(First published in 2013)
When Britain conquered the world and established her empire, it took football along. And today, we have several regional variations of the sport throughout the Commonwealth. The Football League was founded in England in 1888, and that could rightly be described as the beginning of big time competitive football when the sport became a major revenue earning enterprise.
This writer will not attempt to write on the chronicle of the evolution of the football sport in Nigeria and what, over the years, has made it the singular most popular sport in the country. Those eminently competent and qualified to do so include the likes of the Grand Master Fabio Lanipekun, Victor Adeniyi, Tolu Fatoyinbo, the oracle at Ibadan, Sam Akpabot, Walter Oyatogun, while paying respects to Ishola Folorunsho and Yinka Craig.
Contemporary commentators can also speak better on the subject.
For me, it is the place of Football as metaphor that is the concern of this article. The cheering news that there is something in this world that can galvanise Nigerians and virtually rev them into ecstasy is the raison d’être of this column.
Nigeria is without a doubt a very suffering country. Her country men and women are groaning in unprecedented agony brought about by the exploitation, greed, wickedness, insensitivity, and economic repression by their so-called self imposed rulers. Their home bred slave masters!
Nigeria has no electricity. Nobody should dispute this fact. What Nigerians have is candle light that functions at the mercy of the wind. When the wind blows, the candle light is out!
Nigeria has no internal security. Not a shade of it. If you would like to take a wager, allow your vehicle to break down on the Long Bridge at 7pm. Or go to the Church in Maiduguri. This is a country where you are never sure you will return home safely any time you go to work or venture out to visit your aged parents in your country home. You need to carry your amulets, or the Christ’s Cross or John the Baptist’s axe, or a longish Islamic string of beads any time you are going to the bank to transact business.
These days you see big men going about with bulging chests: it is bullet proof or bante they stuff under their flowing agbada! Make no mistake about it!
Despite the harrowing fact that a negligible few of their country men have emptied the national treasury, despite the fact that several hundreds of thousands have been denied placement in the universities and colleges due to a combination of factors: no school fees, the JAMB nuisance, shortage of educational institutions, and despite the fact that many marriages and homes have broken down as a result of the economic crunch, Nigerians, in their millions, still trooped out in celebration of a football victory.
Nigerians are easily the saddest people on the surface of the earth. Except the few insane men and women who are stealing money they cannot exhaust even if they spend a thousand years on earth! And yet in spite of their agony, in spite of their misery, in spite of their deprivation, in spite of their seeming hopelessness, they could still find something to brighten their day, even if, momentarily.
Ordinary football. Ordinary piece of rubber. Ordinary victory in which they are neither participants nor beneficiaries. They knew they would not partake of the red carpet reception in Abuja. They knew they would not share in the lavish ‘spraying’ of currency notes on the players. They knew they would not get a ‘mourner’ *MON,* or a ‘Cunny-cunny man’ *CON* or ‘grand commander of the federation of rogues’ *GCFR*, yet they gleefully opened their mouths and exhibited decaying teeth in ecstatic joy.
The current plunderers of our common patrimony should learn from this episode that what Nigerians need can be counted on our finger tips: security, employment, justice, transportation facilities, food, shelter, education facilities and over all good and accountable governance.
Nigerians do not care if their leader is an atheist, a Muslim, a Christian, a traditional African religionist, a Guru Mahara-Jji, a Rosicrucian, a Buddhist, a Zoroastrian, a Mormon, or a worshipper of stone! Nor do they care if their Leader is from Zungeru, Port Harcourt, Birnin Kebbi, Iseyin, Owerri, Obudu, and Song or from Ago Iwoye. All they care for and desire is a SELFLESS LEADER with a lot of wisdom, a great intellect, a great vision and proven capacity and capability a and EQUITY. And certainly not a THIEF!
Nigerians do not care for ethnicity. All the talk about religion and ethnicity really came from the deceptive tongues of the crafty politicians. Sport, love, and faith have combined to prove that Nigerians do NOT discriminate. Just be fair, honest, trustworthy and considerate, Nigerians will fall for you no matter where you come from.
Now that we have been united in mass poverty and in sport, it is hoped that the self imposed slave masters currently driving us to the precipice will seize the opportunity of our heroic victory in South Africa to do a rethink, change their ways, repent and ask for our forgiveness.
The cabal in Abuja and their surrogates in all state capitals of the UNITARISED federation should take a cue from ordinary Nigerians and do the needful. Nigerians are not a difficult people to please. They are not a difficult people, by and large, to govern.
The sport of football has demonstrated, as it has often times done, that Nigerians can be made happy, can be united, and can follow and hail a good leadership whenever they find one.
Stephen Keshi is the man of the hour. And I am sure if Nigerians are asked to vote for a Leader worth following today, they will; in their millions vote Keshi for the Ultimate gold!
Here is calling on those temporarily holding the reins of power to seize this hour of euphoria to come down from their Olympic Heights, identify with ordinary [I hate the word: all of us are SPECIAL in the eyes of our Creator], I mean the masses of Nigeria and give us many more things to cheer than the rubber at Pretoria!