Nigeria: King Kanu Nwankwo, Osaze Odemnwinge and ‘Green Eagles’

14 June 2011

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At times like this, when the center appears not to hold and a blood-dimmed tide is loosed upon the world that drowns the ceremony of innocence, and things fall apart, webmasters usually receded to the innermost core of their beings, saying little.

There’s a habit born of long, historical memory of the politics of Nigeria which tends to suggest they are indestructible, the happiest peoples on earth that are able to survive even extreme hard times and do get on with lives as best they could.

“Those are Chinua Achebe’s words in Things Fall Apart you are plagiarizing,” Akpe charged as soon as Curator began his ‘blood-dimmed’ apocalyptical speech at the website last Sunday.

It was at an extra-ordinary session. Web meetings, if you re-call, take place Fridays. But the testimonial match in honor of Kanu Nwankwo on his retirement from international football last Saturday had occasioned the Sunday conclave.

“No. The words actually belong to William Butler (W. B.) Yeats”, Curator amended patiently. Akpe had the knack of diverting attention away from real issues of the day. Curator wanted to keep matters focused for the day.

Yeats’ poem, Second Coming, had for-shadowed the cataclysm of the Second World War, some think. And the title of Achebe’s book was a direct line from that short, but powerful poem.

With the bombings by Boko Haram terrorists up in the North that target Christian places of worship and their persons indiscriminately; the sundry tales of official sleaze as typified by ex-House Speaker Dimeji Bankole and his gang of lawless lawmakers; the near total electric power black outs, and the return of the obnoxious muggings and robberies inside danfo buses called ‘one-chance’ to Lagos roads – with all this confusion around, webmasters already had too much on their plate to quibble over the origins of Achebe’s muse.

Chairman Maximus, who had decreed the extraordinary meeting, had worried about the numerous probe panels set up by government in this civil rule dispensation to look into why Nigerians are determined to kill off each other in the name of politics, religion or ethnicity.

At the last count, there had been about 400 of such probe panels in the last 12 years of civil rule alone beginning in 1999, including the famous Oputa Panel. And what has been the out come of the probes so far? Nothing! Nigerians still managed to go about merrily stealing from one another, killing and muddling up the political process so much that things have really fallen apart.

That was why the spectacle of our football stars of yore who had managed in their respective carriers to give Nigerians some moments of pure joy, unity of purpose, and happiness, was a welcome topic last Sunday.

Enough of the bad news!

“Kanu deserves all the accolades that the world may decide to heap on him,” Uche, former Director of Operations (DOP) said, with an admiring shake of his head.

“Did you see Finidi George with his luxuriant Taliban beards?” Eskimo contributed.

“Or, Seyi Adebayo (the Nigerian) who plays for Republic of Togo?,” Kalistos interjected.

Soon all the doom and glum had evaporated and webmasters were regaling each other with tit bits of that testimonial game and the personalities who had graced it.

Take a bow, Benjamin Muaruwari from Zimbabwe; Austin JJ Okocha; Aloy Agu; Peterside Idah; Peter Ruffai; Governor Raji Fashola and the Lagos State government; Emmanuel Ebue, Kolo Toure, Didier Drogba of Ivory Coast; Dan Amokachi, Tijani Babangida, Celestine Babayaro, Uche Okechukwu, Ike Uche; Bonfrere Jo; Stephen Keshi; Sunday Olise, Christian Chukwu; Mark Fish of South Africa, Sule Muntari and Michael Essien of Ghana, Rigobert Song, Samuel Eto’o of Cameroon; Danny Shittu, John Utaka, Obinna Nsofor, and numerous others who had dropped all they were doing, just to drop by at the Teslim Balogun stadium, Lagos, to honor one of their kind last Saturday. It was all very heady, webmasters agreed.

What was it that makes Kanu Nwankwo such a special human being, and Nigerian? It could not have been his football skills alone, which were considerable, but not as flashy as, say, the dazzling footwork of a JJ Okocha in full flight?

Was it the fact that Kanu survived a career and life-threatening heart problem and had overcome it all to post superlative performances with the Arsenal football club of England and other clubs? Many African footballers and sportsmen may have been as outstanding as Kanu was, but are they all as honored, with trophies, medals and humility as he?

Webmasters were not sure. But the Prof had hazarded a guess. “Maybe”, he said, “it was Kanu’s magnanimity of spirit, his selfless life-style that deviated radically from what conventionally obtains with a majority of African high-achievers, which marked him out as an outstanding human being.

“He gave to his nation the African continent what had been denied him as a child, which is quality heart care, through his HEART FOUNDATION that caters for the underprivileged”, Prof continued. Sure, many agreed.

“Yes,” agreed Zuma: “and Kanu did all that without making any fuss over it too!”

That was when discussions veered towards the intellectual capacity of the domeless wonder boys who run the nation’s football, the NFF or is it NFA? Why do they ridicule themselves and the rest of Nigerians by making claims they cannot sustain?

For example, when Nigeria had some pride the national team had a semantically exact name – the Green Eagles. But then some self-conceited bunch with their eyes on the money and not the glory woke up to re-Christian the national team ‘Super Eagles’!

That was the most illogical thing to do, considering that the nation was anything but ‘super’ and so could not be in any position to field a ‘super’ national football team!

It is the same idiocy that led the gnomes at the nation’s football house to raise a bunch of under-23 players and dubbed them the ‘dream team’! And you wonder, is there a limit to copycatism?

Nigeria manages to borrow the best from established nations and powers like Britain and the United States of America. They borrowed the Parliamentary system of government and its ranking systems of national honors such as Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SAN) and other vainglorious accoutrements that add no values to citizens’ lives.

And when they have so borrowed, Nigerians proceed to bastardize the cultural loans from others, turning them into tools to befuddle, mesmerize and rip off the less informed in society.

“How can a chicken which cannot fly liken itself to the soaring, all-powerful, African eagle? Or, to name a straggling team of age-falsifying footballers a ‘dream team’?

Of course, it should be a dream when a 30 year-old journeyman footballer is fielded to play in age-grade competitions like the under-23 tournaments. That has been the mystery of the bombastic and mentally challenged re-naming of the nation’s football teams in recent times.

“So what about the present team that mauled the Argentine national team just the other day, are they not super?” Ovid, playing the devil’s advocate, submitted.

In response, Jude had mentioned the “Super Eagles” team that barely scrapped a draw in a game that everyone knew Nigeria should have won, are they so ‘super’ after all?

The problem with Nigerian football team coaches is that they possess too much ego for their own good, Prof ventured. They mistake discipline for repression of the creative and spontaneous aspects of their players’ lives.

Like, Samson Siasia, indigenous national team coaches mistake Osaze’s quiet self assurance for arrogance in order to ban him from helping his national team. This is a shame because one should never logically expect a set of behaviors from the ‘part’ which is never found in the ‘whole’.

The question for Siasia is: Which aspect of Nigerian national life is ‘disciplined’ to the tune demanded of Osaze?

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