I want to confess upfront that I am not a
football-person and as such, I did not follow the AFCON competition, whether in
the begging, in the middle or in the end. My thinking is that I would not be
breaking my head, and making deadly
emotional investments to watch people who earn in a day, more than I would earn
in a year. So, I face my face and spend my time wisely! Indeed, it was after my
morning prayers on 12/2/24 that I checked my WhatsApp messages and saw
that the cup decided to go with the Ivorians.
One wicked commentator quipped: ‘If na you nko’? How can you prefer
Nigeria to Ivory Coast? One thing I noted was that most of the
commentators, full-blooded Nigerians, believed that the Eagles did not soar so
well and that it would have been unfair for us to have won the game. A few
blamed the referee while others harped on the remote control which the Ivorian
Goalkeeper tied to his waste. Some even blamed the bloated official delegation,
which went to watch the finals with about 7 private jets; from a country that
is simply on all fours and had turned beggarly of late. However, we lost and in
Nigeria football, you either win or you win! No time or sympathy for losers!!!
Thet fact
that I am not a football-person does not mean that I do not study the game, for serious and jocular
purposes Thus on 11th , 18th
, 25th February and 3r March 2004(20 years ago) I did an incisive analysis of the lessons which the theory and practice of
management could learn from the game of football.
The lessons include playing by the rules and punishing offenders to
avoid demoralising others, the importance of teams teamwork and team performance; the principle
and practice of empowerment, strategy, objectives, corporate retreat(
half-time), coaching and body language. The series was titled ‘Management
and the game of football’ and
was published by BusinessDay. Ten years later, I wrote on ‘Nigeria,
their football and their coaches’( BusinessDay, 18/2/14) where I
x-rayed the frightening turnover of coaches and
9 months later, I wrote on ‘The Keshi Treatment as a gbogbonise’(
BusinessDay, 4/11/14) where I examined the ignominious sack of Kesh as if that
would solve all the ills of Nigerian football. They had coerced him to take a
foreign assistance but he ‘no gree for anybody’( no be today!)
and they eventually sacked him so as to engage a foreign coach! Our survival is still far until we start
consuming local content, Igbo-Made or Made in Aba! There are
other locally manufactured items but over the years, Nigerians, including
Nd’Igbo reserve the most derisive terms
for Igbo-Made products. I don’t know why.
Victory is sweet… even for kidnapers and kidnapees!
All these
were very serious interventions, using football to teach management to both students and teachers alike and to
speak some truth to power about the issues of the day. You can go and
verify! Today however, I want to write in a lighter mood. I woke up the other
day to read that our dear BAT had appointed Stanley Nwabali as the Minister of
Defence. It was after we sent Bafana x2 home and Nigerians were
giving it to ‘them’ that we ate everything that was named twice like chin-chin and
moi-moi! As a consummate consumer of current affairs, I was surprised at the
sudden change of guards, more so with the
new Minister as an ‘okoro man’ and an ‘Idle Civilian’.
I was trying to link the appointment with our pace-setting ranking in the KFR
(Kidnap for Ransom) industry. I decided to file the news in my chronicles
of insecurity matters but before
then, I decided to ask Mr Ubiquitous (Google) what happened. It
was then I realised that it was an April Fool in February; that
Nwabali was the Eagles goaltender that
defended the goalpost in a manner that had not been seen in recent times! I
fainted!!! Others, probably follow ‘okoros’ added that those who played the
game at night did not take out time to find the meaning, etymology and the
Zodiac implications of the name, Nwabali.
It meant ‘child of the night’ and that
they underrated Nwabali by playing the game at night when he would
surely excel. And PO was there live!
Died for the love of football…
It was the day after semifinal encounter that I sadly found out that this was the most deadly qualifier for Nigeria. Sure, people had died due to heavy emotional investment in football and two of them happen to be from Igbo-Ukwu. But we never had it so bad. Cairo Ojougboh( my last encounter with him on these pages was over the NDDC affair), a youth Corper, the Deputy Bursar at Kwara State University, High Chief Osondu,a business magnet in Ivory Coast who had sealed a business deal with Obi Cubana the day before, assuring him that his brand would overrun the Ivorian market, Mikail Osundiji of Abeokuta. and a young man named Lucky at Ago-Palace way. They all died with immediate effect because the game did not immediately go their way. If only they had calmed down, if they had lived, they would have savoured the victory of that particular dicey tie. Anyway, as Prof Ginigeme Mbanefo told us in Year One Economics class at good old UI in 1977, something must kill man. It may be football, it may be a spouse or other members of the family, it may be a side-chick or a business partner; it may be police or military bullets or most likely, Kidnappers, bandits and UGM.
Finals: Watching strategies and statistical analysis
Following the deadly qualifier, many Nigerians designed new methods of watching the finals: ‘killing’ the volume(so that you won’t hear anything),covering 95% of the screen and leaving open only the Ivorian goalpost or having the BP monitor permanently attached to the arm during the final. A good number of people avoided the match in its entirety and some public awareness on how to watch the Nigerian-Ivorian match filled everywhere. Luckly as I write, I have not heard of any loss of life after the finals. Prof Joy Ezeilo revealed that she did not go to watch the finals because it would take her 5 month’s salary( at professorial bar) to buy a flight ticket to Ivory Coast (and this excludes body no be wood). She wisely reordered her priorities. Some people became emergency econometricians, calculating the regional, state and tribal makeup of the players and noting that Federal Character was absent.
The Ivorian keeper with his stuff, is that the cup? Returning to the land of darkness
Well, we lost and some of
us descended on the players or the BATified Government. Some people wondered why
we sent that huge, noisy and distracting
delegation to watch the match. Some believed that the statement by NFF that the
Eagles would win for BAT was the cause of the tragedy while some
believed that a win was POssible if Obi had been around. Others
showed the Eagles coming home with ‘I better pass my neighbour
generators’(a caricature of our precarious energy situation). Some even showed
our players trekking home with their IDP-like luggage on their heads. A good
number descended on Alex Iwobi, to an extent that it has got to the level of
cyber- BULLYING. Ahmed Musa advised such people that targeting a single player for the team’s
shortcomings is unfair and unjust. We win as a team, and we lose as a team. It appears that the efforts and
expenses incurred by the Anambra State Government to set up a viewing centre
for the games was in vain but the state cobranded with the Eagles, gave the
people some moments of conviviality and helped those who were there to momentarily
forget, with a good number of Nigerians, the sorrows of TINUBUlation!
INEC Scores, the police matter and viewing center at Awka
Some people for whatever
reason decided to watch the final match
on the glitchy INEC portal where the score was 4-2 in favour of Nigeria and Ivorians were asked: ‘If you don’t
like, Go to court’ and as the court be right now, very few people are taking that COURTous option. Shehu Sani ‘killed
it’ by advising us to leave the AFCON Cup and face the Cup of Garri (with its
incredible price!). some wicked Nigerians also called on the NPF to openly
declare their stand and loyalty on the matter because their logo contains both the Eagle( Nigeria) and Elephant(I’Coast)
The best from the games however was from an ‘unknown analyst’ who
listed the lessons from this AFCON and here it goes:
✍ Ivory
Coast lost two out of three group matches but still got to the final. They had
a second chance and took it seriously. Don't play with the second chance life
gives you. Don't give up on yourself!
✍ Ivory
Coast were beaten 4-0 by Equatorial Guinea, yet they bounced back to the final
while Equatorial Guinea got eliminated. Don't write anyone off. You won today
doesn't mean you are the best. Don't look down on the person you defeated
yesterday!
✍ Ivory
Coast mobilized support for Morocco to beat Zambia so that they can qualify.
Some of those clapping for you now and supporting you may not be your real
friends, they may just be using your success for their gain. Morocco went home
after helping Ivory Coast to qualify to the final. Don't let anyone use you for
any gain that doesn't benefit you.
✍ South
African goalkeeper stopped 4 penalties against Cape Verde and we're so
confident. They wanted the match against Nigeria to end in penalties so that
they will win. But against Nigeria, he couldn't stop any penalty, instead the
Nigerian keeper stopped 2 and won MOTM. Don't be too confident of yourself.
✍ Nigeria
scored a second goal that was disallowed because of an earlier foul at the
build up. Goal was cancelled and SOUTH AFRICA were awarded a penalty. Such is
life, when you think you have lost, God may give you a redemption to turn ashes
into beauty.
✍ Senegal
didn't lose any match at group stage. But when they played against Ivory Coast
that lost 2 matches, they were eliminated.
✍ All the
defenders were on Osimhen, they did all they could to stop him, even four of
his goals were disallowed.....but they didn't take note of Ademola Lookman.
Your real enemy may not be who you are thinking.....
✍ Kelechi
Iheanacho didn't play the previous 5 matches, he came in late into the 6th game
and became the hero. All you need to be a hero could just be one kick and not
100 kicks, but if you have just one opportunity to kick the ball, do it
well......
He then went Biblical
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is
not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise,
nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but
time and chance happeneth to them all(Ecclesiastes 9:11) and concluded that the time and chance means PREPARATION WAITING FOR
OPPORTUNITY. I owe him
or her a big bottled of water!
And even though we lost, things are moving on
in other dimensions. The Federal Government rewarded the team with national
Honours and landed property. Furthermore,
the rating of the Eagles rose by 14 points( I don’t know when it has
ever jumped up like this) and the same applies to most of our players. The
price of Nwabali on the sports-exchange rose astronomically; he
broke a 22 year record held by Ike Shoronmu, holding the longest clean slate
among all the Nigerian goalkeepers, by
not conceding a goal for 493
minutes across 6 games and he was chiefnised
by his people. It appears as if this AFCON was played for that Son of Night..
BAT also benefitted from the games because some Nigerians awarded him the ‘man
of the match’. I asked them how and why somebody who
was not in the field of play became the man of the match and they said
because he left the complex woes of Nigeria to concentrate on the match!
However, Ivory Coast won.
Many of our compatriots admitted that the Eagles played below par. Even the
Ivorian coach commented that the Nigerian players were weak and that they capitalised on that
shortcoming. And somebody said that the
lesson from Ivorian victory is: never judge a man by the first round.
Let’s wait for the next AFCON, World Cup
or even the Olympics. There will always be a football competition going on!
Herbert Wigwe: And the man died!
Herbert Wige died a painful death in a foreign land with his wife and son and it was the same day we lost AFCON. There was immediate grief and shock across the country and beyond, and especially in the financial sector, where his impact was massively felt. The social media was awash with videos of his last birthday, his out-of-this-world mansion, which he launched in December, the university where tuition fees start from $15000, his acts of silent philanthropy and how he was the financial backbone of the biggest RCCG Parish in Nigeria. But Nigerians wont even let him rest in peace. While his corpse was still stranded in foreign land, Nigerians decided to unearth all the dirty manoeuvres that characterised the various bank acquisitions he was involved in. And the stories left some gaps in terms of ethics and integrity. Why did they not say all these things all these years?
Unfortunately, he is no longer around to defend himself while his friends and associates have suddenly gone dumb! Someone even brought in a prophecy-based conspiracy theory! And life goes on because about 48 hours later, someone was appointed to take over the affairs of Access Bank Holdings. Only God knows the intensity of organisational politicking that preceded the appointment. No one is indispensable and ALL is VANITY! And as someone lamented, one of his key benefactors just went on to host big-bang Birthday bash( Chukwudi Iwuchukwu: Herbert Wigwe; The world Moves on!). Sure, the world moves on, just as it will do when it becomes our turn to bow out; when the bell tolls. I had planned to write on his University but that will be on hold for now. May the good Lord grant him eternal rest and strengthen his remaining children and aged parents in these trying moments. And may we, the leaving know that it can happen anytime!
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“Find a great mentor, someone who has already been through the many challenges of being an entrepreneur..” -Jodi Levine
Entrepreneurship in Practice: Cases, Challenges and Lessons By IK, MUO PHD is now available on Amazon, since 14/5/21. Click here to view Available for order +2348033026625 | Delivery: Worldwide
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