April 03, (THEWILL) – Like many Nigerians at home and in the Diaspora, I am still pained by the Super Eagles’ shocking inability to qualify for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, clearly the biggest sporting tournament in the world this year.
The Super Eagles were favourites to defeat the Black Stars of Ghana in the two-legged playoff football match that would guarantee the winner a World Cup ticket. Entering the second leg of the tie after a goalless draw in Ghana, the Super Eagles needed just a goal to beat the Black Stars, but, alas, the match ended in another draw.
The Nigerian side only managed to secure a 1-1 draw. The Super Eagles were uninspiring and nonchalant while the match lasted. They lacked leadership on the field and did not appear to understand the importance of this particular game.
Having been shocked by Ghana’s early goal, the Super Eagles earned a penalty to equalise and did not score another goal. The away goal rule meant the Ghanaians were headed to Qatar.
So what went wrong with this promising team that had Victor Osimhen, the Serie A Player of the Month for March and Napoli FC’s top scorer? The answer is not farfetched. ‘Nigeria happened to the Super Eagles.’ I will explain what I mean below.
There is this phrase that appears to be growing in popularity – ‘Don’t let Nigeria happen to you.’ It simply means that the country is synonymous with failure, not because it does not have the capacity to succeed, but it appears to be designed or programmed to fail, courtesy of a couple of self-inflicted actions.
How does one explain that a country abundantly blessed with both human and natural resources is on the brink of economic collapse? Nothing appears to be working well as it should in the country.
There is the Nigerian factor in almost every facet of our daily lives. A country so rich in everything, yet the majority of its people are hungry, frustrated, poor and struggling to eat a meal a day. A country with abundant crude and gas reserves, yet sabotages its four refineries in order to encourage the importation of refined petroleum products so that billions of naira can be stolen through a fraudulent fuel subsidy scheme. A nation that has ranking medical doctors in every field of medicine globally, yet its leaders and elite have refused to build world class hospitals and instead prefer to travel abroad for medical treatment. The list goes on and on.
To get a full grasp of the Super Eagles’ failure to reach Qatar, I will take you back to Sunday, December 12, 2021, when the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) fired the Franco-German coach Gernot Rohr, who had managed the first team for the previous 64 months. The President of the Federation, Amaju Melvin Pinnick, was specific about the rationale behind the interventionist action. Without mincing words, Pinnick attributed the sacking as a precautionary move to forestall “a disaster waiting to happen.’’
According to Pinnick, the collective decision by the NFF committee that recommended Rohr’s sack was hinged on the basis that in the final two games the coach supervised, the senior men’s national football team were abysmal to the point where it was an act of divine providence that Nigeria even qualified for the playoffs.
The NFF therefore believed that to avert a situation where Nigeria will fail to book a spot at the global football tournament, better hands were required to steer the course of the team towards Qatar. After weeks of going back and forth on hiring a foreign coach, it settled to allow Augustine Eguavoen, the Technical Director of Football, a former player and coach, to manage the side in an ad hoc arrangement. It was obvious that the NFF’s action was a knee-jerk approach to solving the symptom without dealing with the core problem – self-serving, lack of government and private sector investment in developing Nigerian football vis-a-vis the local league and football academies.
The cause of the country’s continuous decline in African and global football, despite its huge number of talents and millions of football fans, is easily traceable to the Nigerian factor. The truth is that the fortunes of the country’s football cannot be divorced from the realities of daily existence in Nigeria because it is not aliens from Mars that are at the helm in football. Germans are not the ones running the country, just as Americans are not hampering steady supply of electricity. Ukrainians are not the ones stealing our oil nor are Russians scamming the country of billions of naira, using one subsidy regime or the other. Rather, the Nigerians charged with the responsibility of service to the country have abdicated this charge and supplanted it with a brazen disposition to self-service. One of the consequences is that Nigeria will not be at the first-ever World Cup in the Arab world.
Rohr had managed to fulfill one of the core obligations of his contract – qualifying for the TotalEnergies 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cameroon. He was on the verge of securing the country a ticket to Qatar, even though his team lacked depth, coupled with months of insider wranglings with the top brass of the football Federation on issues that included two months’ unpaid salaries and the charge of the Pinnick-led body that the 68-year-old coach had failed to enforce discipline in the team.
Up till this moment, Nigeria has no comprehensive programme to develop its football industry as it is done in the West, Asia and Middle East. There is no system and no one in sports administration seems to care. We just have the inherent Nigerian penchant of carrying on without a plan and dependent on God’s grace and luck.
Football is a religion and industry in this country. We cannot keep approaching it the way we do and expect results better than what we got on the field in Abuja last week. If we don’t change our approach, we will continue to witness the same lackadaisical approach that is the standard operating procedure of almost everything Nigerian. There is also a debilitating lack of accountability, unnerving nonchalance, a characteristic absence of commitment, a dearth of leadership and acute paucity of motivation.
Last Tuesday, the Ghanaians were the more motivated side and were able to lift themselves up to achieve their target. Anywhere you look in Nigeria today, you will find the exact same malaise. There is a lack of commitment, accountability and nonchalance. From importation of bad petrol without anyone being held accountable till date to the collapse of the national grid to terrorists attacking our trains, airports and highways, yet no one has been held accountable.
For Nigeria to dominate soccer and indeed, sports in Africa and the world, we must have a long term plan and funding for sports development. The scheme must include reviving our youth’s sports programmes in secondary schools, colleges and universities.
