By Onochie Anibeze
Where are those who say that Nigeria can host the World Cup? Where are those who are still trying to convince the government that we can host the Commonwealth Games and are pulling all strings to start the bidding?
I hope that they are watching the shame that is Nigeria 2009. I hope that even government will, by now, appreciate the level of our decadence, the level of our backwardness, the deep rot in our polity and begin to look inwards for repairs rather than exposing our mediocrity and dying culture to the world.
Yes, dying in the sense that some years back our sports culture was rich. Then, thousands flocked sports venues to be part of the spectacle. Just like what happens today in Europe and other countries with rich sports tradition, Nigerians travelled to other cities to watch football games.
In this country, we saw teeming supporters hire buses to travel to other parts to cheer their darling teams in soccer matches.
We saw Rangers fans travel in hordes to Lagos, Jos and Benin to cheer Rangers. We saw supporters of then IICC, Bendel Insurance, Mighty Jets of Jos, Water Corporation of Ibadan, Kano Pillars travel out of their cities to cheer their teams.
Then, league matches were crackers. The element of surprise was there and fans travelled because winning away matches was not unusual. Now the best an away team gets is a draw.
The corruption that has destroyed other sectors of the country also crept into sports and referees are now producing magic with whistles.
Club officials influence matches, especially their home games. It is almost some taboo to lose home matches. And if fans knew results of matches why would they go for games?
Suddenly, we began to lose everything. The fans started disappearing. Now our teams play in empty stadiums. Chief Oyuiki Obaseki, the head of the Nigerian league board says that he is facing the challenge squarely.
We are watching how he tackles the corruption. I wish him luck. But we are still paying the price of what corruption has done to our football. The other factor is simply incompetence. Those who manage our football are either corrupt or incompetent.
This is not about the Nigeria Football Federation. It cuts across the entire country. The states are worse than the federal government. I can only vouch for a few like Delta and Lagos.
It is a national problem. Just as votes don’t count in our elections and wrong people continue to emerge as our leaders, I don’t see how there can be a paradigm shift in sport. When the head is bad, it affects the whole body.
The problem of our sports is still the problem of leadership. If we had good leaders, they would have done something about reviving sports in schools.
The ministry of education would be working with the ministry of Youth and Sports to ensure sports takes its rightful place in our country. If we had good leaders, it will reflect in our football because the system will produce the right ones to run football.
The ones who will take wise decisions and get our football cracking again even if it takes time. Otherwise, we will continue to plunge deeper and deeper and what we are all witnessing in the ongoing FIFA Under 17 World Cup will continue.
We are setting negative records in all areas. I’m not sure FIFA has ever had it this bad. From transportation to communication to facilities and even simple accreditation, it has been problem galore. There was power failure in Kano, Water Polo in Enugu following heavy flooding of the pitch that halted the game between Burkina Faso and New Zealand. It was so bad that the turf was raised by the flood.
Bad job. Moments later Calabar had its share of the misfortunes. Rain forced them to stop the game between Iran and Columbia. In Abuja, during the first match between Honduras and Argentina, the rains exposed the poor drainage system and the pitch was waterlogged, a scene the whole world caught on television just as it happened in Enugu, Calabar and Kano.
As the televising has been capturing the true Nigeria as showcased by these incidents, foreign print journalists have been having field days too.
The one that has surprised fifa most is the attendance in many centres. Kano and Kaduna have been exceptional as expected. Enugu tried to fill the stands by conveying students to the stadium.
Their effort should be commended. At least, the people responded to the pleas to attend the games. Calabar has not faired badly in this respect. But it has been so disappointing in other venues. Abuja has been pathetic.
The opening ceremony and matches lacked the atmosphere full houses ensure in games. The empty stands told our story. Fifa had to appeal to us to come watch our games.
Gates were thrown open for the second match day in Abuja. 40,000 tickets were bought. Still the fans would not respond. Students were hired into the stadium for the little effect Nigerians saw.
I don’t think that it has ever happened in fifa events. Students can be taken to stadiums. In fact, Egypt took students to stadiums. But never had authorities bought tickets and announced that people should come and take and enter the stadium free and they still refused to exhaust the free tickets. About 15,000 turned up in Abuja.
Out of this, about 5,000 were students. So what happened to the remaining tickets? Even Lagos, the acclaimed home of football in the country was not impressive. We know that we have got so many things wrong.
But if it’s so bad that we shy away from entertainment, from soccer that is a unifying factor, a sport that excites and makes us to momentarily forget the ills of our polity, then something serious is happening to us.
If we can’t get people to watch soccer events of this magnitude, how can we successfully host commonwealth games? With all these problems, how can fifa, in this generation, ever approve any of their world cups to hold in Nigeria again?
The fifa I know will not come here again, at least not in this generation. But this is a point I must stretch going by what happened before this one was awarded. The signs of laxity were there. The signs of failure were there.
FIFA cannot claim that they didn’t know. But because some of them stood to benefit from our corrupt system which was oiling their palms, they kept coming, threatening never to come again but continued to come.
Nigeria’s Ogbono Soup can wet any appetite, I tell you. This is why I never expected them to publicly and loudly condemn the messy situations they met on arrival.
This is why I never expected them to complain badly for they are partakers. But this is not a blanket condemnation. There are those who didn’t know what was going on.
FIFA is a great body but they are no saints. The attitude of our faans could be said to be a rebellion against the rot in our football.
However, I’ll not lose hope in our sports. When I see what Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan is doing in Delta State, some confidence returns and I have hope that some day Nigeria will change.
Fashola is in the same category and as far as sports is concerned, Gbenga Daniel is making an inroad. Let’s not give up on Nigeria but for now, let’s avoid exposing our backwardness by striving to host these big events. The shame of Nigeria 2009 is enough..
Onochie Onochie, i hail u. u succeed as always in meeting my expectations- my choice 4 number negative reporter on nigeria.u never fail to deliver wen it coms to making allegations & rubbishing ur own country.
u complain of the ineptitude of the LOC, yet u fail to also point out that ur fellow journalists are holding key positions in the various state & national LOCs. ur colleague tony ubani is a member of the transport sub committee in lagos yet u pple complain of the problems journalists faced during accreditation.wat is ubani doin ther if not to “come and chop”? aisha falode, felix okugbe, evn mainasara ilo & others are all fellow pressmen,so use ya tongue to count ya teeth. if u wer made a member like UR COLLEAGUES dt enjoyed the windfall of COJA, would u complain like ds?
as for crowd, did u follow the confederations cup in RSA?ws ther any difference in the number of ppl dt showed up wen compared to nigeria’09? the competiton ws about the biggest names & best teams in world football yet the stadia wer half empty except the finals.
is it not a known fact that u-17,u-21 both male & female donot attract capacity stadia?did u not follow egypt’09?how come it is only ur country dt has failed in ur negative, myoptic & biased write-up wen u as reporter knw dt the situation is same all over the world- canada’07 u-21/ korea’07 u-17/ holland’05 u-21/finland’07 u-21 female to mention a few?havent u seen or heard of abandoned matches in elite euro leagues as a result of water logged or frozen pitches? didnt we see a match in the kings cup featuring real madrid & another team abandoned 4seasons ago due to power outage & the remaining 20minutes played the next day?
examples abound all over the world @ds stage of any fifa organized event. if fifa is so worried about empty stadia ahead of south africa2010 to the extent dt they hv given free tickets to ppl,including construction companies’ workers, then i must admit dt u hv just displayed the height of crass folly & comprehensive ignorance. we knw all is not well wit public office holders as seen in the landmark judgement & pronouncement of justice bunmi oyewole but dt does not confer on u the temerity to play sheer stupidity to the gallery simply bcos ppl like u have not benefitted directly from ds competition?
pls pls pls stop drop ds negative disposition, do more of objective writings & go the extra mile to also draw from similar events globally b4 u hang ur country out in the sun by the skin.
b4 i forget, did u hear the news dat southafrica2010 LOC& SABC begged AIT to lend their latest cameras to use for the worldcup but wer turned down bcos dr dokpesi said his country needed them for ds competition?hw com u didnt deem it fit to celebrate such? r u sure the praise u r heaping on fashola & uduaghan is not a call for patronage??
Well Mr Onochie, your comments are noted but I am deeply disturbed by the state of your own mind. You have not written your article in the way those people who have seen the 4 walls of a university would appreciate. You have thrown up allegations which you cannot substantiate saying that some people are rubbing their hands with Nigeria’s obono soup. There has been power failure in a german league cip recently, Preemier League matches were postponed last season due to frozen pitch in stadiums that claim to have under gounr heating systems, I beg you to buy the tape of the Chelsea Barcelona match 3 seasons ago to see the state of the chelsea pitch on that day. There are certainly problems in Nigeria no doubt- corruption organizational etc etc but the reportage by vanguard newspapers of this tournament has been pathetic. Nigeria has won a very interesting match against Argentina and yet the news headline the next day was scandal scandal every where.I watched canada 2007, stands were barely one third filled, I watched the FIFA under 20 women world cup in Finland, a stadium with only a row of seats and a house constructed nearby used as changing rooms hosted FIFA grade A matches and yet FIFA declared this tournaments as successful. How have your comments been of encouragenments to the volunteers at these tournaments? the re is a young lady at the Lagos centre who stationed herslef at the toilets to ensure that the toilets are always clean moving in and out at every time without pay, what have you done to make this tournament better instead of whining away persistently. I hope you were deeply ashamed to see fans in Bauchi troop out en masse to support the golden eaglets, now you know that it is an Abuja Problem if fans don’t come out. Please next time if you can’t help to make any thing better, don’t make it worse. Vanguard can go to hell and burn to ashes!
Can you prove this ogbono soup allegation? Mind you, FIFA is not EFCC.
well Mr. Onochie Anibeze perhaps you are seeing things through your own version of everything is bad in my home country. I am from Canada and I supported Abuja’s effort to host the 2014 commonwealth games and I support the efforts to bid on the 2018 games. Any Fifa Tournament is hard to do because of the very nature of the Tournament but Many hard working people with this tournament have shown Nigeria to be good to host major sports events despite the problems. AIT has more Tv Equipment purchased for this tournament then the South African Broadcasting Corporation has to the Senior world Cup next year. AIT is so advanced in that outside broadcasting realm that ESPN of the United States would like to hire their equipment and personal.
I am sure your words are not encouraging to the many volunteers . How precisely does a LOC Stop Rain on a Football Pitch from Falling?
Organizationally Nigeria could certainly use a helping hand but also it is to purge some elements that look to these events as an open store to thieve. There are some good people in Nigeria and Africa that can fit that bill. As to the commonwealth games Abuja still is the place that will be the exception to the rule for the games by virtue of the infrastructure and sports venues already in place. Glasgow Scotland is currently Stumbling in the early days of 2014 while Abuja is keeping and exceeding all transportation commitments for 2014 without actually hosting the games.
A 2018 bid will be successful if it sees the light of day thanks to informed people who are not journalists like yourself .
In summary, Nigeria is a failed state and deserves to die.
Onoch is simply right. Even the dry pitch is not even. I have seen the ball bounce awkwardly, i have seen the pitch shoot up when the ball is played hard. To add, how do we continue to cope with the nonsense commentary (documentary/ narration) from BON? Why wont they allow us enjoy the real commentary with fine british accent since they cant obviously do it properly. Instead they use it as their prompter! Also, they hav no visual replay of the match during review of matches. To my surprise, even after our match today, no review was done of the half and the goals. Where are they in a hurry to?!!
It is not enough to talk and expose the ills of the society, what are you, you doing yourself. It is not for the leaders alone.
Nigerians by staying away are not just expressing their disgust with the rot in sports but also with the whole failing edifice that is the structure called Nigeria. how can people come to watch when they are hungry? it’s good that our shame is exposed for the whole world to see. maybe, just maybe our administrators would take the business of governance serious now that their is no hiding place for them. may the rains come pouring.
Its a shame. I can tell you that the great insecurity in the country is the reason why most people would not turn up at match venues. These matches sometimes finished late evening. How will you get home. I think FIFA Meant well alhough we can claim that we were arm-twisted to host the event. The level of poverty is Nigeria is too high for citizens to indulge in jamborees. The earlier the politicians know this, the better. I hope they will not wait until the whole mess explodes before they do ’something’. God Dey.