By Nelson Ekujumi
Just yesterday night(29/11/11), I
watched the Under 23 National team 5 that was formerly
called dream team lose its second match to Senegal in the ongoing qualifiers to
determine Africa’s representatives for the football event at next year’s
Olympics game. I just couldn’t believe my eyes that this bunch of players could
be paraded by the NFF as the representatives of the Nigerian people.
I was even angrier when I heard
in the news report this morning that the coach on secondment to the team,
Stephen Keshi complained that the team lost the match because they didn’t play
to instruction. Oh, what a shame that the newly appointed coach of the Super
Eagles watched a different match from the one we all saw yesterday because
there was no footballer in the that team. The team from the head coach to
players are all misfits. You couldn’t figure out a footballer in that team. They
lacked fitness, couldn’t mark, hold the ball or even distribute it. We could
have saved ourselves this national embarrassment if we had gone to any of our
maternity centers to pick eleven pregnant women who would have performed better
than these boys.
The price we are paying now is
what befalls any people and system that rewards cheats and failures at the
expense of hard work. The NFF is the only football body in the world where
people who have repeatedly failed at one level or the other are recycled just
like in our political life, hence our pitiable condition in the comity of
civilized people. Look at the roll call of the membership of the NFF and let
any one of them point to his /her individual achievement in their personal
capacity before being saddled with the task of managing the destiny of a
country of over 160 million people which they have toyed with.
To think that this miserable team
could have salvaged whatever glory was left of our football after all the
national and local clubsides teams crashed out of every major international
competition that we entered for at the female and male levels under the
leadership of Alhaji Maigari NFF this year was like a like pipe dream. The
Under 23 team is a disappointment and an embarrassment to the psyche of the
Nigerian people, the board of the NFF must take full responsibility for this
show of shame by resigning now.
The only road to success in life
is through diligent planning and hard work rather than luck. Until we get men
and women who are knowledgeable, focused and sincere on board the management of
our football just like in our political life, the only way to go for our football
is down, with these undertakers in charge.
As we approach the year 2012, one
fervently hopes and prays that the members of the board of the NFF who still
have any atom of shame left in them will be sober enough to realize the extent
of damage they have done to our collective destiny by the failures of 2011 in
football at all levels by resigning now. To the Alhaji Maigari led NFF, the
time to go is now because enough is enough!
