A Reflection on Nigeria’s Football and National Laxity
Growing up, I always knew I could play football well. Though my passion for the game has never truly faded, it no longer manifests as a player. My sister in Lagos used to send me small thick rubber balls called Toronto from time to time. I can’t remember if any of them lasted more than a week before they “died” literally.
If you’ve played Toronto or its twin brother, Felele (a very light ball), like I did, you might already be drawing your pension from your preferred Pension Fund. That is, if you were fortunate enough to have worked in organized and transparent institutions that adhered to the former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s Pension Act. There was a former governor’s company (I won’t name it) that deducted both pension and cooperative contributions from workers’ salaries but never remitted them until the company collapsed! It’s shocking, isn’t it?
While I continued playing football actively long after my national youth service years, my involvement never waned. However, my passion turned into a source of discomfort when I started experiencing serious body temperatures and post-match headaches every time I watched the games of the then Green Eagles/Super Eagles.
Recently, before the senior national team faced the Crocodiles of Lesotho in Polokwane, South Africa, during their 2026 World Cup qualifying match, Nigerians fell into their usual frenzy and self-inflicted tension. They calculated and “prophesied” how the Cheetahs of Benin and Bafana Bafana of South Africa would fall in their remaining matches so that their beloved Super Eagles, who had slept on duty throughout the qualifying matches, would jump to the top of their group’s table and fly to the World Cup in Mexico/US/Canada next year.
I refused to join in this patriotic, mathematically-inspired optimism because I saw no justification for it. Why should a team that always believes it must toy with chances in the morning and hysterically chase the same opportunities when serious competitors are almost breasting the finishing tape in the evening be at the global showpiece? Why?
But miraculous interventions are never in short supply in Nigeria, even when our pains are self-inflicted. How does one wrap their head around the fact that Nigeria struggled to sneak into the face-saving but tortuous play-offs in a group consisting of South Africa, Benin Republic, Rwanda, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe? Who are the real football powers here, considering Nigeria’s football pedigree?
If we are honest with ourselves, is the Super Eagles’ lax style not a national culture? We always toy with and throw away opportunities with our eyes wide open; pat problems on the back until they turn into monsters; deny the gravity of our challenges when they could be addressed with transparency until they transform into national embarrassment; and desperately commit humongous amounts to projects that could be easily completed, especially when Nigeria was economically strong and healthy?
Has the “Super Eagles lax style” in key areas not cost our dear country dearly, contributing to the convoluted woes Nigeria has suffered even before independence? If we agree that the senior national team, with the active collaboration of the Nigeria Football Federation, never planned to qualify for the 2026 World Cup, then we will understand how Nigeria has wilfully undermined its own initiatives to attain greatness which potentially God has ordained for her.
Would the Obasanjo government claim not to know when Mohammed Yusuf founded the Boko Haram sect in Maiduguri in 2002, hiding behind the devious claim of enforcing strict Sharia regime politically introduced by some governors in the North, led by former ex-governor Sanni Ahmed Yerima of Zamfara State? Yerima was still in the Senate when Yusuf led his army of fanatics to attack Bauchi in July 2009, where hundreds of innocent souls, and justifiably, scores of the terrorists were killed.
As a crisis which, if not addressed, would snowball into tragedy, the Boko Haram senseless killings have refused to stop even till this day despite all efforts and massive resources devoted to exterminating it. If the Obasanjo government had summoned the political will to deal with this monster in 2002, the countless lives lost and helpless Nigerians displaced could have been preserved.
No group of human beings created by God could have inflicted on itself what our dear country did with the fraudulent importation of petroleum products and the grounding of the nation’s four refineries dating back to the days of our gap-tooth President, General Ibrahim Babangida. Not satisfied with the $12bn oil windfall his regime recklessly mismanaged during the Gulf War, IBB, who is sadly treated as a deity to be consulted in his haven in Minna today, embarked on ceaseless importation of fuel, while successive governments complicated the nation’s self-inflicted woes with massive subsidy fraud. Talking of ignoring or justifying a simple crisis before it grows to a monster like the Super Eagles!
Among other areas where the national team’s level of cultural laxity is demonstrated most is Nigeria’s steel sector. This sector has been grounded for years while we keep deceiving ourselves with permutations of industrialisation and the much-vaunted but self-deluding technology transfer.
It is common knowledge that highly-valuable Ajaokuta Steel project, which started shortly after ex-President Shehu Shagari assumed office in 1979, has remained in limbo since shortly after Shagari was sacked by the military. The project, one of the biggest in Africa then, was reportedly 84% completed on December 31, 1983 when one arrogant Major General Muhammadu Buhari toppled Shagari (while many Nigerians rejoiced) and the crippling of Ajaokuta started.
You may also like to know that apart from Ajaokuta, there were four inland steel rolling mills in Aladja (Delta), Osogbo (Osun, where I observed my youth service in 1992-1993); Jos (Plateau) and Katsina. These plants were to be fed by the Ajaokuta plant which was to draw its unexploited iron ore from nearby Itapke. Despite the significant economic and industrial potential which these projects held, they have remained in limbo, grounded, taking over by weeds and rodents, while Nigeria spends about $6bn annually importing steel from China, Germany, India, US and others.
Do I need to ask you how a nation, citing dull and fraudulent excuses, could hold itself down in underdevelopment when the obstacles to its greatness could be removed? Is it not obvious that the Western powers which Nigeria had clung to since independence are not interested in our “independence” from its cage and economic experiments which are intentionally designed to fail anyway?
Are we not aware of the deliberate devaluation of the naira (by floating the currency) at the prodding of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund? When these institutions commend a nation’s reforms (like they are currently doing about Nigeria), they have potentially concluded the country’s burial, awaiting internment.
Can you educate me how Nigeria, as a nation, conducts its affairs differently from the Super Eagles’ lax style, almost always waking up late to chase what should be in its kitty; co-habiting and encouraging its obstacles with the lamest of efforts, and closing its eyes to inherent, begging opportunities?
I wish the Super Eagles would eventually qualify for the 2026 World Cup. While I can’t take a bet on the technical and administrative backing of the Eagles, I’m sure they have the human resources to achieve this if the lax approach changes, but I won’t develop any headache if the qualification fails to materialise, not this term.
