Good bye 2009!
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- Category: Sports
- Written by ODEGBAMI ON SATURDAY
- Hits: 931
To be alive, and to have the privilege of being part of another year, of another beginning, are enough for one to feel wonderful and to be grateful to the Creator of all things.
Good bye 2009. It would be considered a wonderful year only if we draw from the depths of philosophical thinking and hold on to the straw that there is a gift in every disappointment, and that underneath such disappointment is a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered, On that score alone every year can be considered ‘beautiful’ depending on how one looks at its contents. Having said that, we can now examine the facts on ground.
Sport generally, is presently an ailing project in Nigeria, the only positive side of which is that the decade, 2000 to2009, will now be a watershed, to provide a perfect case-study of how NOT to develop sports as we project into the immediate future! For that reason, for the lessons the past decade provides, we can truly thank the elements for the out-gone year but still consider it the year of the locusts.
The past decade has to go down in documented Nigerian history as one that saw to the total decline of all sports in Nigeria. No sport recorded anything of major significance in 10 years. At the end of 2009, to think it is only Nigeria’s qualification for the World Cup of football, the country’s number one sport, after stuttering performances that left hearts wrenching and mouths gaping, with the abundance of talent available to the country, with its size and resources, with enviable records in all championships in previous decades, and huge potentials that have become the envy of the rest of the world, that is now being counted as the country’s only and greatest achievement in the whole of sports provides very uncomfortable food for thought. Even that success was achieved with so much difficulty that what should have been almost routine is being lavishly celebrated as if the World Cup itself has been won. That speaks volumes about how far down the slope of decline the country’s sports have been led.
Qualification for one of 5 places in Africa should be routine! To drive home the point of the level of deterioration of football the NFF has set the level of a semi-final place as its target at the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola. It is simply incredulous. Semi-finals of the African Cup of Nations Cup? I can’t believe it. How did we get to this sorry state? At this point in the history of our football should it not be that anything short of the final match of the Nations Cup should be the least we should set for ourselves as our target? Go through the history of the championship and observe that the country has strolled to the semi-finals so often that to now choose that stage as a target to measure success is either an indication that something is amiss with our football or some people are just taking Nigerians for a ride. Who is fooling who?
Generally speaking so poor was the last decade for sports that no sport can point at any achievement of significance in that period! Not even the singular, pyrrhic victory of Samuel Peters in boxing which even then cannot truly be attributed to the country’s effort. Even that now looks embarrassingly like a flash in the pan, a drop of water in a sea of raging fire. It cannot be counted! There was nothing achieved in tennis, volleyball, basketball, boxing, swimming, track and field. Name the sport, the summation is that nothing was achieved. All other sports have gone to sleep buried beneath the rubble of Nigeria’s lack of major success in football. It seems there is a deliberate and systematic plan to asphyxiate other sports!
In football, in the female and age-group categories, hitherto the country’s stronghold in the continent, the story is also that of a steady decline. Even the under-17 teams of 2007 and 2009 developed heavy clouds of credibility. The females are losing their dominance to other emerging African teams as they failed to win the AWC as well as the cadet version for the first time since their inception. It is at club level that Nigeria can clam some credit through Enyimba Football Club of Aba that captured the African Champions League trophy twice, and Heartland FC that took over the baton in 2009, got to the finals and naively surrendered the cup to Mezambe of Zaire in a match many think they should have won had they attacked away from home in the final match instead of defending their slim one goal lead in the first leg at home,
Another minor point is that it is in the same decadent decade that Nigeria bid for and hosted the highest number of international sports events in the country’s history. The effects of the by-products of bidding and hosting are yet to be fully felt as those would depend on what use the facilities and infrastructure developed for the events are put after the events that gave life to them, and the maintenance regimen put in place to sustain them. All of that would become manifest from 2010. So 2010 is about new beginnings. With hope and the conviction that things must change for good we usher in a new year!
Welcome 2010!
On the note of hope, therefore, I welcome 2010 and the next decade! The first lesson from the past decade is that we cannot do the things we did in the past, the way we did them, and expect a different result. We must do things differently. We must have a clear vision, a simple, practical road map and a new complimentary visionary leadership! We must dislodge those that have enslaved Nigerian sports in ignorance, short-sightedness and selfish agenda resulting in sports’ stunted growth. We must engage the Nigerian people in the conversations about the future of their sports and get their input. We must involve the people in transparent selection or merited appointment of those that will administer and manage their sports. The new leadership must provide illumination for sports development into the next decade. We must bring change - real and integral! We must remove every vestige of a sit-tight mentality and destroy the rackets that affect the genuine democratisation of our sports; we must democratise the process of electing officials from the grassroots up and not from the top downwards; we must be fully accountable for the resources put at sports’ disposal; we must set targets of achievements that must reflect the potentials of our great nation, and our rightful place in the world of sports, aiming for the top and even beyond always! We must make the best use of our ambassadors in all sports to join forcefully in the re-branding of Nigeria as a great nation and a great people!
That’s what 2010 and beyond must challenge us to do!
Articles
Good bye 2009!
Category: Sports Written by ODEGBAMI ON SATURDAY Hits: 931
To be alive, and to have the privilege of being part of another year, of another beginning, are enough for one to feel wonderful and to be grateful to the Creator of all things.
Good bye 2009. It would be considered a wonderful year only if we draw from the depths of philosophical thinking and hold on to the straw that there is a gift in every disappointment, and that underneath such disappointment is a hidden treasure waiting to be discovered, On that score alone every year can be considered ‘beautiful’ depending on how one looks at its contents. Having said that, we can now examine the facts on ground.
Sport generally, is presently an ailing project in Nigeria, the only positive side of which is that the decade, 2000 to2009, will now be a watershed, to provide a perfect case-study of how NOT to develop sports as we project into the immediate future! For that reason, for the lessons the past decade provides, we can truly thank the elements for the out-gone year but still consider it the year of the locusts.
The past decade has to go down in documented Nigerian history as one that saw to the total decline of all sports in Nigeria. No sport recorded anything of major significance in 10 years. At the end of 2009, to think it is only Nigeria’s qualification for the World Cup of football, the country’s number one sport, after stuttering performances that left hearts wrenching and mouths gaping, with the abundance of talent available to the country, with its size and resources, with enviable records in all championships in previous decades, and huge potentials that have become the envy of the rest of the world, that is now being counted as the country’s only and greatest achievement in the whole of sports provides very uncomfortable food for thought. Even that success was achieved with so much difficulty that what should have been almost routine is being lavishly celebrated as if the World Cup itself has been won. That speaks volumes about how far down the slope of decline the country’s sports have been led.
Qualification for one of 5 places in Africa should be routine! To drive home the point of the level of deterioration of football the NFF has set the level of a semi-final place as its target at the 2010 African Cup of Nations in Angola. It is simply incredulous. Semi-finals of the African Cup of Nations Cup? I can’t believe it. How did we get to this sorry state? At this point in the history of our football should it not be that anything short of the final match of the Nations Cup should be the least we should set for ourselves as our target? Go through the history of the championship and observe that the country has strolled to the semi-finals so often that to now choose that stage as a target to measure success is either an indication that something is amiss with our football or some people are just taking Nigerians for a ride. Who is fooling who?
Generally speaking so poor was the last decade for sports that no sport can point at any achievement of significance in that period! Not even the singular, pyrrhic victory of Samuel Peters in boxing which even then cannot truly be attributed to the country’s effort. Even that now looks embarrassingly like a flash in the pan, a drop of water in a sea of raging fire. It cannot be counted! There was nothing achieved in tennis, volleyball, basketball, boxing, swimming, track and field. Name the sport, the summation is that nothing was achieved. All other sports have gone to sleep buried beneath the rubble of Nigeria’s lack of major success in football. It seems there is a deliberate and systematic plan to asphyxiate other sports!
In football, in the female and age-group categories, hitherto the country’s stronghold in the continent, the story is also that of a steady decline. Even the under-17 teams of 2007 and 2009 developed heavy clouds of credibility. The females are losing their dominance to other emerging African teams as they failed to win the AWC as well as the cadet version for the first time since their inception. It is at club level that Nigeria can clam some credit through Enyimba Football Club of Aba that captured the African Champions League trophy twice, and Heartland FC that took over the baton in 2009, got to the finals and naively surrendered the cup to Mezambe of Zaire in a match many think they should have won had they attacked away from home in the final match instead of defending their slim one goal lead in the first leg at home,
Another minor point is that it is in the same decadent decade that Nigeria bid for and hosted the highest number of international sports events in the country’s history. The effects of the by-products of bidding and hosting are yet to be fully felt as those would depend on what use the facilities and infrastructure developed for the events are put after the events that gave life to them, and the maintenance regimen put in place to sustain them. All of that would become manifest from 2010. So 2010 is about new beginnings. With hope and the conviction that things must change for good we usher in a new year!
Welcome 2010!
On the note of hope, therefore, I welcome 2010 and the next decade! The first lesson from the past decade is that we cannot do the things we did in the past, the way we did them, and expect a different result. We must do things differently. We must have a clear vision, a simple, practical road map and a new complimentary visionary leadership! We must dislodge those that have enslaved Nigerian sports in ignorance, short-sightedness and selfish agenda resulting in sports’ stunted growth. We must engage the Nigerian people in the conversations about the future of their sports and get their input. We must involve the people in transparent selection or merited appointment of those that will administer and manage their sports. The new leadership must provide illumination for sports development into the next decade. We must bring change - real and integral! We must remove every vestige of a sit-tight mentality and destroy the rackets that affect the genuine democratisation of our sports; we must democratise the process of electing officials from the grassroots up and not from the top downwards; we must be fully accountable for the resources put at sports’ disposal; we must set targets of achievements that must reflect the potentials of our great nation, and our rightful place in the world of sports, aiming for the top and even beyond always! We must make the best use of our ambassadors in all sports to join forcefully in the re-branding of Nigeria as a great nation and a great people!
That’s what 2010 and beyond must challenge us to do!