The guru Mouftau Baba-Ahmed said I was partly to blame for the Super Eagles’ crashing out of the World Cup and sneaking back into Nigeria after a long flight from Russia. It was a strange accusation, but I do not dismiss what Malam Mouftau says because given the illustrious spiritual standing of his late father, he must have obtained some laqani of seeing on the Kaliningrad soccer pitch what coach Rohr never saw. Mouftah said if only Segun Adeniyi and I had written column articles to spur the Eagles on, they will be slugging it out in the Round Two matches by now.
I might look to some people like a secular urban liberal but I am not the one to dismiss the supernatural dimensions of sports. In 1974, when Africa had only one spot in the World Cup Finals in Germany, the final African qualifying match was played between Zaire and Zambia. Zaire won the match 2-0. Fans were aghast that whenever the Zairean star striker Kidumu took a shot, the Zambian goalkeeper ducked and let the ball sail right past him. He later swore, according to DRUM magazine, that whenever Kidumu took a shot, he saw a spear coming at him instead of a ball. Zambia protested to CAF but the apex African football body said it did not recognize juju in sport.
Trouble is, African juju-men never quite found the formula to spiritually tie up the legs of White strikers at the World Cup. When Zaire went to the finals in 1974, it lost all its three group matches, 0-9 to Yugoslavia, 0-3 to Scotland and 0-2 to Brazil. Now, what witches cannot do by way of motivating our players and disorienting our opponents, I do not see how columnists can do it. You might be impressed with the story I just told about 1974 football events and might be expecting to hear more about the ongoing World Cup. Unfortunately, my interest in football and in sports generally evaporated in the 1970s, when the only source of football news available to me was the newspapers and Ernest Okonkwo’s splendid commentaries on Radio Nigeria.
I knew all the football greats of that era, including Christian Chukwu, Emmanuel Okala, Haruna Ilerika, Sam Garba Okoye, Sule Kekere, Segun Odegbami, Muda Lawal, Ismaila Mabo and the great 1960s goalkeeper Inuwa Rigogo. In contrast, I heard Ahmed Musa’s name for the first time when he scored two goals against Iceland. Even the names of the football teams has left me far behind. When I mentioned Enugu Rangers, a young man confidently told me that there is no such team in Nigeria. Well, there was. There was also the Green Eagles, Mighty Jets, IICC Shooting Stars, Bendel Insurance, Stationery Stores, NEPA, Kaduna Bees and Port Harcourt Sharks. Bauchi Wunti, Alyufsalam Rocks, Gboko Lions, El-Kanemi Warriors, Iwuanyanwu Nationale and Abiola Babes all came later. In Sokoto that time we also had a team called Sahara Storms, whose star striker was a man called Lancaster. In the 1970s there was a man in Ilorin called Alhaji Mark One-One, who carried cheerleading to a new high. We also had a referee called Sunny Badru, who refereed the 1972 Challenge Cup Final between Enugu Rangers and Mighty Jets. NFA cancelled the match and ordered a rematch because he allowed a dubious Enugu Rangers goal and denied Mighty Jets a clear penalty kick.
I hear that before they left for Russia, Super Eagles captain Mikel Obi promised President Buhari that he will bring to him a cup. Obi said “cup;” he did not say “FIFA World Cup.” If therefore he stops at any roadside stall in Lagos and buys a plastic Made in Nigeria cup and presents it to the president, he would have fulfilled his promise. After all, there are 197 countries in the world and only eight of them have ever won the FIFA World Cup since it began in 1930. Uruguay, which won the first tournament, last won the cup in 1950. England, France and Spain have won the cup only once each. When France went to Japan in 2002 to defend the cup it won in 1998, Senegal immediately mowed it down. So, why should we worry ourselves about winning that cup? Industrial as Japan is, rich as Switzerland is, populous as India is, sprawling as Canada is, expansive as Russia is, powerful as USA is, and all of the above as China is, they all punch far below their weight at the World Cup.
We Nigerians, by nature, always want to punch far above our weight. Even where we properly belong to the Featherweight division, we will argue for a place in the Super Heavyweight category. World Cup is even a small thing. Nigeria has been campaigning for the last twenty years to get a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. We thought we inched closer to that goal in May last year when our Ambassador to the UN Prof Tijjani Bande was elected Acting President of the 81st Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly only days after he presented his credentials. Many Nigerians urged him to sit tight in that chair.
Now, permanent seats on the Security Council were shared out 72 years ago among the Allied Powers that defeated the Axis Powers in the Second World War. The US for example had 13 million soldiers, thousands of planes and hundreds of warships in that war. The Soviet Union fielded 33 million soldiers and thousands of tanks in that war. Nigeria, in contrast, contributed a few companies of men to the British Army, which kept them away from the main theatres of war and instead sent them to Aden and Burma. Yet, when you hear Nigerians clamouring for a Security Council permanent seat, you will think we won the Battle of Kursk.
Even the Pope had trouble getting a seat at the big powers’ table. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged Soviet leader Josef Stalin to listen to the Pope’s suggestions, Stalin retorted, “How many divisions has he got?” Nigeria however thinks a suitcase full of dollars will make up for the lack of army divisions. Remember that then National Security Adviser Ismaila Gwarzo sent a memo asking General Sani Abacha to approve $250m, 75 million pounds and N100m for Nigeria to campaign in East Africa for Nigeria’s permanent security council seat. With one stroke of the pen Abacha approved the money, which went to Switzerland instead of Uganda.
The prospects for getting a permanent security council seat dimmed when the big powers blocked UN reform proposals, so Nigerians came up with another tall national aspiration. Soon after the Donald Trump-Kim Jong-un summit in Singapore, a small think tank went to work on how we could get Trump to abandon a G-7 Summit at Camp David and fly directly to Antarctica for a summit with Nigeria’s President. They have listed five things that Nigeria could do to trigger this summit. Uncle Kim has already exhausted the nuclear option, so our think tank members went to the MD of a Disco to seek his help to send an electric jolt to the White House. They found this MD’s office running on a Mikano generator, so they left without talking.
We have to be very creative about the kind of weapon that could earn us a summit with Donald Trump. Since the thing dearest to Trump’s heart is a wall on the Mexico border and our brother Aliko Dangote is a genius with cement, he should secretly produce a cement-dissolving powder at Obajana that, when applied by Mexico, can dissolve Trump’s wall as soon as it is built. Once Trump hears that we hold the monopoly of that cement-dissolving formula, he will board Airforce One, flanked on all sides by B-52 bombers, and fly to Antarctica for a hastily arranged summit with our President. There are four other ideas for quick national acceleration to Great Power status but I will not disclose them today.
