Welcome to 2009. There is a seeming conspiracy of the elements as we consider the immediate future of sports in Nigeria! I can sense it that tennis will play a very important role shaping the future of sports in Nigeria. To start with, the new Minister of Sports, apart from being a tennis buff, is one of the Presidents of sports federations that have served the tennis federation the longest in Nigeria’s history! For many Nigerians, celebrating his appointment is mainly on the strength of his credential as an experienced administrator, and one that has been a victim of the ramshackle system of the past! That tennis, in the over 10 years that he served the federation, did not made an appreciable headway in development, is seen more as the result of the poor system with which he had to work than because he did not do much! Those close to the corridors of sports vouch for him as a humble, hardworking and committed champion of tennis. So, his first challenge would be to make the sports system work properly, and in doing so, tennis, and, by extension, all the other sports apart from football, would be the beneficiaries! His second and even greater challenge would be to lift tennis from his new exalted position of Minister. After failing to lift the sport all these years everyone, especially those from his immediate sports constituency, would expect him to now do what he was not empowered to do all these years.

His third challenge will come from abroad. How does he tap from this source of energy coming from the United States of a growing number of former international tennis players, all armed with solid degrees, knowledge and experiences, plus the latest tools of training, that are anxious to work with him in the new dispensation? In the past few weeks, through Facebook, I have had the incredible privilege of reconnecting with many of them - all great tennis players of the Golden decade of Nigerian tennis (1979-1989). Interestingly, they are all singing the same tune – ‘change’! They say this regime should do a lot less of rhetoric and a lot more of action! I have been infected with their enthusiasm, and my excitement about 2009 and beyond is building! This group of Nigerians is led by Sadiq Abdullahi who has come closer to me through his mails in the past one month than in all the 20 years we have known each other. I see tennis as the sport that will drive Nigeria’s anticipated sports reforms. Nigeria’s new sports minister is unlikely to be a football-only minister. Hopefully, the over-emphasis on football to the detriment of other sports would become a thing of the past. Football, with or without government, would draw its own support and funding. It is the other sports that need life-support through serious activity at grassroots level. Tennis, in particular, with its highly technical requirements, is a sport that has to be introduced at institution level for it to succeed. Pursued correctly, it will provide the youths another platform (apart from football) to produce sports champions for Nigeria! It will in addition, provide a very powerful tool for the evolution of an authentic sports tourism industry in Nigeria (more on this later).

Wait a minute! Did you notice what I noticed on CNN recently? It started with a television advert. Shakira, the renowned female America R and B singer, was to play at the Emirate Palace, Abu Dhabi, on New Year’s eve. Where is Abu Dhabi! Except you are versed in Geography you may not easily place it on the map of the world! Well, just in case you don’t get it, check it out! Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the United Arab Emirates, a very modern, Arabic, and Muslim city!

A second advert was running almost at the same time. It was about a tennis tournament that would run from January 1 to 3 between six of the world’s current greatest tennis stars. They are Raphael Nadal, Roger Federer, David Davydenko, Andy Roddick, Andy Murray and James Blake!  They will be playing in the year’s first and newest major tennis tournament. The prize money was not advertised but I can imagine what kind of money would attract the world’s top six players to a city struggling to become a major tourist destination in the desert of the Middle East! Eh, what’s going on? 

The answer is very simple. It is a simple formula that has worked over and over again to draw attention to an emerging city or country and to create a new economic centre using the unfailing instrumentality of sports and entertainment! Recall – how did Sydney, Melbourne, Dubai, become active players in the global tourism industry?  Sydney used the Olympic Games. Melbourne continues to use the Australian Open tennis championship. Dubai, the second largest city in the UAE had effectively used the Dubai Golf Classics and the Dubai Open to catalyse its emergence as a major player in the international sports circuit. Today, after a massive investment shepherding the world’s greatest golfers and tennis players to a once relatively unknown Dubai, the city has become, in a few years, one of the fastest growing commercial and tourism destinations in the world! Do you now get the vision? Watch out for Abu Dhabi in the next few years. It will soon become another Dubai, no thanks to a simple but powerful game called tennis! Mark my words!

I am writing this in the morning of Christmas day. I have just woken up to the sound of my ringing phone and text messages from friends, family and colleagues from all over the world. They are all messages of goodwill in celebration of the commemoration of the birth of Jesus Christ over 2000 years ago. I join with all in wishing readers a Merry Christmas.

I am also thinking of many things. Even as 2008 has been a very disappointing year for Nigerian sports, the events of the last few days have re-kindled my hope that the past year is the crucible of fire through which the country has to pass in order to emerge at the other end shining like Gold. Thanks to the remarkable power of Facebook I have reconnected with the most improbable sports people you can imagine, people I have not seen or heard of for many years. In the past one week I have reconnected with Fatima Yusuf-Olukoju, Davidson and Osmond Ezinwa, Bulus Husseini, Rolake Olateru-Olagbegi, and so on, all great athletes of their generation. I sense a growing enthusiasm by them to join with progressive elements to effect positive change in Nigerian sports. There is a consensus of opinion and determination to make desired this happen starting from 2009. That’s why I am looking forward to 2009 and the years ahead for the prospect of a new dawn for Nigerian sports.

As I connect with them I tell them about my little effort sprouting slowly but steadily in the village of Wasimi Orile- The International Sports Academy, a specialist senior secondary school, with the vision of becoming the best such institution in the world, providing the highest academic education at secondary school’s level with the best facilities and curriculum for some sports development. I tell them my mission is to make the academy the best in the world. They then get excited and want to join forces with me. They then want to know what to do to support the vision. I tell them it will start properly in February of 2009 when the school will be officially opened for closer scrutiny by the public, the media and governments. I tell them the school is already running on an experimental basis and that the results so far have been phenomenal, to say the least.

I am thinking other thoughts as well. 2009, it appears, may not be a very busy year for sports generally. There are the National Sports Festival in Kaduna and the Under-17 FIFA championships holding in Nigeria as the two major events involving Nigeria. Of course there would be some international engagements for some of the minor sports I may not know about now, but most importantly, the year will mark the end of the drought decade in Nigerian sports. It will end up in sharp contrast to the Golden Decade, 1990 – 2000, when the result of developmental work done up till the 1980s yielded maximum fruit. Whereas the drought decade, 2000 till date, is manifesting the lack of a proper developmental programme during the decade preceding! As we enter 2009, the country should prepare for the next decade, a very significant and busy one for the country indeed, starting from 2010.

2010. In that year Nigeria will be 50 as an Independent nation. It is also the year of the African Cup of Nations in Angola, and the first World Cup to be hosted in Africa. Rangers International Football Club of Enugu will also mark their 40th anniversary that year. 2010 will be one year away from the next Commonwealth Games and two years from the London Olympics.

As I think about more significances of that year I recall that it is also the year that FIFA will take the unusual step of determining the hosts of two World Cup finals – those of 2018 and 2022! I am thinking that with recent developments in the politics of world football Nigeria should do the unusual and bid for the hosting rights of the 2022 event. It should bid to host the world’s first regional World Cup, leading a team of 4 other West African neighbours, all football giants in their own right that would never under normal circumstances have thought of hosting such a monumental event, to present a joint bid! Between Nigeria, Togo, Benin Republic, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire, the region would be able to provide excellent facilities, fund the project without going bankrupt, put up an unbelievably different and colourful event, and show the world the way into the future of the World Cup when even the poorest countries would dream the possibility of being a part of hosting the world’s most prestigious, most glamorous and most profitable single sports event.  

Simply put a joint 5-nation West African bid would be of enormous economic and social benefit for the 250 million strong ECOWAS. It would accelerate even faster the social, economic and political integration of the region. It would give the region the reason to ensure that the vision of the founding fathers of ECOWAS - free movement, a single currency, a West African super-highway, a borderless region, a mono-rail system along the West coast, and so on and so forth - becomes a reality. One venue of the World Cup finals in each of Togo, Benin, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire would be the greatest advertisement for those countries in ways that decades of effort to achieve same through other means would never have accomplished.  Hosting the 1-million strong army of the World Cup followers would transform the region completely. Nigeria can easily and successfully provide everything necessary to host 4 of the venues! If the country is really serious about its development in all spheres 14 years from now is enough time to totally re-engineer the country and to showcase the result of that process to the world!

Whilst I am thinking these crazy thoughts I am also wishing all a very prosperous New Year!

A few months ago, when Chief Oyo Orok Oyo was to be buried, due to other engagements I was committed to around Lagos, I could not attend the ceremony. The Veterans Sports Association, a group of veteran sports administrators and stakeholders based in Lagos and led by Chief Jonathan Ogufere to which I belong, was well represented at the event. Members returned from Calabar with reports of an excellent event. They also came back with a photograph, a copy of which I have now kept amongst my collection of special football items. It was a photograph of members of the veterans’ delegation standing around a fine-looking, but aged gentleman I could not immediately recognize. Who was the gentleman in the middle?

I was later told. He was a member of the Nigeria’s historic 1949 UK Tourist team, perhaps the country’s first unofficial national team! That was the team of ‘Thunder’ Teslim Balogun, Dan Anyam, Isaac Akioye, ‘Daimond Toe’ Baby Anieke, Ayo Adeniji, Francis Ibiam, Titus Okere, and so on, all now dead. I met a few of them in the early days of my football career, read about their exploits in Europe, had the rare opportunity of viewing clips of a few of their matches in England at the film library of British Overseas Films and Television in London, and documented their historic exploits in my first published book, ‘Nigerian Football 1960 to 1990’. That team was led by one described by those who knew the team and by some members of the group itself as a great football player, a natural born leader, a great motivator and a gentleman. True to the tradition of the sea where the captain is usually the last to abandon a drowning ship, Chief Etim Henshaw, the captain of the 1949 UK tourists is the last man left in the ship. The Veterans found him, alive and well, perhaps the last surviving member of that team.

Yes, Chief Etim Henshaw is kicking, living out the twilight of his life in the quiet solitude of Calabar. Incidentally, I have never met him. What a pleasure it would be to do so now and interview him. I wanted to know from the members of the Veteran’s association how well Captain was faring. They tell him life is not too easy for him but that the high Chief of Calabar is maintaining his distance and dignity by choosing not to be a ‘pest’ on the national football establishment.

I think the Nigeria Football Federation should move fast, support him in any way possible whilst he is still alive, and document his life and story for posterity. That’s the least Nigeria can do to honour one of the great pioneers and heroes of the country’s football tradition.

By the way, I am in the process of writing a follow-up to my first book, the first, the most comprehensive, authentic and authoritative book on the history of Nigerian football. The new book will cover the following decade in my historical chronicle, 1990 to 2000, the golden decade of Nigerian football! Watch out for it soon!

I was discussing Nigeria’s greatest football players with some friends the other day after the burial of our colleague Alhaji Haruna Ilerika. It came round to the issue of goalkeepers. It was an interesting debate who deserves to wear that crown. Who is the greatest goalkeeper in the history of Nigerian football? None of us knew enough about the goalkeepers of pre-Independence Nigeria, so we could not talk much about Francis Ibiam, Carl Od’wyer, Olu Onagoruwa, , and many others. But the short film clips of the performance of the 1949 UK tourists that I watched was enough to convince me that that honour cannot belong to that era. On the other hand we saw or even played with several of the latter day goalkeepers from Andre Carew and Yakubu Bauchi, to Inua Lawal Rigogo, Adebiyi, Adisa, Essien, Okala, Fregene, Joe Erico, Ogedegbe, Rufai, Agbonivare, Agu, down to Sorounmu, Enyeamah, Ejide and Aiyenugba. Its been  greta collection of safe and competent hands. 

We were all in agreement about a few things. The first is that earlier goalkeepers were more flamboyant and artistic. Inua Lawal Rigogo for instance was described by former Ghanaian President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as ‘the flying cat’. Those who watched him at his peak said they saw him more than once defy the laws of physics by changing direction in mid air to stop a deflected shot. I physically watched Peter Fregene in 1968 in a match where he kept goal for Leventis Iddo Tigers at the King George V Stadium. I saw him leap into the air to tip a goal-bound shot over the crossbar. The picture is till in my head. I still see him suspended in mid air for some milli-seconds in defiance of gravity! Emmanuel Okala also defied the law of gravity with his then unusual 6 ft 5 inches frame. Good goalkeepers were never that tall in those days. People thought their centre of gravity was so far from the ground that dealing with low balls would be impossible. After Okala the world must have had a re-think. Emmanuel Okala went on to become the first and, perhaps, the only African goalkeeper to win the African footballer of the year award! He was awarded that distinction by ASJU in Togo when late Esbee, Osuntolu, the great and longest serving sports editor of Daily Times, was its President. Okala was so imposing in goal that there was the myth that the full span of his out-stretched hands covered the distance from one goal upright to the other! His presence intimidated the faint hearted (I was surely one of those).

The second thing we all agreed on is that latter day goalkeepers, from after Okala, were more technical. They covered their angles better, dealt better with crosses, read the game better, and so on and so forth. In short they were more efficient and less artistic.

But to pick one of the goalkeepers as the best ever was challenging for my friends and I. We resorted to voting. Most votes went to Peter Fregene! The consensus was that he was the most complete goalkeeper. He had everything – style, acrobatics, competency, safe hands, and great communication skills. Incidentally he also served Nigeria longer than any other goalkeeper in the country’s history!

Since the advert, Patrick has also addressed the Lagos sports media where he revealed new and immediate plans to reform Nigerian sports. He told them of the commission’s short and log term plans and distributed printed materials detailing them. He also has been quietly consulting with stakeholders in various sports and urging them to come up and team up with Nigerian sports in the much needed sports reforms.

I have known Patrick for well over three decades. We have shared the limelight of sports together through many of those years. I know he is loaded to the hilt with knowledge and experiences that very few can match in the country. My admonition to him is to keep his goal in focus; to accelerate the process of changing everything that he knows has held back Nigerian sports development for many years. He knows also he may not have a lifetime to do this, but even if all he has is a day his impact must be felt.

Patrick is a solid product of the authentic Nigerian sports tradition established in the 1970s. He was a product of the combination of academics and sports. He was a multi-talented sportsman, sprinting as well as he playing football both for the Eastern region and the Green Eagles for many years. He did some coaching after his football career and then joined the National Sports Commission. He became one of the original beneficiaries of the sports foundation laid by Isaac Akioye to take Nigerian sports to the next higher level. He was trained by the National Sports Commission along with Yinka Okeowo, Sergha Porbeni, Gloria (Ayanlaja) Obajimi and a few others to take over and carry on with the original vision laid for sports development in Nigeria by Jerry Enyeazu and Isaac Akioye. He coached briefly at the national team level before settling fully into sports administration in the sports commission/ministry. He has since acquired all the degrees in physical and health education up to doctorate level. Politics at different times interrupted what could have being a steady sustenance of the original vision so much so that he became an involuntary part of the ensuing national sports ‘racket’.  As we draw to the close of 2008, the darkest period in the history of Nigeria sports, providence has now intervened and the clock has turned full circle. Patrick is back, albeit temporarily, saddled with the responsibility to provide some illumination ahead. In no time at all he must race to plant the seeds of change and a new direction for Nigerian Sports. History beckons on him. I believe he has started on the right path! Good luck Patoriko!

I am writing this early on Thursday morning. It is 6 am. I notice my handset flash. I don’t want to be disturbed. I am late already and struggling to put words together and send this page to my editor. The phone keeps flashing. I pick it up. It is Yomi Opakunle. He does not bother to express any pleasantries. ‘Haruna Ilerika died at three O’clock this morning’, he yells into my ears!

I scream. My heart beats so fast I can’t even think. What? Haruna? No, Haruna cannot die. Haruna is immortal! He is not the kind that one can imagine dying. He is an epitome of life itself. Life for him is an endless series of jokes. His every word is a rib-cracking recollection of an encounter with members of his football constituency. Every encounter with him is a relive of a past experience wrapped in funny jokes. For those of us who shared time with him in the Green Eagles, his recount of incidents from that time, bring back nostalgia of a wonderful past. He was a storyteller and a jester rolled into one. 

His football story is a fairytale. Most followers of football alive in the early 1970s knew about Haruna Ilerika before they met him. His fame was the stuff of legends. He was the greatest school boy football player in Nigeria’s history. He was a student of Zumratul College, Agege. As a student football player between 1969 and 1971 he was more known and more popular than any other Nigerian footballer alive at the time. He mesmerized the Lagos football scene with his deft ball control, his silky, effortless dribbles and his immaculate passing skills. On top of that he scored beautiful goals. In two years he built up a cult following in the Lagos area that gradually spread to the rest of Western Nigeria.  The rest of the country had to be content with the mystical stories that were spread about this young left-footed school boy who did magical things with the ball. Every where his school went to play was filled to capacity. A full musical band of supporters went everywhere with him singing his praises and mocking opposing teams. He never failed to entertain the crowd. He would dance with the ball, put the ball through opposing players’ legs, lift the ball over their heads, and do things that made opposing defenders mad and silly at the same time. Once he put the ball through Abeokuta Grammar school’s dreaded, ‘wicked’ defender Tokunboh Morris’s legs, back and forth, twice. Tokunboh was so ‘mad’ he took a wild swing with his foot intending to kick Haruna off the face of the earth, missed and fell flat on his face. It was said mockingly that Tokunboh ate the grass of that field. Such were the stories that surrounded Haruna Ilerika.  

This and other thoughts are going through my mind as I take in the news of his death. I need to round this off quickly. Haruna is a Muslim and according to the tradition he will be buried today. I must go to pay my respect and console his family! This is not a tribute. The tributes to this great man would come later!

A few months ago, following an unplanned visit to the tennis courts of the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos, I wrote my impressions about the sport and the deplorable state of the once-beautiful courts that trained and promoted some of Africa’s greatest tennis players, most of whom came out of Nigeria. I was very privileged to have been around at the time to watch most of them play – Nduka Odizor, David Imonitie, Tony Mmoh, Rolake Olateru-Olagbegi, and so on. Domestic tennis at the time was heavily promoted through major tennis championships all over the country. There were the Dala Hard Court Championship in Kano, the Ogbe Hard Court championship in Benin, and so on, events that attracted a lot of foreign participation and followership and should have grown by now to become a fixture in the international calendar of global tennis. One of the most flamboyant players of that era came from Northern Nigeria. His name and performance spiced up Nigerian tennis. For three years he ruled Nigerian tennis and eventually joined the train of gifted tennis players that moved abroad to hone their talent and get some education in the American collegiate system. He came home many times to play and represent the country, but for over 20 years now I have not seen nor heard about him. This past week, he surfaced on my blog. Sadiq Abdullahi, Nigeria’s tennis champion from 1986 to 1988, is alive and doing very well in America. He now holds a doctorate degree and is still very involved in sports.

I had announced in my column a few weeks ago that my blog had become functional and the public was welcome to read my views on issues in Nigerian sports in my weekly writings!

Reactions and responses have started coming in from all over the world. One of the early mails caught my attention. It came from one of Nigeria’s most flamboyant and stylish former national tennis champions, Sadiq Abdullahi! Sadiq was one of those tennis players in the 1980s that dominated the African tennis scene and took Nigerian tennis to its zenith. After Odizor’s monumental feat of getting to the last 16 at Wimbledon, the only Nigerian in history to have done so, Nigerian tennis drew global attention and just needed the right programmes and exposure to get to the very top. Along with Odizor came Mmoh, Imonitie, Rolake, Abdullahi and a few others. They were to provide the platform upon which Nigerian tennis was to get a lift to the world stage! Many of them either came in from America or were on their way there in a deliberate strategy by the National Sports Commission to develop both the sport and the athletes through the American collegiate system, a programme started by Isaac Akioye and sustained by Awoture Elayae. The United States provided the best opportunities for the young talented Nigerian athletes to advance their sport and academics.  Nigeria was borrowing from a model that has sustained America through the decades as the world’s foremost sports development country. Unfortunately, as the managers at the NSC changed hands so did the vision, to such an extent now that the vision has finally died! Last week, I saw the final admission of failure in some newspapers in a desperate plea by the NSC for ‘oxygen’ for Nigerian sports federations. They have all been put up for ‘sale’ to interested members of the private sector in Nigeria! My view on that is a discussion for another day!

So, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a response from no other than Sadiq himself pasted on my blog. I was elated to discover that Sadiq has advanced in his career and education. He now holds a doctorate degree and is still keeping in touch with his primary constituency.

I reproduce below his mail. I am glad to note that he is interested in joining us in the trenches! I will surely keep in touch with him. He is one of those that Nigeria must now challenge to return home soon and join in the needed reforms in Nigerian sports, particularly tennis. Northern Nigeria, in particular, must lure him back!

Dr. Sadiq Abdullahi  

November 25th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

My big brother Segun,

The last time we met was at the Lagos Lawn Tennis Club in 1987. Before then we have watched each other doing our thing in soccer and in tennis. I know you love the game. I will be in Nigeria next year and I hope you will extend an invitation to me to visit you so that we talk tennis.

 

I am saddened to read that Dr. Bruce Ijirigho was attacked and robbed while in Nigeria for a short visit. I had the opportunity to work very closely with Dr. Ijirigho in forming the Nigerian Sports International Foundation, based in Homestead, FL., USA. The goals of the Foundation include: to serve as a voice for active and former Nigerian athletes, sports administrators in Nigeria and in the Diaspora; advocate for transparency and effective management and development of all sports in Nigeria; provide financial and technical assistance to empower Nigerian sportsmen and women, sports administrators and sports journalists; and to support its members in the realization of their aspirations for the greater good of Nigeria.

 

Indeed, Dr. Ijirigho is qualified to champion a change in sports direction in Nigeria, particularly how we approach sports development in Nigeria. There are many other Nigerians equally and eminently qualified to begin a dialogue for change. We need to join Dr. Ijirigho in this effort. The time is right. We need to first of all change the conversation about sports development in Nigeria. We can begin here at this forum. Many voices out there demand that we begin now.

 

Please visit the http://www.nigeriantennisfoundation.com. There is hope.

Former national Tennis Champion, 86, 87, 88.

Sadiq Abdullahi

I am thinking of Henry Nwosu and the huge responsibility he carries on his shoulders as he prepares Nigeria’s young boys for the under-17 FIFA World Championships taking place here in Nigeria in the late summer of 2009. The burden he carries is that Nigerians will expect nothing but another cup winning performance from the lads he would assemble. After all Nigeria, that have won the trophy three times previously, would be playing on home ground with all the expected partisan support. There’s nothing wrong with such expectation by the way. Nigeria is one of the most successful countries in the world at age-group competitions particularly at the under-17 level.

This is my slight worry. Henry Nwosu inherited the new eaglets team from Alphonsus Dike who was removed following the poor performance of the team he assembled a few months ago. With Dike’s unceremonious removal Nwosu must now realize that the only thing that will make him remain as coach of one of the national teams in the future is to win the under-17 championship next year. To do so he needs to assemble players that can do the job. That’s where his challenge starts! Already, I read reports this past week in one of the newspapers that Henry had selected 45 players after a rigorous national screening programme. The next step he was reported to have said would now involve watching clubs in the domestic league for additional players to strengthen the team. Wait a minute. Players from the domestic league to play in an under-17 championship? Consider this: players that would represent Nigeria 10 months from now must be at most 16 years of age now to qualify to be in the team. And Nwosu wants to get them from clubs? I am a proprietor of a secondary school. We have very talented players in the school as those that have watched the boys play would easily testify. Most of them are under-16. They are genuinely the ages they claim. Everyone who sees them can easily attest to their youthfulness and hence their ages. The trouble is that no coach will give them a look in because they would be considered too small, too fragile, and too inexperienced for a competition where the only option for the coach is to win! So, most coaches, as Henry is also contemplating doing, would not go to the schools but to clubs to seek the players that can get the job done. These players most of whom have left school will present documents with the complicity of their parents that indicate any age but the true one! 

It is okay for other coaches that have trodden that path but I see a moral dilemma for Henry Nwosu, one of the most gifted players to have worn the colours of Nigeria, and one that started his own career at a very tender age!  What is this burden?  Henry was given the opportunity and hence a solid foundation for his future career in football as a young school boy. Henry played for Nigeria’s junior national team as a school boy under 16 and he excelled. Henry knows that it is possible to assemble a team of genuinely young players below the age of 17 by October 2009 who will represent Nigeria, do very well, but may not necessarily win! That would cost him his job and possibly a future career in the national team. He is not alone in the class of Nigerians that played football very well as students and went on later to represent the country at junior and senior levels at very young ages. Tunde Disu, Johnny Egbuonu, Stephen Keshi, Tarilla Okorowanta, Segun Olukanmi, Yomi Bamiro, Adokie Amiesimaka, Muyiwa Sanya, Femi Olukanmi, Wole Odegbami, Tunde Balogun, Samuel Garba, and many others. This shows clearly that it is possible to assemble genuine under-17s, do very well and possibly win trophies. Going this route will guarantee a sustained development from grassroots upwards. It will give authentic youngsters the opportunity to pursue their dreams without paying the price of abandoning school for football. Nigerians shall see the youngsters grow through the ranks of the game and not end their careers at junior level as many are wont to do at the present.

The decision before Henry is difficult. Go for the short term, Pyrrhic victory or go for  sustainable long term development even if the team may not win the championship in the end. I don’t envy him at all. Nigerians will not understand unless they are told before hand what the vision is. What ever decision Henry takes however I urge him to look a little in the direction of schools for some of the players he would finally assemble. It would not make a good picture if as was the case with Dike’s team, Nigeria’s assembly of under-17 players does not include even one school boy! Haba, how can that be?

I am treading on slippery ground, no one needs to tell me. I recall one of my former staff, Rotimi, a very devout Christian, who left me mainly because we could not agree on how to reconcile the issue of morality and sport. Ordinarily there should be nothing wrong with a Christian working in a sports company. But I recall the several arguments Rotimi and I used to have before he finally left. It started with his church pastor that told him that sport was demonic; that anything that controls the minds of people the way sport does, anything that promotes and celebrates winning by all means, (fair or foul), anything that justifies physical violence, and use of foul language and swear words should not be the portion of a good Christian. It was impossible for me to convince him that cheating, falsification of age, use of drugs, hooliganism, violence, intimidation, and many other unhealthy practices that have characterized sport are not enough reason to condemn it.  After all, when did sport stop being a useful tool for recreation, for health, for cultivation of friendships, unification of peoples, assembly of the youth from diverse cultures and backgrounds, development of public utilities and infrastructure, provision of jobs for millions of people, an economic contributor to communities and countries, and so on? Should humanity condemn itself because there are those (maybe even in the majority) that accept poor conduct and improper practices, and even use them as yardstick to measure material success?

Discussions on sports and morality have always been a challenging and sometimes difficult area to touch. That’s why even in a very religious country like Nigeria, with mosques and churches daily filled with people seeking spiritual salvation, people have come to live with as acceptable poor conduct provided the end result is ‘success’ or ‘victory’. That’s why the most celebrated people in the Nigerian society are often those with the least moral assets. Parents support and encourage their children to cheat and falsify documents just to be a part of a prospective largesse. Sports cannot be different. There is unbelievable money, power and fame attached to success in sport that people can do anything nowadays to win trophies, and games. The prize of victory overcomes the ultimate price of morality. Even World sports federations have admitted recently that they are engaged in a losing battle against the promoters of immoral practices in sport.