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Let’s field our first eleven

September 16, 2007
Twelve days ago, Nigeria’s junior football team
vanquished Spain in the ultimate game of the 12th FIFA
Under-17 World Cup tourney. Nigeria’s decisive
victory—3-0 on penalty kicks—was a fitting finale to a
riveting run. On their way to earning the title of
world champions, the team had dominated competitors
from such traditional football powerhouses as Germany,
Argentina, France and Colombia.

The team, affectionately tagged Eaglets, did more than
demonstrate its superiority as a team. It also
excelled in the two major departments of the game. Its
defensive wall was as impregnable as its attacking
arsenal was impossible to contain. It brought
artistry, supreme confidence and a fluidity of
movement to their games. It started the opening minute
of each game with the same sense of purpose and energy
as it played the last minute. The players cohered as a
team. From their first game of the tournament, these
young Nigerians served notice of their determination.
They were not in Seoul, South Korea for a picnic, or
to be also-rans. They came to town to lift the prized
trophy. From the outset, then, they had their eyes on
the prize.

They succeeded with a brilliance punctuated with an
exclamation point. Had they won only against one or
two formidable opponents, their dominance might have
been ascribed to luck. But to sweep past the
competition as they did, and to remain the only
undefeated team in the tournament, shows that this
surpassing feat was no fluke. They—players and coaches
alike—worked hard, took themselves and their opponents
seriously, sweated in practice sessions, and executed
their game plan with breathtaking finesse.

Thanks to their work ethic, they not only won, they
also endeared themselves to many lovers of football
around the world. They charmed their opponents and
fans alike. They proved to be not only the best team
around but the team with the best individual players
as well. They gave the tournament its best
offensive-minded star in the person of Macaulay
Chrisantus, the leading scorer. Chrisantus dazzled
opposing defenders. He feinted, bobbed and weaved his
way to seven goals.

The Eaglets’ success buoyed a nation in desperate need
for cheerful news. Students of nationalism recognize
the role of international sports in galvanizing
national pride. For the 90 or so minutes that the
Eaglets took to the field, they enjoyed the spiritual
support of 140 million Nigerians. Their presence in
the field, hoisting aloft the banner of Nigeria,
helped—however fleetingly—to heal the religious,
ethnic and class lines that often divide Nigerians.
Yes, even if for an hour and a half, they cemented a
nation. They were our proud ambassadors in whom we
took pride, and we rooted for them. Their success
belongs to us, as their failure would certainly have
been ours as well.

The Eaglets’ triumph holds out several profound
lessons for all Nigerians. For me, the central lesson
is the wisdom of fielding our best talent. A nation is
as great or puny as the men and women in whose hands
it entrusts its important affairs. A country that
wishes to soar, to seriously bid for greatness, must
invite its first eleven to lead the charge.

Nigerian leaders are often seized by great accesses of
grandeur. They speak of lifting Nigeria overnight from
the ranks of the most economically miserable countries
to the tier of one of the top twenty economies in the
world. But even as they speak, they leave their
audience in no doubt that their resolve is feigned.
They dissipate their energy, not in working to actuate
their vision, but in further pauperizing the nation
they would transform. Their other actions contradict
their words. They appoint mediocrities into highly
critical positions. They bypass the best and settle
for the second or third best.

The Eaglets won because Nigeria put its best football
feet forward. How often are the best hands and minds
in Nigeria asked to carry out tasks that are crucial
for national development? How many ministers are
recruited on the basis of their technocratic know-how?
How many government officials invest time in mastering
the nature of some aspect of national developmental
crisis in order to be part of the solution? How many
Nigerian leaders spare a serious thought in their
waking hours, or keep awake at night thinking
seriously about—and this is a phrase beloved of our
politicians—“moving the nation forward”? If they knew
what it takes to move a nation forward, how many of
them would be inclined to do it rather than have their
gluttonous guts affixed to the trough?

There can be no question: Nigeria will turn the corner
and begin to win the challenge of development when it
embraces the culture of putting people in positions
based on what, not who, they know. If the political
leadership persists in its contempt for those
possessed of technical knowledge, then the country has
no right to expect anything but utter failure and
frustration.

Nigeria is beset by myriads of crises. Its power
supply deteriorates by the day. Its roads are in a
ghastly state. Its health care is nothing short of
scary. Its public-funded educational institutions are
in terrible shape. Urban blight is a bane. Corruption
still runs rampant, especially at the highest levels
of the society. As the gap between the (fine) dining
classes and the scavengers at trash dumps widens, the
former have become greedier and more mindless.
Unemployment is a deepening malaise, and one
conjectures that the growing menace of armed robbery
is directly tied to an explosion in the number of the
unemployed. Taken together, these and other
dislocations paint an undeniably grave portrait.

Even so, Nigeria has the human resources—a technically
equipped and savvy pool—to tackle the nation’s many
travails. This talent needs to be mobilized,
husbanded, and given the charge to—Go! If Ghana can
dramatically cut down on power failures in its major
cities, Nigeria can do even more. If Ghanaian
universities have attained a reasonable degree of
stability, imagine how much better Nigerian
universities can do—given the right tonic of purpose.
If Sierra Leone can conduct respectable elections in
which the opposition trounces the ruling party, then
an Iwuless Nigeria is surely capable of doing the same
if not better.

The secret is not to leave it up to God, or to prepare
a laundry list of excuses to justify failure. Our
Eaglets did not win in Seoul because they prayed and
fasted and had sleepless prayer warriors importuning
heaven on their behalf. They won because they bought
into the good old habit of preparing well in practice,
and going at their opponents with focus and
determination. If the Eaglets had stepped on the field
armed, not with a strategy for victory, but with
pockets bulging with post-mortem excuses, they won’t
today be the world champions but a pathetic, whining
team. They won because they understood the value of
striving for a goal. They cherished the virtue of
working in unison, playing their hearts out, and
setting their eyes early and consistently on the
prize.

As we fete them and celebrate their dazzling
performances, let us remind ourselves that the final
way to make their achievement an enduring part of our
experience is to glimpse what it suggests about our
collective potential. When we banish frauds from
steering the wheels of our nation; when we set high
standards for ourselves and our fellows; when we
insist on putting our best informed, best trained and
morally astute in charge, then we improve our odds of
taking on the world. And leaving the competition a
little dazed.

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