OUR humour can be electric. It must be in drawing from its eclectics that someone came up with the line, “every problem has an expiry date”. Stephen Keshi, Eagles coach, whose cognomen, Big Boss, tells its own story, defies every logic about dates retiring problems.

Keshi was a superb captain, who led the Eagles to a second CAF Nations Cup title in 1994, after the Eagles had finished runners-up thrice.

The same year the Eagles qualified for their first World Cup, a befitting cap to Keshi’s retirement as a player. It took another 19 years for Nigeria to win the CAF Nations Cup – Keshi was coach, becoming one of only three Africans to have won the trophy as a player, and as a coach.

An impressed nation and corporate organisations made Keshi a real Big Boss. They showered him with gifts and honours. Some suddenly discovered Keshi, particularly the football authorities with whom he disagreed on all matters except that the Super Eagles were the men’s senior national team of Nigeria. His CAF victory after several attempts to sack him, the poor management of his welfare which was in the public space, pitted him as a national hero. He shunned supervision; the nation almost roared together, “Leave Keshi alone”.

The rapidity of his decline stunned many. Scrappy results through the World Cup qualifications, the quality of the team’s play at the FIFA Confederation Cup, all added to new agitations for Keshi’s removal. He was sacked as the 2015 CAF Nations Cup dream withered. Nigeria, the defending champion, did not qualify. An ill-informed presidential interference returned him to the job. The

Nigeria Football Association refused to renew Keshi’s contract, believing the problem would expire on its due date. Someone did to solve it. Keshi remained in the picture, he was owed salaries, and he

wanted the job. We had warned last November that a presidential involvement in hiring Keshi meant nobody could sack him.

He is still around dictating the terms of his return. He has hardly uttered a word about his plans to return Eagles to winning ways. Perhaps, a big problem like Keshi would have “a big” expiry date.

Whenever the date is, Keshi’s presence around our football is long overdue for disentanglement from the title and role he once merited. It is not our business how much he cherishes being coach of the Eagles. Nigeria needs an Eagles coach who would take the team to unattained frontiers. Keshi proved he was no longer that coach with string of embarrassing losses that culminated in Nigeria’s absence from the 2015 CAF Nations Cup – for us that was the expiry date of “problem” Keshi.