, Uche Okechukwu, Benedict Iroha, Emmanuel Amunike, Finidi George, Austin Okocha, et al, could save him when the NFA’s axe of habitual impatience rose to strike.
Sadly, it is always the impressed incompetence of the managers that is always alarmed after each failed outing of the Super Eagles, while the frustrating and corrupt acts of the country’s football governing body are pushed under the shelve.
The frustrating practices of nepotism- giving priority to recommendation and long legs above competence, zeal and patriotism are hardly blamed as causes for our football miscarriages. The coaches only suffer the blame burden.
For the records, how has our country been treating the welfare of our footballers from earliest times till date? How many of our football heroes played national football happily and took ceremonial exits when age came calling on them? How important have we been taking up the very important strategy of raising young stars to succeed existing stars?
Like it is in the general family case, every man makes haste to bear kids and raises them with his youthful strength to succeed him when the inevitable old age comes knocking.
He never waits until he is weary before scrambling for descendants. But in the Nigerian sports sector at large, stars only spring up from nowhere once in a while, used while their stardom lasts, and dumped once their productivity diminishes.
Gloomier in this case is the fact that some of these stars who struggled independently to stardom encountered challenges in the course of giving in their best to the service of their fatherland, only to be abandoned to rust at a time the same fatherland they sacrificed for was expected to support and get them back on their feet. Sad, indeed sad.
Let’s consider among others the case of Emmanuel Amunike as an instance. At the peak of his career when he was good enough to contest the number eleven (No 11) shirt with ex-Dutch star, Marc Overmas in the then Barcelona team.
Recounting the ordeal that saw him quitting football prematurely, Amunike once narrated how he left his Barcelona team midway in an activity filled season to answer a national call.
He got injured while training for the match he was called to feature in for the super Eagles, but rather than being sponsored for treatment, his replacement was immediately sought and he ended up returning to his club with the injury. Amidst grudges, he was treated by his club but not without being warned.
Not too long after, another call came for a national assignment and he ignored the warning of his club to honour the call, only to meet another (this time, a knee) injury during the match proper and had to stay back in the country for treatment.
All efforts, according to him, to get support from his country went futile and going back to his club in frustration, your case is of course as good as mine what his fate was.
That was how Emmanuel Amunike, one of Nigeria’s greatest left wingers roamed the surface of this earth seeking cure for his knee injury without success until he was eventually forced out of a football career that was dazzling with prospects.
In this same country, our then Samson Siasia led under 23 team were almost ejected from a hotel in a foreign land where the team camped ahead of the Netherlands 2005 junior world cup. It took the intervention of a certain state governor to save us the shame of such international humiliation.
Eventually, the same team scaled through to the grand finale of that tournament and though they were forced to settle with a runner up position, the government of the federation was first to identify with the success- a success it never contributed to.
With this and several other cases which time and space or the lack of both would not permit their inclusion in the foregoing, the quest for national prominence by local soccer stars is no longer about the zeal to serve the nation, but merely as platform to earn a spot in one international club or the other. Once this is secured, the football interest for the nation dies off in them.
This has been a result of the levity and disregard with which the welfare of players has been treated, as much as it has equally been a result of a disheartening, non-motivating reward system. Now this gets me wondering how an innocent stadium selected as venue for a match contributed to a negative outcome of a failed management.
In case we have forgotten, when the national stadium in Abuja was launched with a friendly encounter between the Super Eagles of Nigeria and the Samba boys of Brazil, the former got a home soil humiliation of three unreplied goals.
Who was to blame for that? Or was the stadium also constructed by or named after Godswill Akpabio? Again in 2005/2006, Nigeria fell for Angola in a very important qualifying game for the 2006 world cup in Italy, was that also a case of bad luck from the government of the state that hosted the game?
Same way, our country, Nigeria has over the years been in the habit of abandoning fallen heroes to their fate- I mean the very heroes who met their fall while serving the country.
And while the ones who survive the fall are left to lick their wounds for the rest of their lives, others who were not fortunate to survive are easily forgotten and their families abandoned to suffer the pains of losing their breadwinners.
As the case has always been, another heartbreaking of such events happened recently when a policeman, Sargent Chukwudi Iboko attached to a certain branch of Zenith Bank in Owerri was abandoned to die of gunshot injuries he sustained while battling a gang of armed robbers who invaded the bank.
After about two months of battling with life on a hospital bed, neither the police force nor the bank could assist his treatment with the needed funds.
Sad, he eventually gave up recently, leaving behind the burden of raising seven kids for his wife. What a country! Fortunately and unfortunately, one of the seven kids, according to news report, died while his father was being buried- at least, that reduces the number to six.
The most recent development of the casualties caused by that very bank robbery incident is that the only surviving of the three policemen is currently seeking for financial assistance from the public to foot a N3m skull surgery recommended to get him back on his feet.
Is ordinary three million naira too much an amount for a combined effort of the Nigerian Police and Zenith Bank? And I dare to ask, is he no longer an officer of the police force? Where is the management and owner(s) of the bank he fell while trying to protect? Is this how banks treat the police guards attached to them? With this, what encouragement/motivation are they giving to other bank guards that would make them risk their lives in the case of any of such attack against the safer option of taking cover or seeking the nearest escape route?
Come to think of it, is it in the constitution that banks should take their capitalist practices to the extreme? Events like this make me want to take a full supportive stand with the Marxist view of the communist policies.
Would human life be treated with such disregard in a core communist state? What does this communism (as a system of government) care about (in the first place) other than THE PEOPLE AND
THEIR WELFARE?
Before drawing my conclusions, let Zenith Bank come out to tell the public that it could not afford even half of the required N3m to have at least commenced the treatment process of the late Iboko.
Where are the SMS ALERT FEES, the ATM CARD MAINTENANCE FEES, etc., which the banks have been stealing indirectly from customers? If we have been caring for them enough to overlook their fraud of imposed charges, why can’t they show even an infinitesimal part of same? They would think we do not notice their stealing because it takes the formula of N75 per customer, forgetting that we do not need to be bankers before knowing that seventy-five naira times one million customers is equal to a whooping seventy-five million naira (N75x1,000000=75,000000).
Truth is, somewhere out there in this country, families of tumbled heroes are suffering to make daily bread after losing their breadwinners to the service of the nation. Why? They have been abandoned and neglected by the authorities of the very land that guzzled their sources of livelihood.
That is how horrendous the reward system in this country has been. As it is now very obvious, only a few, in fact, less than a handful of those clambering for enrolment into one service group or the other are sensu stricto in for patriotic service.
The rest resort to that only as means to getting employed. Little wonder why money making has taken precedence over service. And to meet the target, even a corrupt means is considered a norm.
Finally, with the case of the Nigerian police for instance, would anyone blame a policeman who immediately takes off his uniform and runs for his dear life rather than risk same battling with armed bandits? Why should he, when he remembers how dependent his relatives are on him and comparing the treatment given to others who took same risk but never lived to tell the story?
Ubong Sampson (08021419939) is a Public Affairs Analyst.
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