Sports And Politics ... Handshake Across The Niger, Mission ( Im) Possiblè?
‘ MATHEMATICAL’ is back on the football field, training. I am preparing for, probably, the most significant football match of my life. And this is not a joke.
I played my last official football match on a fateful December day in 1984. That makes 36 years since I threw my football boots in frustration into the stands of the National Stadium in Lagos towards a disappointed audience that had just watched me play, probably, the worst match in my football career. That was when I played a proper football match for the last time.
Since then, I have retired into the cocoon of other sports and non- sports- related interests including the latest - agricultural farming.
So, for this retired ex- football player to be exhumed from the archives and invited to participate in a serious football match after 36 years, means something serious is in the offing.
I have already started the mental exercises for my return to action, starting with fully grasping the motivation for this audacious adventure that could affect my life forever. I am as worried as I am excited.
To start with, I no longer have the legs for a serious football game. My legs can hardly handle anything more than my slow- motion ‘ bursts’ whilst playing tennis.
Propelling my 87 kilograms of withering muscle and mid- riff fat through the rigour of a football match would be a ‘ killer’ physical challenge. But that is what I have signed up to do in the next few weeks to support a seemingly impossible but inevitable mission, because not to do something, anything, is to be complicit in the looming disintegration of the ‘ geographical expression’ called Nigeria. The invitation to return to football for another important match came in a message sent to me by some friends, concerned Nigerians that had come up with a ‘ crazy’ idea to walk our long talk, and tackle one of Nigeria’s most intractable political challenges, fusing the forces of the East and West to balance the domineering forces of the North in order to build a global economic and political force out of Nigeria, one that had failed to materialise in over 60 years of not trying enough and failing, of course.
These visionary friends think it is time we deployed the power of sport to bring together the Igbo and the Yoruba around a common cause, to test the efficacy of what had been mouthed for a long time by southern political leaders that such an effusion would produce a Nigeria that will be very powerful and prosperous. They believe that sport is a tool that creates the atmosphere for such a union with its immunity to the vagaries of religion, tribe, political affiliation and status. Sport is a bridge builder like no other activity known to man.
So, some cultural leaders of the two major ethnic groups have decided to seize the opportunity that the present dire situation across the country presents, and creatively organise a football match that would present a platform for the leaders and followers of the tribes to meet and extend handshakes across the River Niger, an impossible feat before now, but one which has the potential of changing the fortune of Nigeria should it happen. If and when the Yoruba and the Igbo come together and act a common script in the drama of Nigeria’s development, a force,
potentially powerful enough to place Nigeria on the trajectory of a world power would be unleashed to the world.
This has not happened in the past because both tribes became slaves to history, to accusations of past betrayal of each other on the political front. That’s why the handshake across the River Niger has been a ‘ mission impossible’ for almost six decades.
That narrative must change into a new option for the country at this most precipitations of times.
I read my invitation to be a part of this novelty football match again. I see the names of my many friends in the socio- cultural and even political arena from both tribes in the lists. These are persons of my generation. On an individual basis we are buddies. As a team driving a cause, we have not collaborated much. As we approach the sunset in our lives may our greatest regret not be that we did nothing when we had the opportunity to do something to contribute to the desired change to the fortunes of our country.
I like the ‘ foolish’ things of life that confound the wise. I like simple things, simple ways and practical things. I like clarity and honesty. Sport presents such backgrounds.
To use Nigerians’ love for their football is one thing we have not exploited enough to drive national agenda.
There had been a few instances in the country’s history since Independence that football featured prominently in national issues.
There are reports that in 1968, during the brutal Civil War in Nigeria that killed over 2 million people at the final count, fighting was temporarily halted to enable the warring armies of Biafra and Nigeria to follow the radio commentaries of the football match taking place in Lagos that involved the greatest football player in the world at the time, Brazil’s Pele.
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