By Rotimi Fasan

WE are surely getting good at being bad, taking one step forward and several backward. And rather than pretend that the Nigeria/FIFA spat has been resolved by Nigeria blinking and grovelling before FIFA while the latter looks away to make for the impeachment of principal officers of the Nigerian Football Federation, the truth of the matter remains that we’ve once more made fools of ourselves before the whole world, showed ourselves up for the spineless people that we are.

For how else can one explain that the President of the largest Black country on earth would bow down to the threats of a mere football association even if one that claims to serve the interest of the world? What was President Jonathan thinking when he came to the decision to back down to FIFA’s threat to ban Nigeria from competitions organised by it if the President did not rescind his decision to ban Nigeria’s national football team from international competitions for two years? Those in support of the President’s latter decision have criticised him for imposing the ban in the first place.

But even more damning of his action, for me, is his decision to act as if Nigeria’s ostracism from the world football community was something of a national disaster. Isn’t it said that he who pays the piper calls the tune? If the object of the ban on the national football team was to revamp the game in the country while leaving room for the growth of a home-spawn national team that we can, as once, be proud of again, why should we be afraid of the threatened FIFA ban?

In the first instance the ban on our team was not directed at sabotaging FIFA, rather it was to bring sanity to the house of corruption that had been erected over football management in particular and sports in general in Nigeria. Nowhere was the decision taken to spite FIFA.

Therefore there was no reason why FIFA should chafe at our decision to demand value for money being spent on football in Nigeria. Except FIFA benefits from the corrupt management of football in Nigeria which it now appears to do, there was no reason why it should feel affected by what would appear a painful decision, a necessary operation needed to excise a malignant growth.

That decision was purportedly informed by the need to safeguard our national interest which should not be subject to the dictates of a foreign body or foreigners. As a sovereign nation, we do not need FIFA’s authority to determine what is in our interest. We ought to be the sole judge of that. And the infantile argument that Nigerians are a football loving people is just what it is- a whole lot of hot air.

Football is not food, neither is it the air we breathe. There’s no reason to pretend to be more Catholic than the Pope. There are more important things that should and would occupy us in the wake of a football ban that to continue to throw money down the bottomless bog of a game that has become a national embarrassment. Until they were knocked out of the just ended mundial, Brazil did not do too badly in South Africa.

But their quarter-final place did not save the job of their coach or of many of the team members who know that their place in the national team is no longer tenable, unlike Nigeria that was offering monetary bribes to players too old, fat and tired to move- offering them huge monetary bribes to advance beyond the first round which they couldn’t even achieve.

 Were it Nigeria the likes of Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, multiple winners of the World Footballer title, would still be in the national team for sentimental reasons that can only cripple the growth of the game as there presence would definitely close the door of opportunity in the face of younger, hungrier and more agile players.

Nigerians all knew that the reason nobody had been able to clear out the rot in our football had been the fear of FIFA ban being spread by those feeding fat on the rot. Such persons saw and still see any move in the direction of cleaning the house as political interference of some kind. For this reason they keep Nigerian football under the reign of persons who saw their position in the NFF as family inheritance.

They turned football management into their personal business. But because such persons represented the interest of FIFA it has remained blind to their antics. But this cannot be surprising for the FIFA hierarchy is more or less run like a monarchy where the leaders remain for decades if not for life, giving room for all sorts of manipulations. No, FIFA’s silence cannot be surprising. What is surprising and at once vexing is that President Jonathan did not anticipate the FIFA move or what should be his administration’s response to the claims of those, such as our shirking, punch-drunk law makers in Abuja who, after bouts of wrestling and rounds of boxing, left the serious business before them to pretend football is, like rice, now a national staple that Nigerians would die without.

This is sheer spinelessness of the worst kind. One is not by this saying that Nigeria should have stuck to a bad decision which I do not think the ban was, the point is that Nigeria should have thought through her position before imposing the ban and stuck by it no matter the nonsense from FIFA. But now the impression has been created that we do not think before talking, which is why we could be easily dissuaded from following up on a decision we supposedly took in the best interest of our country. We are always afraid or unwilling to make the sacrifices we need to make in order to succeed and make the future better.

It’s this vexing lack of will that sees us repeating many of the mistakes of the past that have bedevilled our development as a country. In a way, this is not a sign of courage or confidence and does much damage to the impression one has of the readiness of President Jonathan to provide the right kind of leadership for an undisciplined lot as we tend to be. In this respect, at least, there have been better testimonies about Obasanjo, Buhari, Babangida – even Abacha, all polarising figures of our national history. Jonathan seems set on the slow coach path of his predecessor, explaining a destructive lack of drive or initiative in terms of the need to listen to opposing views. This may be the way of a populist but, I repeat, it is not the trait of a leader. 
Talking Point