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“Yakubu is 25 but a Nigerian 25”—Everton Manager, David
Moyes in 2008.
“I don’t see Nigerian football getting out of the quagmire, the
problem it is in, today, is because corruption is getting
deeper and deeper. From time to time we get flashes where
we do well in some competitions with overage players and
we celebrate.
That was one of the issues I looked at; we can’t keep using
overage players. We used over-age players for junior
championships, I know that. Why not say it? It’s the truth. We
always cheat. It’s a fact. When you cheat, you deprive the
young stars that are supposed to play in these competitions
their rights.”— NFA Chairman, Anthony Kojo Williams, in
2000.
JULIUS Agwu is one of my favourite comedians in Nigeria .I
love his feminine voice,the crispness of his jokes as well as
his delivery. Anytime I am boarding a flight and I call my
wife,I usually say “abodu ala o”.I picked that from Julius.He
cracked the joke about a flight attendant going around the
lounge to announce an aircraft boarding because the public
address system was not working during the renovations of
the Enugu airport .
The Igbo lady was saying: “A Lagos abodu ala o” There was a
passenger billed to fly that plane who did not understand a
word in Igbo and therefore sat put while other passengers
went to join the queue. About an hour later he went to the
A… counter and asked why they had yet to make a boarding
call only to be told that the plane had since departed “I went
round shouting abodu ala” came from the flight attendant as
if every passenger must understand her native tongue.
But his joke that is relevant to what I am discussing today is
the one where he talked about some Nigerian team training
for an age-grade competition near his house and how he
went to one of the players to ask for his age and the
response he got was: “Our coach has not given us our age”.
We have just “conquered” the world again in Chile and the
drums are rolling in celebration of our lack of character and
integrity as a people. Our infinite capacity to conspire in
falsehood and pretend that all is well when the reverse is
the case is once more being demonstrated even when we
don’t blink in reciting our
NATIONAL PLEDGE:
“I pledge to Nigeria my country To be faithful,loyal and
HONEST”
We say these and all the other lines(read LIES) even when no
one believes in them. We have mastered the art of saying
something and doing another because the very foundation
of our country is a concrete of lies. Every action we take is
built on falsehood because we just can’t do it right. Cheating
our ways to corner undeserved advantages has become a
national culture because we have not been able to construct
a national vision.
After 55 years we still cannot count ourselves because an
accurate census would minimise our ability to cheat. Our
examinations have become a farce as parents even buy
questions for their wards and pay for admissions. We beat
traffic rules if there is nobody in sight to enforce them.Our
politicians forge certificates to contest elections. Our vote
counts conflict with actual vote cast. Judges take bribes to
pervert Justice. Priests and Imams negate moral values. The
“how “ no longer matter to us and yet we pray that our
country should succeed .
We can occasionally have some fake success but not good
success because we break all the rules of success as natural
cheats. We deploy kids to vote in elections where adults
should participate when we want to cheat internally and
assemble adults to go and compete with kids globally when
we want to cheat internationally. This is why we are
celebrating 22 men who went to an unequal competition
with only whispers about the actual ages of our boys.
Physical appearance
Mere physical appearances of our boys should tell any
honest person that the suspicion about true ages of some
Nigerian footballers which made FIFA to ban the country
from all international fixtures for two years after finding that
the birth dates of three of our players in the 1988 Olympics
were different from ones used by the same players in
previous tournaments is still very much with us.
Nigeria has over the years paraded promising “ youngsters”
who mysteriously failed to fulfill their potential in the senior
teams. Phillip Osondu was the best player at the 1987
Under-17 World Cup, after which he was signed on by
Anderlecht, only to drift out of the game and into janitorial
work after questions were raised about his real age. Femi
Opabunmi shone brilliantly when Nigeria played in the finals
of the Under-17 competition in 2001 and was officially the
third youngest player in the senior team when he featured
in the 0-0 game with England during the 2002 World Cup.
But by 2005 he had expired doing only part-time soccer in
some unrated team in lower rungs of the French league.
Adokiye Amiesimaka questioned the inclusion of Golden
Eaglets captain Fortune Chukwudi during the 2009 Under 17
championship . Amiesimaka in an unusual candor bared his
mind after Nigeria’s opening 3-3 draw with Germany at the
Abuja National Stadium on October 24. “In the 2002/2003
season, I was chairman of Sharks Football Club of Port
Harcourt. I decided to have a feeder team of fresh school
leavers not older than 20 years.
One of my key players then is the current captain of our so-
called Under-17 Golden Eaglets. By his own admission at
that time, that is seven years ago, he was 18 years old…If we
are not utterly irresponsible, how can he be eligible for this
tournament when he is not less than 25 years old now?”
Amiesimaka wrote in the Punch newspaper. Chukwudi
played till the Eaglets final match and fizzled out thereafter.
But since corruption is official in Nigeria,there was no
whimper from our officials .
I read on The Cable in June this year of how Taye Taiwo’s
twin sister allegedly celebrated her 39th birthday the day
Taiwo was doing his own 27th.There was also the story of
Samson Siasia cutting the cake of his 30th wedding
anniversary at the age of 47!
About the most hilarious was that of Dele Ajiboye who
exposed the lie over his age when he featured in the
Under-17 tournament in 2007″.In the chat(with Soccer Star)
the Golden Eaglets gold medal-winning goalkeeper in the
FIFA U-17 World Cup in 2007 inadvertently revealed he was
older than he claimed eight years earlier. When asked about
his role model as a professional goalkeeper, the Kwara
United keeper revealed the person without much fuss. “I
have many role models.
Anyone I learn from is my role model,” he said. “I could
remember when I was still a young boy, I do watch Peter
Rufai and I learnt a lot from him.” Ajiboye is 25 now and 17
in 2007, but we doubt he was referring to the Peter Rufai of
1998 World Cup. Nobody learnt anything fruitful and
meaningful from Rufai of 1998. Even Ajiboye at age eight
couldn’t have learnt anything worthy from the fumbling
Dodo Mayana except, of course, how to make cheap goals
look spectacular. Then, we are assuming Ajiboye was
referring to the Rufai of 1994 Africa Cup of Nations and
World Cup. But in 1994, Ajiboye was four!”
James Spencer in an article traced age fraud in the Premier
League to African players: “Age fraud came to prominence in
the Premier League from the mid-1990s onwards, as clubs
began looking more and more at emerging African players.
Several former Premier League players from Nigeria alone
have been suspected of such misrepresentation.
Nwankwo Kanu is a legend of African football and became a
cult hero in England playing for clubs like Arsenal and
Portsmouth. The tall forward won the Champions League
with Ajax in 1995, but was always suspected to be as much
as nine years older than his stated age. Speaking in 2010,
Harry Redknapp jokingly exaggerated that Kanu was 49,
though given how he described ever increasing ailments and
the need for treatment, there seemed to be a shred of
authenticity to his words.
Former Newcastle United striker Obafemi Martins was also
at the centre of an age row. The player had spectacularly
burst onto the scene with Inter Milan as a youngster, but
failed to make the most of his talent, suggesting he could
already have been much older than stated. In 2005, while
Martins was still in Italy, the Nigerian Football Federation
claimed he was actually born in 1978, though his player
registration stated it was 1984.
National failure
Similar stories also exist for both Jay-Jay Okocha and Taribo
West who plied their trade in the Premier League for Bolton
Wanderers and Derby County, respectively.
Throughout his career, Okocha was rumoured to be 10 years
older than his official age. Following his departure from
Derby in 2001, West allegedly told Partizan Belgrade that he
was only 28, though given the state of his body the club had
strong suspicions that he was 40.
It may not occur to us that our national failure is the sum
total of all these little acts of dishonesty .I recall a Dutch-
journalist friend of mine who I was driving along the Airport
Road in 1998 and saw a fellow peeing on the road. He
looked at the guy and said to me: “If that man cannot see
anything wrong urinating on the roadside,he would do other
1000 things that are not right and would not see nothing
wrong”.
We shall engage in this hollow rituals of celebrating our
“victory” but we know in the inner recesses of our minds that
is all a fluke because we didn’t do it right. Scoundrels posing
as patriots would even abuse this writer for writing the truth.
That majority is wrong should not desist the minority that is
right from saying it as it is.
The truth must be told even if heavens fall: It is only
righteousness that exalts a nation.
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