Yakubu sent me this email after reading my piece last week. ‘Shankar Lee’, (that was my nickname in secondary school and Yakubu has not stopped calling me that some 40 years after), “no one seems to care or be bothered about the ages of the players” (quoting me from last week).’Yes, but this is more a function of the futility of the exercise than that of the righteousness of the deeds of the selectors of the team. Yes, 20 is quite mature in sports but not a single one of these men is 20 or below notwithstanding what their doctored passports say. Give them a few more years and most of them will go into soccer oblivion having succumbed to the natural process of ageing’.

Yakubu Ibn Mohammed is my former classmate and former football team captain, presently one of the executive directors of the Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, Abuja. We used to call him planner the dazzler (I still call him that by the way) in school for his dazzling skills and speed on the tracks and soccer field. Yakubu is one of many Nigerians that found fault with my argument last week about the insignificance of the ages claimed by members of the Flying Eagles in the under-20 competition. I was proved right when the Flying Eagles (over-aged or not) fell to a slightly technically superior France last week even if many people on facebook considered it a deserving pay back for cheating. In a match that was full of drama and some truly breathtaking football action, the Nigerian team were bettered by a slightly more organised and purposeful French team. Age definitely mattered little in the match as the Eagles were matched strength for strength by the French lads who themselves could not reenact the magic they displayed against Nigeria and easily and woefully went on to lose to Portugal last Wednesday night!

The grounding of the Eagles buttressed my argument that at under-20 the age differential is much less significant than at under-17, for example. I believe that at under-23, age totally stops being a factor. Thats why in several sports, at ages below 20, many athletes can become world champions – Mike Tyson in boxing, Boris Becker in Tennis, Tiger Woods in golf, Pele and Diego Maradona in football, and so on. Whilst I agree entirely with the observation that it is totally immoral and unfair if we use older players for age-group championships, as the last championship has shown, we gain nothing at the end and lose a great deal (I am not even saying we did or not cheat this time around). The most painful part of cheating and not winning is the fact that the deed mortgages the future of genuinely talented youngsters that would have, otherwise, benefitted from the experience even without winning (and who says they cannot win?).

Becoming a global champion is not a sprints event. It is a marathon race that takes a number of years and plenty of investment in time, material, finances and human resources. Attempting to cut short the process has become the single most damaging factor in Nigeria’s grassroots sports development project. The institutions that should provide the talents and measurable, authentic and progressive statistics are bypassed and cheating is allowed to provide the win-at-all-cost motivation. It is Professor Pat Utomi who often preaches the principle of anchoring any form of development to institutions rather than individuals. Yes, institutions remain and sustain long after individuals have passed on. The development of Nigeria must be driven and sustained by institutions and a high calibre of persons to drive them. These institutions, put in place, will weather all storms. Sports development cannot be different. The moment sports development left the school environment, sports started a downward slide in the country. Thats why the effort to revive sports within institutions must be pursued single-mindedly.

Return of the Academicals!
President Goodluck Jonathan has demonstrated a commitment to this goal by establishing the Nigeria Academicals Sports Committee, NASCOM, which I head. I am committed to leading the assembled group of equally passionate Nigerians with a clear vision of what needs to be done to carry out the President’s mandate and change the face of grassroots sports in Nigeria. The formula is going to be simple. From October there shall be competitions at national level in at least six different sports. The best talents discovered during inter-state competitions will compete against one another as State Academicals and provide the platform to discover the best secondary school sports talents in Nigeria. Incentives must be in place within schools to attract the youths to them and keep them there. As they remain in school different aspects of the President’s transformation agenda are influenced positively – the youths at that age are engaged and empowered with sports activities and events; exercise and sports improve the health situation amongst them which in turn greatly influences the life expectancy of the next generation; the youths are guided carefully into the vast career opportunities in several sports abroad; the intricate values in sports are engrained in the students amongst which are discipline, team work, fair play, the winning spirit, friendship, national unity and patriotism; and so on and so forth.

The most important and critical aspect of the Nigeria academicals sports project is one that will tackle the scourge of age-cheats, mercenaries in school sports and falsification of documents. It is the registration of all student athletes in Nigerian schools. Anyone that will participate in any secondary schools sports competitions must be registered in a format that will guarantee that alteration of vital information will not be possible once it is given. The process of achieving this is already being vigorously and intricately worked out. It will contain students bio-metrics as well as age, place of birth, and so on, provided whilst they are in school. Even when they complete their education the information will be available for all higher institutions and other agencies that may need them. The registration comes also with several benefits to the student athletes – admission concessions into higher institutions, health and life insurance, scholarships and training grants, and establishing a banking and savings culture. The era of age-cheats may actually be coming to an end with the NASCOM initiative of the President and established by the National Sports Commission. All that is left now is the political will to take on the challenge and nurture it to fruition. I can see and feel it already. Different relevant government ministries are embracing the idea of a partnership with NASCOM to promote projects that will empower the youths. The revival of the academicals sports tradition must be credible and authentic. It must be visibly and measurably beneficial to the youths of Nigeria. It must make it possible that our secondary school students shall combine their education with sports and get the benefit of the best of both worlds. We must expand the frontiers of possibility for the secondary school student population in this country that constitute 25% of the youth population of the country.

The end of cheats and mercenaries!
Meanwhile, there are many more letters in my mail box. They all refer to my piece of last week. I was part of the millions that watched how Nigeria still played well but lost to France in Columbia 2011. I listened to the commentaries on television throughout the duration of the match. One thing that kept being repeated throughout was how the Nigerian team paraded the youngest set of players in the entire championship; how one Nigerian was indeed the youngest at only 17. There were also the worrisome references to some of the players who were so ‘young’ they would still be eligible to play in the next championship in Turkey in 2013! Thats what frightened me. No way! We may have excused what happened during this championship when questions and doubts were raised about most of the players Nigeria paraded, but not any more must we be found complicit in action that produced players we cannot vouch for as genuine youngsters. In 2013 we must choose not to be silent and watch another set of players ‘rob’ genuine youths the opportunity that year’s championship will provide. Let us present players with their true ages.

Back to Yakubu Ibn Mohammed. He is one of those that entered St. Murumba College with me on the same day in January of 1966. We left together 5 years later. Our classmates were Patrick Graves, Lati Adebesin, Samson Dangana, Joseph Medeme, Jonathan Lassey, Augustine Asen, John Burmah, Rasaki Busari, Joseph Ilesanmi, Felix Ilesanmi, and so on….We know each other and the records are there in the school for all who doubt to see. In addition, all the students that were in St. Murumba College with us, as well as in the neighbouring schools of St. Johns’c College, Baptist Boy’s High School, Commonwealth College of Commerce, St. Louis College, and so on… they all can vouch for us and attest to our ages within a one year margin of error. It is hard to lie about one’s age and records and not be found out. So, we know our football players and we know their approximate ages and their background. We must not be part of those promoting falsehood and lies, and cheating just because we are in sport and want to win by all means. We shall only be setting a very bad example standards for the next generation!