Keita: Sacrificial lamb for ‘system collapse’

Nigerians have been caught on the hop and in their usual flight of fancy have reached for an accident, harmless Sani Keita, as an excuse for failure in their World Cup campaigns  in South Africa.

Keita must not return to Nigeria, they say, because he earned a red card that reduced Nigeria’s strength in the remainder of the period of the match between Nigeria and South Korea to 10 men.

What a convenient sacrificial lamb,  Keita , for failure of government and its people; failure of leadership.

Has anything been done rightly in the last 11 years that democracy has been given a bad name by crooks and swindlers at its helm in Nigeria?

Fourteen years ago, venerable soldier and leader, Samuel Osaigbovo Ogbemudia, told me:
“Nations don’t go to war every month or every year nowadays. The youths of all nations show their strengths on athletics fields, football pitches, wrestling and boxing rings, tennis courts and other aspects of sporting activities.

Government must build them right from the cradle in its own interest”. Willy Brandt, former West German chancellor, in his  book, “I  was Hitler’s prisoner”, said what the average German needed were food, water, shelter and football.

Note the stress on football to Germans.

But Nigeria has ceased to believe in those things in the last 11 years since former President
Obasanjo’s laissez faire economics. She believes that mammon, indecently or dishonestly acquired, is the only answer. Nigeria now throws money at problems in the 11 th hour without concrete solutions.

She lost two matches and had no points in her World Cup finals campaigns and still wanted to represent her group in which three of the four competing nations had six, and three each. She wanted to upstage them.

That was grand dishonesty, trying to reap where one did not sow. So she disingenuously blamed her missed opportunity on a red card given to Keita in the last match. Keita has become the whipping boy for a collective guilt of national sloppiness.

No serious people think like that, hoping for a bountiful harvest without setting their hands on the plough to till the land. This shows the complete emptiness that has enveloped the nation in the last 11 years of so- called constitutional rule. Nigeria  has not got a leader for the past 11 years and so the people grope in the void for magic.

Nigeria has governors. It would have been purely inexplicable magic if Nigeria had sailed to the second round.

She has no footballers of world class, except averagely Osaze Odemwingie, Mikel Obi, Chidi Odiah and the “crucified” Keita.

It was not Laggerback’s fault that Nigeria did not click. He could only have coached footballers, not pretenders.

Nigeria had only just four to fit the description of world-class footballers.

Let us visit history. Football was first played in Nigeria at Hope Waddel Training Institute, Calabar in the 1890s and it spread to the coastal towns of Warri, Sapele, Benin, Lagos and other places white men settled then on the coast. Football grew fast in those areas.

The problem with Nigerian football is not what they called the Nigeria Football Federation; as if mere change of name is a magic portion, however, corrupt the NFF has become in the last  11 years. It is the failure of a system which has affected education, social mobilization, economy and sports generally.

One used to be baffled by the ignorance of those who commented on sports in the newspapers and on TV, especially football in Nigeria. They often argued that sports had become big business that demanded marketing.

They would not talk of how to manufacture the products to be marketed.  It will take 10 years of good planning and science to produce new Okochas, Ehizuelens, Ezinwans, Onyalis, Adenikens, Badas and sportsmen of world standards in Nigeria again. It should not be a fire-brigade approach for public relations.

The commitment must be from the top and whoever perches there must know his onions.
One was surprised that President Goodluck Jonathan wanted the so-called Super Eagles to reach the semi-finals of that tournament. To quality at all was an act of God. Jonathan was tasking God for too much to support rot and incompetence.

Nigeria is in the throes  of misleadership. She needs informed and fore-sighted leaders. She does not  need DOs (district officers). Nigeria needs a leader who has planned for power and has concept of a Nigeria of the 2050s with a programme to match. Jonathan has not convinced me of such a leadership with his endless committees like Umaru Musa Yar Adua’s.

The morning shows the day. Jonathan should set up a committee of 10 to develop sports, not a committee of hustlers. I venture to  list Dr. Ogbemudia, Peter Osugo, Professor Okuwobi, Femi Okunnu, Galadima, Ajibade FasinaThomas, Col Paul Ogbebor, Segun Odegbami, Col Mumuni, Major General David Jemibewon, Professor Adegbite, Jim Nwobodo and Orji Kalu.

They are tried and tested men in all areas of sports  development. And Jonathan is still mouthing the adoption of a failed economic system, soulless privatisation. Is he part of change, the current blowing the world?

We cannot solve our problems with short-gun approaches. If there had been vision in leadership
Nigeria would have been at peace with herself today because she is one of the richest nations in the world. It is gratifying that the condemnation of the present system is coming from as high as the Deputy Senate President.

His prayer in the motion he sponsored against kidnapping told it all: collapsed economic system in 11 years of constitutional rule. Nigeria needs a leader not an administrative officer like old colonial governors taking orders from Washington and London as the situation now seems to portray. It shows the collapse of ultra capitalism in Nigeria.

If one may ask, what type of English do we write or speak now in Nigeria? Has the Federal Ministry of Education changed our English to American computer language? Why then do we use “gotten” for “got” as  past participle, “proven” for “has proved” when,  in fact, proven, in English talks of ability? How did we come to phrases as “for you and I” instead of “for you and me” being in the accusative case?

There is so much to say of the new Nigerian English bedeviled with “show case” instead of just “show”, and comparative becoming superlative like “the best team will win” in a match involving two teams.

Is it easier to use the words “, check mate” instead of “check”. Really, this is a failure of leadership that should not be blamed on teenagers seeking places in higher institutions, but in  “system collapse” in Nigeria.

By BEN LAWRENCE