Where did it all go wrong?

No, this is not about what you think. There is no need saying anything further about the twin evil plaguing the land: petrol scarcity and little or no electricity supply. If we are not confronted with the rent-a-quote crowd who are quick in telling us what a foreign leader thinks about our peripatetic president, leaders and their aides talking down on us on how long it will take to clear the mess they met on the ground assault us. Even if we pardon the latter as it is their style in this clime, what do we say of an army of supporters who type on their keyboards usually plugged to a generator running on petrol bought at anything between N150 to N220 per litre and still do not see anything amiss? Surely, we need more mental health experts in Nigeria.

But this is about football, especially our national team, the Super Eagles. There’s something about football that makes a person go to any length to watch it spending any amount and with so much sadness around us, it is one of the few things that make citizens happy. Even when some of our compatriots who could not afford the subscription fee of the satellite TV operators, they will still squeeze themselves in dingy rooms or shacks surprisingly called ‘viewing centres’. Too often the Super Eagles’ performance have been doing yoyo with Nigerians’ emotion. Up today, down tomorrow, and like most things in our land, you never know what to expect but you are prepared for the worst. And that was what happened in our failure to qualify for the Cup of Nations.

After the first leg here in Nigeria which we drew having conceded a goal at the dying minutes, I told my son that we are out of the Nations cup. A boy whose devotion to anything football surpasses mine and who has not experienced the pain and agony of following the Super Eagles, he kept hoping that his countrymen would do him proud. He enthused over Alex Iwobi and Victor Moses who illuminated the field that day with their skills and work rate, but I knew deep in my mind that our journey to Gabon has been aborted even before take off. Last Tuesday was not different even as many Nigerians watched the game played in Egypt with power supplied from generators. Our players did their best but majority of those who played that day had no vim, pace and craft. They were passengers on the field and it was sunset for some of the senior members of the team, as they seemed intent on telling us that Nigeria does not need them any longer.

Of course, we saw a glimpse of the future too. We saw those who could lead us to the Promised Land, properly guided. And that is the crux of the matter. We don’t have pilots for the journey ahead in football issues. The body saddled with that responsibility, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) couldn’t take us anywhere. With three coaches in three years and a wild goose chase for a foreign coach, football administrators in our land are not better than our political leaders. “When destiny played out, there’s nothing we can do about it,” Amaju Pinnick the NFF president, told journalists last week in Abuja. Destiny? How unserious can a leader be? Destiny when the body spent more time dueling with the former coach, the one whom Pinnick dubbed “African Guardiola”. More and more, folks running our football have shown that they are bereft of ideas that can move us forward. Added to this is the reality that we are not producing quality footballers like before and more attention ought to be paid on our local professional league.

The ray of hope coming out of the Nigeria Professional League shows that we can do things right if we are determined in this country. Gradually, fans are trooping to stadiums across the country to watch matches. Seeing pictures of fans at the Agege Stadium in Lagos watching an NPL game under floodlight gladdened one’s heart. In these days that we have been talking of diversifying our economy, it should interest our government that while the English Premier League has a brand value in excess of $4 billion since 2013; it generates £2.2 billion per year in domestic and international television rights. We can get there too if our heads are in the right places.

Apparently it will be too much expecting Pinnick and his gang of clowns to resign but they should do the right things. Even though the sports minister has been saying the correct things on Super Eagles, it is unsure if he will do the right things. In a country seemingly on life support, football is an essential medicine that must be administered regularly.