NIGERIA IN PARIS 2024: A NATION WITHOUT HEROES!
“Poor is the Nation that has no heroes, but shameful is the Nation that has them and forgets.” – Marcus Tillius Cicero
By Babatunde Jose
Every country on earth has men and women who lived their lives in the service of their country. Every nation worth the name has its documented history outlining the struggles and achievements of its people. The history of a nation is usually incomplete without its great men, women and heroes and why not, its villains and scoundrels too. The main purpose of heroes is to inspire the future.
Let us consider the case of football and the generation of footballers who won laurels for Nigeria: Many people, especially the young ones may not have heard of late Haruna Ilerika; ’a prodigious player from an obscure secondary school in Surulere, Lagos. He went on to play for the academicals and the Green Eagles while he was the star player for Stationery Stores (Flaming Flamingos). Talking of Stationery Stores, we must not forget Muyiwa Osode, the gangling maestro, ex-Ahmadiyya College, Agege who also graduated to the National team with some of his schoolmates, including Tunde Disu who later became a National Coach.
Today’s children will grow up never knowing that Nigeria ever had such great footballers who brought the country continental fame and became household names. However, with the passage of time and our general decline as a nation, some of these heroes died virtual paupers, emaciated from illness, and left behind a destitute family. They became unsung and the heroes in them died. However, a good many of them, after football, went on with other chosen careers and became successful in life.
The reasons for the decline of the nation are not farfetched: We lost our focus and our bearing. In the days of glory, we raised and nurtured these heroes from secondary schools. Those were the days when we excelled in almost any field of sports.
Just as schools had unending competitions that threw up heroes in the fields of play, clubs sprang up to continue nurturing these gifted men and women. The police football and athletics club recruited young men and women fresh from school.
There was also the Ports Authority or The Marines who made waves on the football pitch. Names like Henshaw of Marines readily come to mind and there was the UAC club where Cyril Asoluka was one of the big names.
The proverbial ‘music died’ with the incursion of the military and the bastardization of our educational system. Murtala/Obasanjo decreed the takeover of secondary schools and things have never been the same again. As they say, ‘nothing can ever come from nothing’.
A society that fails to groom and nurture its youths can never expect to excel in sports or athletics. Where are our Nduka Odizors on the tennis courts today, our Thompson Onibokuns, and Laurence Awopegbas? They have been consigned to the dustbin of history. We used to have the Ogbe Hard Court tournament in Benin, and the Lord Rumens Tournament in Lagos. Our Lagos Lawn Tennis Club has since become a social venue featuring artists such as St Janet; a sad commentary on a club where Arthur Ashe once graced the court.
Where we make any tangible waves, these days are the products of individual talents that have been lucky to cross the Sahara or the Atlantic to seek grooming and sponsorship in other climes. That is the only reason we hear of such names as Blessing Okagbare, Falilat Ogunkoya, (incidentally, it was the late MKO that sponsored Falilat to the university in Mississippi). Left to this country, such budding stars could have been dimmed and forgotten. The National Sports Institute housed in the National Stadium Complex in Surulere has seen better days. No sports training academy like we find in the US or Jamaica devoted to grooming athletes. And yet we want to make waves at international sports meets.
At the current Paris Olympics, our contingent were mere spectators, you hardly saw a ‘green-white-green’. The ones that occasionally come to light are so intangible as to make you ashamed. It is sad that we could not field entries into many events. Yet we have federations for various sports whose officials struggle to go junketing to the Olympics and other international sports meet.
A very pathetic story is that of former Nigerian Olympian Echikunwoke who won hammer silver for USA. Echikunwoke missed out on competing in the hammer throw at the Tokyo 2021 Olympics due to a failure by the Athletics Federation of Nigeria (AFN) to conduct the required drug tests for athletes. She lamented: “On my 25th birthday, I was officially informed that I cannot compete at the Tokyo Olympics due to the negligence of the federation I was set to compete for.
“To be clear: The Federation of Nigeria did not go through the processes to set up proper testing for us athletes. They left us in the dark about this whole drug testing issue until the last minute, where we were left helpless.” The poor lady jumped ship and declared for the USA. A similar case has been that of Favours Ofili whose name was omitted in the list for 100 meters. Ofili was lucky that she made the 200 meters race where she qualified to run in the finals but regrettably came 6th; the poor lady has been psychologically traumatized.
In a piece ‘Favour Ofili; A Metaphor for Nigeria ‘s Failed Sports Administration’ by Douglas Ogbankwa. Nigeria’s sports administration was taken to the cleaners and exposed for the charlatan that they are.
“A Country so blessed with Sports talents but stunted by greedy officials. You could see Nigerians competing for other countries and winning medals. To get into any Nigerian Team, you must know someone. Talent does not matter. If you do not know anyone that has connections, you will die with your talent.
“An Arise TV Correspondent at the Paris Olympics was visibly angry when he complained that a lot of Athletes in Paris, purportedly representing Nigeria are sleeping in hotels or are in the stands as spectators, because they are injured. The able bodied and fit athletes were left at home, because they are not well connected.
“For the Nigerian Olympic Contingent, the event is more like a Jamboree. Taxpayers’ money is used to ferry girl friends and relatives to an event they have no business. The result is the shame we are having now. Even Burundi is on the medals table as we speak and we are not.”
It is a national embarrassment for any country’s sports body to mess up the chances of the country or citizens participating in any games they have the highest propensity to qualify for, and possibly win medals. The game and intrinsic value of the Olympics is always participation, with winning as an icing on the cake, literally. The Nigerian government, through the sports ministry, has often been one huge contradiction in the development and organization of sports. Nigeria is one of the most blessed countries with human and material resources, but visionary leadership in all sectors seems to be lacking.
The fault is not in our stars, but in a leadership that is bereft of vision and mission, a leadership that is incapable of galvanizing the energies of its youth, a leadership that has failed in all matters particular to offer a beacon of light to its youth, a leadership that is so infantile that it cannot work out the best possible way of bringing out 22 sharp players out of a population of over 200 million souls; a leadership that has abdicated its role in the field of youth empowerment; a leadership that has been kidnapped, ranched and rugared.
No wonder people are no longer interested in Nigerian sporting events and have transferred their preferences to foreign sporting activities such as the Premier League and other European football.
Until we salvage our image and return to the path of righteousness, we will never produce heroes in this country. Those that managed to escape the net did so only by fluke.
Segun Odegbami captured the rot when he wrote: “The last decade, 2000 to 2010 is one that presents the greatest difficulty. Player-quality has dropped significantly, team achievements have been few, and truly outstanding players have not shown up as evidenced by the dearth of Nigerian players in the annual selection of Africa’s best players by the CAF.” It still rings true today.
Most of our star players in those days were recruited from the academicals and after their stint in the national team, they went to higher institutions abroad or here in Nigeria. There was therefore a succession scheme whereby when a set goes another replaces it.
Such was the strength, intensity, excitement, talent-flow and attention-capture capacity of academicals football those days. It provided empowerment through well-paying jobs and scholarship to American Universities.
It is instructive to know that many of these academicals left to study abroad and not to play for Arsenal!
Academicals football, nay, schools’ sports is it, and there is the strong need to revive it because it provides a veritable well-pool of talent for the national team.
How can a system where corruption thrives, fueled by bribery, brazen lies, cheating and falsification of documents be expected to produce a football environment that is productive? *A nation without heroes is nothing.* Robert Clemente.
*“O Allah our Lord! Send us from heaven a table set (with viands), that there may be for us – for the first and the last of us – a solemn festival and a sign from thee; and provide for our sustenance, for thou art the best Sustainer (of our needs)” (Quran 5:114)*
Barka Juma’at and a happy weekend.
Babatunde Jose
