Charles Onyango-Obbo, a noted Ugandan journalist, editor and commentator offered this piece on Nigeria in this week's edition of The East African.
He talks about Nigerian corporations expanding beyond the Nigerian and West African markets to invest and compete elsewhere on the continent. I love our entrepreneurial energy, and the continuing economic integration of the African continent.
Amalgamation Day in Lagos, 1914
31 March, 2009
30 March, 2009
The draw with Mozambique
Yesterday the Eagles drew 0-0 away at Mozambique in our first match of the final phase of African qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. The Mambas scored two goals that were disallowed by the referee, so we should be grateful for the point.
In theory, it is too early to press the panic button. It is, after all, only the first match. The Eagles ALWAYS struggle in World Cup qualifiers; we are rarely conclusively in or out until the final match day. This is normal.
This is also worrying, because the way we perform in World Cup qualifiers leaves little or no room for error.
We squeezed past Cote d'Ivoire on goal difference to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and pipped Guinea by a point to make it to the 1998 edition. We qualified for the 2002 World Cup thanks to Ghana, who did us a favour by beating Liberia away in Monrovia, which opened the door for us to sneak in by one point. Four years later, in the qualifiers for 2006, we were again praying for another team to do us a favour, hoping Rwanda would beat Angola on the last match-day so we could sneak in again; alas, though they were at home in Kigali, the Rwandans lost by a lone goal, finishing bottom of the group. Angola went to the World Cup.
If you want to know how disorganized our 2006 qualifier campaign was, note that the Nigerian Football Federation, the Nigerian sports media, and most Nigerian fans did not even know CAF was prioritizing the head-to-head rule until we were already on the brink of elimination ... when we were held to a 1-1 draw in our home match against Angola. We had already lost to them away in Luanda, having fielded an under-strength team because we thought they were "minnows" who wouldn't give us any trouble. Suddenly we realized head-to-head was the first tie-breaker, and that our usual surge of heroic victories in the final matches of every series of qualifiers (which happens every time we find ourselves staring elimination in the face) would not be enough to overcome Angola. Even if we won every match (which we did), and by high margins (which we did, 2-5 over Algeria, and 5-0 over Zimbabwe) the Angolans would hold the head-to-head advantage unless SOMEONE beat them, and no one did.
This is what happens when you lose control of your fate. You end up watching matches you have no influence on, and hoping teams that have no motivation (since they are already out) would do you a favour.
For a team like the Eagles that perennially walks a tight-rope in World Cup qualifying, seemingly innocuous match results can (and have) come back to bite us in the end.
It is not a new phenomenon. In the 3-team final stage of qualifying for the 1978 World Cup, Nigeria finished with 3 points, behind Egypt (4 points); Tunisia went to their first World Cup having finished with 5 points.. The heart-breaking thing is we lost our HOME MATCH in Lagos against Tunisia; that one result would have given us 5 points, and left them on 3 points, sending us to the World Cup. Did I mention we were AT HOME?
Fast forward twelve years, and there was dissent in our camp ahead of our 1990 World Cup qualifier away against Gabon; a couple of players ultimately to boycotted the match. We lost 2-1 in Libreville to the Gabonese. I recognize that no team wins all of its matches, and I am in no way disrespecting Gabon's 1990 squad, but it is this sort of away match that ends up deciding your fate. Had we somehow pulled out a victory in Libreville, our final match against mega-rivals Cameroun, away in Yaounde, would have been irrelevant. As it stood, before kickoff in Yaounde, Cameroun would qualify with a win, and Nigeria would have qualified with a draw; after a brusing, vicious encounter (one Nigerian player rushed to hospital, a couple more Nigerians left bleeding) Cameroun had won a ticket to Italia'90 at our expense. They used that ticket well, going on a Cinderella run to the quarterfinals.
Again, I recognize the fact that no team wins always, but too often we have dropped points and acted like it didn't really matter because it was just one match, only to find that it mattered more than we thought.
I hope we don't end up looking back at this weekend's 2010 qualifier against Mozambique, wondering what might have been with two extra points. Our principal rivals this time are Tunisia, seasoned campaigners who know how to grind out the results necessary to get into the World Cup. In fact, with four appearances, they are Africa's second-most frequent World Cup representatives (behind only five-appearance Cameroun). Unlike Guinea or Liberia or even Angola, the Tunisians will not do us any favours. And while we were lucky to escape Maputo with a draw, the Tunisians ground out 3 vital away points in Nairobi against Kenya. If they get another three away points in Maputo later this year, while we content ourselves with another draw in our upcoming match in Nairobi, qualification could get a little complicated.
Last weekend's result in Maputo means two potentially crucial points dropped, and given our history in the qualifiers (and the fact that the Mambas had two goals called off) we need to be really worried. True, the Eagles have declined in recent years and are no longer the dominant force we used to be. True, second- and third-tier teams in Africa have dramatically improved of recent, with Senegal making the 2002 World Cup, Togo and Angola making it in 2006, not to mention the slew of upsets and shocks in the first weekend of final qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. And true, the final phase of qualifying will be tougher than the first phase where we won 6 matches out of 6 against weaker teams.
But once we recognize and acknowledge your limitations and obstacles, we should not run or hide from them, or use them as an excuse not to try harder. If we want a place in South Africa in 2010, we are going to have to work incredibly hard to get it. In fact, we have to take a page out of the book of the Tunisians, and learn how to use hard work, tactics and team ethic to make up for a lack of stars -- because we don't have superstars anymore. We have got to study our opponents in excruciating detail, and figure out simple but effective strategies to grind out 3-point results from here to the final match-day. Let us not do the usual thing of waiting until elimination creeps up on us, only to post a run of heroic results while praying that some other team does us a favour.
The priority in Nigerian football right now is to qualify for the World Cup. The upcoming Under-21 and Under-17 World Championships are NOT IMPORTANT. Heck, if there is any player currently on a youth team who could add some extra effectiveness to the senior side, draft him immediately.
Up Eagles! Up Nigeria!
In theory, it is too early to press the panic button. It is, after all, only the first match. The Eagles ALWAYS struggle in World Cup qualifiers; we are rarely conclusively in or out until the final match day. This is normal.
This is also worrying, because the way we perform in World Cup qualifiers leaves little or no room for error.
We squeezed past Cote d'Ivoire on goal difference to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, and pipped Guinea by a point to make it to the 1998 edition. We qualified for the 2002 World Cup thanks to Ghana, who did us a favour by beating Liberia away in Monrovia, which opened the door for us to sneak in by one point. Four years later, in the qualifiers for 2006, we were again praying for another team to do us a favour, hoping Rwanda would beat Angola on the last match-day so we could sneak in again; alas, though they were at home in Kigali, the Rwandans lost by a lone goal, finishing bottom of the group. Angola went to the World Cup.
If you want to know how disorganized our 2006 qualifier campaign was, note that the Nigerian Football Federation, the Nigerian sports media, and most Nigerian fans did not even know CAF was prioritizing the head-to-head rule until we were already on the brink of elimination ... when we were held to a 1-1 draw in our home match against Angola. We had already lost to them away in Luanda, having fielded an under-strength team because we thought they were "minnows" who wouldn't give us any trouble. Suddenly we realized head-to-head was the first tie-breaker, and that our usual surge of heroic victories in the final matches of every series of qualifiers (which happens every time we find ourselves staring elimination in the face) would not be enough to overcome Angola. Even if we won every match (which we did), and by high margins (which we did, 2-5 over Algeria, and 5-0 over Zimbabwe) the Angolans would hold the head-to-head advantage unless SOMEONE beat them, and no one did.
This is what happens when you lose control of your fate. You end up watching matches you have no influence on, and hoping teams that have no motivation (since they are already out) would do you a favour.
For a team like the Eagles that perennially walks a tight-rope in World Cup qualifying, seemingly innocuous match results can (and have) come back to bite us in the end.
It is not a new phenomenon. In the 3-team final stage of qualifying for the 1978 World Cup, Nigeria finished with 3 points, behind Egypt (4 points); Tunisia went to their first World Cup having finished with 5 points.. The heart-breaking thing is we lost our HOME MATCH in Lagos against Tunisia; that one result would have given us 5 points, and left them on 3 points, sending us to the World Cup. Did I mention we were AT HOME?
Fast forward twelve years, and there was dissent in our camp ahead of our 1990 World Cup qualifier away against Gabon; a couple of players ultimately to boycotted the match. We lost 2-1 in Libreville to the Gabonese. I recognize that no team wins all of its matches, and I am in no way disrespecting Gabon's 1990 squad, but it is this sort of away match that ends up deciding your fate. Had we somehow pulled out a victory in Libreville, our final match against mega-rivals Cameroun, away in Yaounde, would have been irrelevant. As it stood, before kickoff in Yaounde, Cameroun would qualify with a win, and Nigeria would have qualified with a draw; after a brusing, vicious encounter (one Nigerian player rushed to hospital, a couple more Nigerians left bleeding) Cameroun had won a ticket to Italia'90 at our expense. They used that ticket well, going on a Cinderella run to the quarterfinals.
Again, I recognize the fact that no team wins always, but too often we have dropped points and acted like it didn't really matter because it was just one match, only to find that it mattered more than we thought.
I hope we don't end up looking back at this weekend's 2010 qualifier against Mozambique, wondering what might have been with two extra points. Our principal rivals this time are Tunisia, seasoned campaigners who know how to grind out the results necessary to get into the World Cup. In fact, with four appearances, they are Africa's second-most frequent World Cup representatives (behind only five-appearance Cameroun). Unlike Guinea or Liberia or even Angola, the Tunisians will not do us any favours. And while we were lucky to escape Maputo with a draw, the Tunisians ground out 3 vital away points in Nairobi against Kenya. If they get another three away points in Maputo later this year, while we content ourselves with another draw in our upcoming match in Nairobi, qualification could get a little complicated.
Last weekend's result in Maputo means two potentially crucial points dropped, and given our history in the qualifiers (and the fact that the Mambas had two goals called off) we need to be really worried. True, the Eagles have declined in recent years and are no longer the dominant force we used to be. True, second- and third-tier teams in Africa have dramatically improved of recent, with Senegal making the 2002 World Cup, Togo and Angola making it in 2006, not to mention the slew of upsets and shocks in the first weekend of final qualifying for the 2010 World Cup. And true, the final phase of qualifying will be tougher than the first phase where we won 6 matches out of 6 against weaker teams.
But once we recognize and acknowledge your limitations and obstacles, we should not run or hide from them, or use them as an excuse not to try harder. If we want a place in South Africa in 2010, we are going to have to work incredibly hard to get it. In fact, we have to take a page out of the book of the Tunisians, and learn how to use hard work, tactics and team ethic to make up for a lack of stars -- because we don't have superstars anymore. We have got to study our opponents in excruciating detail, and figure out simple but effective strategies to grind out 3-point results from here to the final match-day. Let us not do the usual thing of waiting until elimination creeps up on us, only to post a run of heroic results while praying that some other team does us a favour.
The priority in Nigerian football right now is to qualify for the World Cup. The upcoming Under-21 and Under-17 World Championships are NOT IMPORTANT. Heck, if there is any player currently on a youth team who could add some extra effectiveness to the senior side, draft him immediately.
Up Eagles! Up Nigeria!
17 March, 2009
African Politics
A month and a week ago I posted an essay on the resignation of Madagascar's then-Minister of Defence, Cecile Manorohanta. The lady (a hero in my book) resigned because she could not continue to serve a government that deployed soldiers to shoot civilian protestors. As Minister of Defence, she felt the burden of responsibility for the shooting, though then-President, Marc Ravalomanana, must have over-ridden her objections in cabinet.
Well, it is five weeks later, and the army has turned against Marc Ravalomanana, ending his presidence. As I type this, it is uncertain if power will be handed over to Ravalomanana's main civilian political opponent, Andriy Rajoelina the erstwhile Mayor of Madagascar, or if power will go to a consortium of generals (with ex-President Didier Ratsiraka's hand guiding in the background).
But I am not really interested in who gets power in Madagascar now. In fact this post is more or less about the irrelevance of that decision.
When power changes hands between political parties or political factions anywhere in the world, the countries in question generally do not change substantially. Whether it switches back and forth between two political parties via "elections", or moves in a less orderly fashion between factions in non-democratic or semi-democratic states, the social, political and economic nature of the country generally stays the same, and its foreign policy positions and alliances do not change much either.
Once in a while there is a real break with the past. The late Deng Xiaopping masterminded one such historic break in China, changing the direction of a prior such break led by the late Mao Tse Tung. But after these rare breaks with tradition, the affected countries usually settle once more into the usual steady-state pattern of governments changing top leadership without substantial effect.
Nigeria and Africa desperately need a break-with-the-past moment that will set us on the road towards the destination we seek. But we are trapped in this endless cycle of power changing hands within an unchanged social, political and economic context. Western Europe, North America and Japan can afford to continue going back and forth like a pendulum between politicians who are exactly the same (or maybe not), but Africa cannot.
But Nigeria (and Africa) cannot get the watershed change we need from our political system, because even in our (psuedo)democracies, the "government" and "opposition" are two fingers off the same hand. For all the violence in Kenya after the vote, there is really little different between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki; one might even argue that the ethnic colouration to Kenyan (and African) politics is driven by the politicians' need to create some kind of differentiation where none exists. In Somalia where everyone speaks the same language and has the same religion, they resort to clan identity. None of them can convincingly argue that he is better than his foes on any issue of actual importance, so they tell you that they speak your language and worship like you, and the other guy doesn't. And this is politics.
Even where the ethnic card is not played, change is elusive. Look again at Madagascar. Only a few years ago, Marc Ravalomanana was a firebrand Mayor of Antananarivo, leading protests against the autocracy of then-President Didier Ratsiraka. Today, just a few years later, Andriy Rajoelina is the firebrand Mayor of Antananarivo, leading protests against the autocracy of Marc Ravalomanana. I bet five years from now, the process will repeat itself.
I intend to write more about this in the future.
For now, I watch Madagascar to see what will happen next.
Well, it is five weeks later, and the army has turned against Marc Ravalomanana, ending his presidence. As I type this, it is uncertain if power will be handed over to Ravalomanana's main civilian political opponent, Andriy Rajoelina the erstwhile Mayor of Madagascar, or if power will go to a consortium of generals (with ex-President Didier Ratsiraka's hand guiding in the background).
But I am not really interested in who gets power in Madagascar now. In fact this post is more or less about the irrelevance of that decision.
When power changes hands between political parties or political factions anywhere in the world, the countries in question generally do not change substantially. Whether it switches back and forth between two political parties via "elections", or moves in a less orderly fashion between factions in non-democratic or semi-democratic states, the social, political and economic nature of the country generally stays the same, and its foreign policy positions and alliances do not change much either.
Once in a while there is a real break with the past. The late Deng Xiaopping masterminded one such historic break in China, changing the direction of a prior such break led by the late Mao Tse Tung. But after these rare breaks with tradition, the affected countries usually settle once more into the usual steady-state pattern of governments changing top leadership without substantial effect.
Nigeria and Africa desperately need a break-with-the-past moment that will set us on the road towards the destination we seek. But we are trapped in this endless cycle of power changing hands within an unchanged social, political and economic context. Western Europe, North America and Japan can afford to continue going back and forth like a pendulum between politicians who are exactly the same (or maybe not), but Africa cannot.
But Nigeria (and Africa) cannot get the watershed change we need from our political system, because even in our (psuedo)democracies, the "government" and "opposition" are two fingers off the same hand. For all the violence in Kenya after the vote, there is really little different between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki; one might even argue that the ethnic colouration to Kenyan (and African) politics is driven by the politicians' need to create some kind of differentiation where none exists. In Somalia where everyone speaks the same language and has the same religion, they resort to clan identity. None of them can convincingly argue that he is better than his foes on any issue of actual importance, so they tell you that they speak your language and worship like you, and the other guy doesn't. And this is politics.
Even where the ethnic card is not played, change is elusive. Look again at Madagascar. Only a few years ago, Marc Ravalomanana was a firebrand Mayor of Antananarivo, leading protests against the autocracy of then-President Didier Ratsiraka. Today, just a few years later, Andriy Rajoelina is the firebrand Mayor of Antananarivo, leading protests against the autocracy of Marc Ravalomanana. I bet five years from now, the process will repeat itself.
I intend to write more about this in the future.
For now, I watch Madagascar to see what will happen next.
14 March, 2009
Football & Sports - Unite Naija-born & Diaspora-born talent
The Nigerian Football Federation has asked Eagles’ Manager Amodu Shuaibu to fly to Italy to try to persuade Angelo Ogbonna Obinze to pledge his international future to Nigeria.
Obinze is 20, plays left-back, centre-back and defensive-midfield, versatility that could prove useful to a manager facing an injury crisis, or put in a position where he must make forced substitutions. Obinze is eligible to play for Nigeria or Italy. I do not think he has represented Italy at the youth level; and if he has, he is allowed to switch his allegiance once until his 21st birthday this May. We have nothing to lose and a lot to potentially gain by convincing Obinze to commit to the Eagles.
We do not have to “cap” Obinze to tie him to the Eagles. According to FIFA’s statutes, a player wishing to switch nationality need only officially communicate this decision to the appropriate FIFA committee. The committee evaluates his declaration to ensure he is still eligible (i.e. before 21st birthday, and possessed both citizenships from the start), and then approves (or not). I do not think Obinze has played for Italy at the youth level, so we have no FIFA hoops to jump through. He need only pledge his future to Nigeria, and we are good to go.
Uwa Elderson Echiejile (Junior Eagles, Canada’07), Chibuzor Okonkwo (Olympic Eagles, Beijing’08) and Matthew Edile (Eaglets, Togo’07, Korea’07, Junior Eagles, Rwanda’09) featured for our youth teams at left-back in recent years. Like Obinze, they are young players, and it is anyone’s guess which one will be the second-best Nigerian left-back when they are all in their mid-20s. Obinze (Serie A) and Echiejile (Ligue 1) are playing at a higher level than the other two, but the Eagles currently have no substantive back-up for Taiye Taiwo (and his accurate cannon of a shot might be a bigger goal threat if he was playing in the midfield, where he ends up most of the time anyway).
Except for truly exceptional super-talents, it is difficult to tell which cadet footballers will become superstars, which ones will become solid-but-otherwise-average professionals, and which one will fail to make it to the professional ranks. Humans mature physically at different rates, and the x-factor of footballing talent also matures at different rates; dominating youth-level ball with physicality and/or raw talent does not guarantee the advantage will be retained at the senior level. Unscrupulous agents, desperate players and negligent law-enforcement add off-the-field issues to consider when pondering the career trajectory of cadet players. Ultimately, no one can claim to know which cadet will be the best at his field position several years in the future. We cannot even pretend to know when we will need to rest or retire players who currently occupy senior national team positions.
To ensure the highest probability of having 22 high-quality players for the Eagles to call on, Nigeria must have access to the widest possible pool of POTENTIAL talent. Contrary to myth, we are not so “abundantly blessed with talent” that we do not need to widen our nets to catch more fish. I have the utmost respect for every player who has donned the Eagles’ jersey – I wish I was good enough – but the truth is we have had quite a few “average” players in our national team. It is one of the most important reasons for our continuous fifteen-year decline since 1994; good players retired or lost form year-after-year, and there was no one of comparable quality to replace them.
Nigeria-born talent is the rock on which football and wider sporting glory must be built. The majority of our citizenry is Nigeria-based, and we will not know true sporting success until our domestic talent-development institutions produce sprinters who can beat the Americans and Caribbeans to Olympic gold, to use one example. We have no top tennis players and are absent from the upper ranks of most sports other than football – and we now outsource the development of our best young Nigeria-born footballers to European clubs, applauding as they leave our shores at ever-younger ages.
We must nevertheless expand our nets to draw in the best Diaspora-born athletes. These sportsmen and women have dual citizenship, and could choose to represent their “other” country. It is our job to do everything in our power to convince them to choose Nigeria. Francis Obikwelu was Nigeria-born, but we let him go, and he went on to win an Olympic silver medal for Portugal; he is a reminder that it is foolish to let good people go, on the false, self-deluding assumption that we have so much talent we will never need them. A related idea, that we are too big to “beg” anybody, must also be discarded. Attracting the best Nigeria-eligible athletes is not about “begging” anyone, but about creating an attractive environment for both Nigeria-born and Diaspora-born sportsmen, giving them the best chance to win for themselves, and for Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the Nigerian Football Federation is engaged in the usual rudimentary, ad hoc, unplanned, disorganized, “fire brigade” activity. Someone, somewhere learned of Obinze (probably by watching Supersport one weekend), and subsequently the NFF orders the Eagles’ manager to go convince one specific player to pledge for Nigeria.
This random approach will never achieve optimal results. We must be systemic and holistic, not random and ad hoc. Rather than chase a single player, as if he was the messiah, we should set up a continuous programme with dedicated staff to spread our nets and capture as many Diaspora-born potentials as we can convince to make the commitment.
Do not misunderstand me. Diaspora-born players are NOT inherently better than their Nigeria-born counterparts, the best of them can be more suited to the playing style of their “other” country than they are to Nigeria (e.g. Gabriel Agbonlahor), and Nigeria-born players will remain the principal source of the national team’s talent pool. Half-hearted, unserious efforts to woo Diaspora-born players like Patrick Owomoyela, Dennis Aogo, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Chinedu Ede came to naught (I am still trying to forget the opportunists Alen Orman and Michael Lamey). Of these players, Aogo is probably the only real loss, and only because he’d have made a good back-up for Taiwo.
We did not have to do any work to win the allegiance of the dual citizens who opted for Nigeria, men like Osaze Odemwingie, Efan Ekoku, George Abbey, Victor Anichebe and Reuben Agboola. Significantly, this list includes players who spent some or all of their childhood or youth in Nigeria. It also includes players who would not have made it onto the roster of their “other” country. And it includes Osaze Odemwingie, a talented, intelligent, hard-worker under-rated by managers and fans, and played out of position. Odemwingie won his first senior cap at age 23, having never played for any of our youth teams; none of our youth team managers thought he would grow up to become a senior team mainstay, which is the crux of my point. We can afford to “wait and see” with Nigeria-born players, but with dual citizens, by the time we discover we really need a particular player, it may be too late.
Some Nigerian Diaspora parents feel a sense of achievement related to their kids being more American than the Americans or more British than the British. Self-consciously they insist it is impossible to raise a Diaspora child to consider himself or herself a Nigerian (which is not true). It would be difficult to convince a young athlete with a background like this to choose Nigeria unless he or she had no chance at the other countries’ team.
There are also many Nigerian parents abroad who do teach their children about their Nigerian heritage. These parents would be immensely proud to see their child win a major event in the colours of their homeland. All Nigerian men grow up idolizing the Eagles, wishing we could be good enough to play in the Eagles’ jersey. These men become fathers who could help us persuade their talented sons to make themselves available for Eagles’ selection. All parties should understand that being available for selection does not mean guaranteed selection, starting shirt, or place on the bench.
It would take time (and resources) to set up a programme designed to draw as many Diaspora-born athletes, in every sport not just football, to the Nigerian flag. For the time being, the Nigerian Football Federation should expand the “invitation” beyond Obinze.
19-year-old Stefano Chuka Okaka is a big man with excellent technique. He can play with his back to goal, hold up the ball, keep possession and set up team-mates (the role Kanu holds today) and can make powerful runs taking the ball from midfield to the 18-yard box (as Yekini and Amokachi did). At age 16 he debuted in the UEFA Cup for Roma, an Italian record, and scored his first goal against Napoli in the Coppa.
18-year-old Funso Ojo has cracked the first team squad at PSV Eindhoven. He can play anywhere in the midfield or on the defence line. Call me a biased fan, but I think any player has a better chance of winning international trophies with the Eagles than with Belgium, so he may be easier to convince than Stefano Okaka.
22-year-old goalkeeper Carl Ikeme of Wolverhampton Wanderers fought his way to the starting assignment before injury struck. The English “Championship” is really the second division, but is arguably stronger than the French second division where Austin Ejide is second-choice (behind Magno Novaes) at SC Bastia, and is definitely stronger than the Israeli first division where Vincent Enyeama starts for Hapoel Tel Aviv. I am NOT saying Ikeme is a better keeper than Ejide or Enyeama; the Eagles’ current numbers one and two are the “standard” and I suggest only that Ikeme meets the standard. Wolves are favourites to win automatic promotion to the Premier League (Bastia is mid-table), and Wayne Hennessy (a future England international and Ikeme’s competition) is likely to be sold to a bigger club.
We have quite a few promising Nigeria-born players coming through the ranks or in the team right now. John Micheal “Mikel” Obi’s was impressive for Chelsea in the away leg against Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. Taiye Taiwo would have it at least to the bench of either of the great Eagles teams (late-70s-to-1980, and 1988-to-2000), and Joseph Yobo is solid. I expect big things from Rabiu Ibrahim and Solomon Okoronkwo.
But we must make sure our “pool” is an ocean, and draw in as many Nigeria-eligible players as possible.
Obinze is 20, plays left-back, centre-back and defensive-midfield, versatility that could prove useful to a manager facing an injury crisis, or put in a position where he must make forced substitutions. Obinze is eligible to play for Nigeria or Italy. I do not think he has represented Italy at the youth level; and if he has, he is allowed to switch his allegiance once until his 21st birthday this May. We have nothing to lose and a lot to potentially gain by convincing Obinze to commit to the Eagles.
We do not have to “cap” Obinze to tie him to the Eagles. According to FIFA’s statutes, a player wishing to switch nationality need only officially communicate this decision to the appropriate FIFA committee. The committee evaluates his declaration to ensure he is still eligible (i.e. before 21st birthday, and possessed both citizenships from the start), and then approves (or not). I do not think Obinze has played for Italy at the youth level, so we have no FIFA hoops to jump through. He need only pledge his future to Nigeria, and we are good to go.
Uwa Elderson Echiejile (Junior Eagles, Canada’07), Chibuzor Okonkwo (Olympic Eagles, Beijing’08) and Matthew Edile (Eaglets, Togo’07, Korea’07, Junior Eagles, Rwanda’09) featured for our youth teams at left-back in recent years. Like Obinze, they are young players, and it is anyone’s guess which one will be the second-best Nigerian left-back when they are all in their mid-20s. Obinze (Serie A) and Echiejile (Ligue 1) are playing at a higher level than the other two, but the Eagles currently have no substantive back-up for Taiye Taiwo (and his accurate cannon of a shot might be a bigger goal threat if he was playing in the midfield, where he ends up most of the time anyway).
Except for truly exceptional super-talents, it is difficult to tell which cadet footballers will become superstars, which ones will become solid-but-otherwise-average professionals, and which one will fail to make it to the professional ranks. Humans mature physically at different rates, and the x-factor of footballing talent also matures at different rates; dominating youth-level ball with physicality and/or raw talent does not guarantee the advantage will be retained at the senior level. Unscrupulous agents, desperate players and negligent law-enforcement add off-the-field issues to consider when pondering the career trajectory of cadet players. Ultimately, no one can claim to know which cadet will be the best at his field position several years in the future. We cannot even pretend to know when we will need to rest or retire players who currently occupy senior national team positions.
To ensure the highest probability of having 22 high-quality players for the Eagles to call on, Nigeria must have access to the widest possible pool of POTENTIAL talent. Contrary to myth, we are not so “abundantly blessed with talent” that we do not need to widen our nets to catch more fish. I have the utmost respect for every player who has donned the Eagles’ jersey – I wish I was good enough – but the truth is we have had quite a few “average” players in our national team. It is one of the most important reasons for our continuous fifteen-year decline since 1994; good players retired or lost form year-after-year, and there was no one of comparable quality to replace them.
Nigeria-born talent is the rock on which football and wider sporting glory must be built. The majority of our citizenry is Nigeria-based, and we will not know true sporting success until our domestic talent-development institutions produce sprinters who can beat the Americans and Caribbeans to Olympic gold, to use one example. We have no top tennis players and are absent from the upper ranks of most sports other than football – and we now outsource the development of our best young Nigeria-born footballers to European clubs, applauding as they leave our shores at ever-younger ages.
We must nevertheless expand our nets to draw in the best Diaspora-born athletes. These sportsmen and women have dual citizenship, and could choose to represent their “other” country. It is our job to do everything in our power to convince them to choose Nigeria. Francis Obikwelu was Nigeria-born, but we let him go, and he went on to win an Olympic silver medal for Portugal; he is a reminder that it is foolish to let good people go, on the false, self-deluding assumption that we have so much talent we will never need them. A related idea, that we are too big to “beg” anybody, must also be discarded. Attracting the best Nigeria-eligible athletes is not about “begging” anyone, but about creating an attractive environment for both Nigeria-born and Diaspora-born sportsmen, giving them the best chance to win for themselves, and for Nigeria.
Unfortunately, the Nigerian Football Federation is engaged in the usual rudimentary, ad hoc, unplanned, disorganized, “fire brigade” activity. Someone, somewhere learned of Obinze (probably by watching Supersport one weekend), and subsequently the NFF orders the Eagles’ manager to go convince one specific player to pledge for Nigeria.
This random approach will never achieve optimal results. We must be systemic and holistic, not random and ad hoc. Rather than chase a single player, as if he was the messiah, we should set up a continuous programme with dedicated staff to spread our nets and capture as many Diaspora-born potentials as we can convince to make the commitment.
Do not misunderstand me. Diaspora-born players are NOT inherently better than their Nigeria-born counterparts, the best of them can be more suited to the playing style of their “other” country than they are to Nigeria (e.g. Gabriel Agbonlahor), and Nigeria-born players will remain the principal source of the national team’s talent pool. Half-hearted, unserious efforts to woo Diaspora-born players like Patrick Owomoyela, Dennis Aogo, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Chinedu Ede came to naught (I am still trying to forget the opportunists Alen Orman and Michael Lamey). Of these players, Aogo is probably the only real loss, and only because he’d have made a good back-up for Taiwo.
We did not have to do any work to win the allegiance of the dual citizens who opted for Nigeria, men like Osaze Odemwingie, Efan Ekoku, George Abbey, Victor Anichebe and Reuben Agboola. Significantly, this list includes players who spent some or all of their childhood or youth in Nigeria. It also includes players who would not have made it onto the roster of their “other” country. And it includes Osaze Odemwingie, a talented, intelligent, hard-worker under-rated by managers and fans, and played out of position. Odemwingie won his first senior cap at age 23, having never played for any of our youth teams; none of our youth team managers thought he would grow up to become a senior team mainstay, which is the crux of my point. We can afford to “wait and see” with Nigeria-born players, but with dual citizens, by the time we discover we really need a particular player, it may be too late.
Some Nigerian Diaspora parents feel a sense of achievement related to their kids being more American than the Americans or more British than the British. Self-consciously they insist it is impossible to raise a Diaspora child to consider himself or herself a Nigerian (which is not true). It would be difficult to convince a young athlete with a background like this to choose Nigeria unless he or she had no chance at the other countries’ team.
There are also many Nigerian parents abroad who do teach their children about their Nigerian heritage. These parents would be immensely proud to see their child win a major event in the colours of their homeland. All Nigerian men grow up idolizing the Eagles, wishing we could be good enough to play in the Eagles’ jersey. These men become fathers who could help us persuade their talented sons to make themselves available for Eagles’ selection. All parties should understand that being available for selection does not mean guaranteed selection, starting shirt, or place on the bench.
It would take time (and resources) to set up a programme designed to draw as many Diaspora-born athletes, in every sport not just football, to the Nigerian flag. For the time being, the Nigerian Football Federation should expand the “invitation” beyond Obinze.
19-year-old Stefano Chuka Okaka is a big man with excellent technique. He can play with his back to goal, hold up the ball, keep possession and set up team-mates (the role Kanu holds today) and can make powerful runs taking the ball from midfield to the 18-yard box (as Yekini and Amokachi did). At age 16 he debuted in the UEFA Cup for Roma, an Italian record, and scored his first goal against Napoli in the Coppa.
18-year-old Funso Ojo has cracked the first team squad at PSV Eindhoven. He can play anywhere in the midfield or on the defence line. Call me a biased fan, but I think any player has a better chance of winning international trophies with the Eagles than with Belgium, so he may be easier to convince than Stefano Okaka.
22-year-old goalkeeper Carl Ikeme of Wolverhampton Wanderers fought his way to the starting assignment before injury struck. The English “Championship” is really the second division, but is arguably stronger than the French second division where Austin Ejide is second-choice (behind Magno Novaes) at SC Bastia, and is definitely stronger than the Israeli first division where Vincent Enyeama starts for Hapoel Tel Aviv. I am NOT saying Ikeme is a better keeper than Ejide or Enyeama; the Eagles’ current numbers one and two are the “standard” and I suggest only that Ikeme meets the standard. Wolves are favourites to win automatic promotion to the Premier League (Bastia is mid-table), and Wayne Hennessy (a future England international and Ikeme’s competition) is likely to be sold to a bigger club.
We have quite a few promising Nigeria-born players coming through the ranks or in the team right now. John Micheal “Mikel” Obi’s was impressive for Chelsea in the away leg against Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. Taiye Taiwo would have it at least to the bench of either of the great Eagles teams (late-70s-to-1980, and 1988-to-2000), and Joseph Yobo is solid. I expect big things from Rabiu Ibrahim and Solomon Okoronkwo.
But we must make sure our “pool” is an ocean, and draw in as many Nigeria-eligible players as possible.
05 March, 2009
Violence in Bauchi, Violence in Nigeria
Communal violence in various forms is a sadly regular occurrence in Nigeria. On the weekend of February 21-22, there was an outbreak in Bauchi, resulting in the deaths of at least 11 citizens.
As usual we focused on the ethnic and religious differences, forgetting that this form of needless, senseless murder happens WITHIN socio-cultural groups and geographic regions as well as BETWEEN them. At least eighteen citizens were killed in 2008 violence between the Ezillo and the Ezza, two Christian and Igbo-speaking communities in Ebonyi State. The “war” between Ezza and Ezillo mirrored the clash years ago between Ife and Modakeke – the “indigene” and “settler” issue that gains more urgency as populations grow, opportunities dwindle, and land supply remains constant.
But communal violence also emerges from the silliest of issues, like the 13 football fans murdered execution-style as part of a rivalry between two cults, the “Highlanders” and the “Greenlanders” in Yenegoa, the Bayelsa State capital.
Violence in Nigeria only gets banner media headlines if there is a juicy ethnic or religious angle to it, and the basic underlying issue of pervasive public insecurity gets little or no substantive attention in our political discourse. We talk about it a lot, but not in any kind of way that leads to any kind of resolution. Communal violence has become a “dog bite man” story. Incident after incident, we shrug our shoulders and carry on, with zero hope of change, zero belief in our political and societal leadership and zero expectations from ourselves.
With so much experience of this needless, senseless killing, Nigeria’s institutions of governance should long since have created or adapted systems to deal with the scourge, yet we still have no substantive intelligence network, no early-warning capability, no undercover agents embedded in radical organizations and no rapid-response mechanism either to stem outbreaks or to deal with the humanitarian problems in the aftermath. Most importantly, we have no leaders willing and able to step up and end this ceaseless era of “communal violence” – nor have we had any such leaders in the past.
We all pay the price for this. A super-majority of Nigerians have never lifted a hand of violence against our neighbours, and never would, but we nevertheless live in a country where the statistically insignificant violent few have had (and still have) a greater effect on socio-politics than the rest of us. We effectively allow them to shape the agenda, and the consequent weakness in our federal union makes it near impossible to join our strengths in common developmental cause.
Our political and societal leaders have proven uninterested in leading a charge against communal strife. There are too many reasons for this, more than can be adequately addressed in this post, so I’ll focus on three that important ones.
Firstly, communal violence does not affect their strategic interests. No politician or militician, no police commander or religious leader, no intelligence officer or traditional ruler has ever lost their job because of a failure to stop communal violence. It has no negative impact on their legal and illegal wealth accumulation, poses no difficulty to on their manoeuvring for political power, position and influence, and their properties, possessions and relatives are under no threat. Honestly, if telephony was something well-to-do persons could do for themselves (like boreholes, generators and flying abroad for medical care) we would not have GSM phones. Our leaders do not fundamentally care about communal violence, whatever rhetoric they spew. The only way violence in Nigeria affects them is through assassination or execution following failed coups-de-tat. You might think this would lead to more interest in law enforcement and public security, but our leaders prefer lawlessness; it allows them to do illegal, unconstitutional and unethical things without facing sanction. They can assassinate each other, beat up each other’s supporters, jail each other, use institutions of state (like the EFCC) as personal weapons against each other, or do anything else they want with no fear of repercussion.
Secondly, at a certain level communal violence is “beneficial” to the interests of our political, societal and even religious leadership. From the pre-Independence struggles of the1950s, to the smuggling-cum-insurgency in the 21st century Niger-Delta, the first rule of Nigerian politics has always been to position yourself as the defender of “your people” against the supposed desire of the rest of Nigeria to dominate or marginalize them. If it isn’t “they want to destroy us”, it is “they blame us and will seek revenge if we let them get power”. Our mode of politics creates violence, perpetuates violence, and tends to create leaders who have no vested interest in stopping violence, as the continuing existence of violence serves as continuing “proof” of the leaders’ indispensability.
Finally, the “solution” to communal violence lies in doing many things that singly and collectively run contrary to the interests of our political and societal leadership. Creating any kind of social contract that ends the pervasive mutual-distrust of the Nigerian citizenry and binds the teeming millions of federal republic to a common developmental purpose would mean an end to the style of leadership that has dominated our land before, during, and after colonialism.
The sad part is our religious leaders are just as guilty of this. They are more scared of losing their respective flocks to other religions than they are of living in a land that does not function in any way reflective of the principles of Islam, Christianity or any modernized version of our Traditional faiths. They could have used their spiritual bully pulpits to galvanize a united public into fighting for positive developmental change; in fact they should have done this decades ago – had they done so, our country could have been so much closer to its true potential today. But no, they have invested their energies in demonizing fellow citizens who happen to worship the same Almighty in a different way. Nigeria is ranked as the world’s most religious country, yet a massive fraud like the 2007 elections can just happen in broad daylight, with no discernible reaction from the alleged moral majority. Healthcare is bad. Education is bad. Electricity is bad. Where is our belief? Our faith? Our moral stance? I forgot, we are using it for communal violence. We have born-again Presidents and pro-Shariah governors who are about as trustworthy as “419” conmen.
It is OUR fault as citizens. We know better. Do not pretend for one second that we do not know better. We do. All of us do, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
We take the easy route and point fingers of blame at entire ethno-cultural and religious communities, rather than face the difficult task of dealing with the core issues underlying our shared insecurity. Dangerously we are prone to reprisals, in thought (firmly held hatreds) or in deed (revenge attacks), directed at anyone who shares a language or religion with perpetrators of violence – a mode of response that creates previously non-existent bonds of mutual-defence between the statistically negligible guilty few, and the tens of millions of innocent people who had nothing to do with the planning and execution of violence.
We the people know this rigmarole is crap. We know the cycle of mutual-fear, mutual-distrust, and incessant communal violence is killing the potential dividends of federal republic.
None of us are safe. None of us are getting the public goods we deserve from our institutions of state. None of us are safe or secure. Frustration about today and uncertainty about tomorrow are unnecessarily high across the land.
These acts of violence are not signs of strength. They are signs of weakness and fear, acts of men who have little or nothing, and are scared that someone else will take what little they do have. It is why “indigenes”, whose only asset in this world is their ancestral land, strike at “settlers” they think are taking the land. It is why herdsmen (cattle is all they have) and farmers (their crops are all they have) clash. It is why religious leaders keep their followers aggressively primed against perceived encroachment by other faiths.
It is not necessary. It is simply not necessary. We can change it, but not until we the people get over our mutual distrust, and mutual fear.
Believe it or not, we are in this together. We will rise together or we will continue to languish together. The choice is ours.
As usual we focused on the ethnic and religious differences, forgetting that this form of needless, senseless murder happens WITHIN socio-cultural groups and geographic regions as well as BETWEEN them. At least eighteen citizens were killed in 2008 violence between the Ezillo and the Ezza, two Christian and Igbo-speaking communities in Ebonyi State. The “war” between Ezza and Ezillo mirrored the clash years ago between Ife and Modakeke – the “indigene” and “settler” issue that gains more urgency as populations grow, opportunities dwindle, and land supply remains constant.
But communal violence also emerges from the silliest of issues, like the 13 football fans murdered execution-style as part of a rivalry between two cults, the “Highlanders” and the “Greenlanders” in Yenegoa, the Bayelsa State capital.
Violence in Nigeria only gets banner media headlines if there is a juicy ethnic or religious angle to it, and the basic underlying issue of pervasive public insecurity gets little or no substantive attention in our political discourse. We talk about it a lot, but not in any kind of way that leads to any kind of resolution. Communal violence has become a “dog bite man” story. Incident after incident, we shrug our shoulders and carry on, with zero hope of change, zero belief in our political and societal leadership and zero expectations from ourselves.
With so much experience of this needless, senseless killing, Nigeria’s institutions of governance should long since have created or adapted systems to deal with the scourge, yet we still have no substantive intelligence network, no early-warning capability, no undercover agents embedded in radical organizations and no rapid-response mechanism either to stem outbreaks or to deal with the humanitarian problems in the aftermath. Most importantly, we have no leaders willing and able to step up and end this ceaseless era of “communal violence” – nor have we had any such leaders in the past.
We all pay the price for this. A super-majority of Nigerians have never lifted a hand of violence against our neighbours, and never would, but we nevertheless live in a country where the statistically insignificant violent few have had (and still have) a greater effect on socio-politics than the rest of us. We effectively allow them to shape the agenda, and the consequent weakness in our federal union makes it near impossible to join our strengths in common developmental cause.
Our political and societal leaders have proven uninterested in leading a charge against communal strife. There are too many reasons for this, more than can be adequately addressed in this post, so I’ll focus on three that important ones.
Firstly, communal violence does not affect their strategic interests. No politician or militician, no police commander or religious leader, no intelligence officer or traditional ruler has ever lost their job because of a failure to stop communal violence. It has no negative impact on their legal and illegal wealth accumulation, poses no difficulty to on their manoeuvring for political power, position and influence, and their properties, possessions and relatives are under no threat. Honestly, if telephony was something well-to-do persons could do for themselves (like boreholes, generators and flying abroad for medical care) we would not have GSM phones. Our leaders do not fundamentally care about communal violence, whatever rhetoric they spew. The only way violence in Nigeria affects them is through assassination or execution following failed coups-de-tat. You might think this would lead to more interest in law enforcement and public security, but our leaders prefer lawlessness; it allows them to do illegal, unconstitutional and unethical things without facing sanction. They can assassinate each other, beat up each other’s supporters, jail each other, use institutions of state (like the EFCC) as personal weapons against each other, or do anything else they want with no fear of repercussion.
Secondly, at a certain level communal violence is “beneficial” to the interests of our political, societal and even religious leadership. From the pre-Independence struggles of the1950s, to the smuggling-cum-insurgency in the 21st century Niger-Delta, the first rule of Nigerian politics has always been to position yourself as the defender of “your people” against the supposed desire of the rest of Nigeria to dominate or marginalize them. If it isn’t “they want to destroy us”, it is “they blame us and will seek revenge if we let them get power”. Our mode of politics creates violence, perpetuates violence, and tends to create leaders who have no vested interest in stopping violence, as the continuing existence of violence serves as continuing “proof” of the leaders’ indispensability.
Finally, the “solution” to communal violence lies in doing many things that singly and collectively run contrary to the interests of our political and societal leadership. Creating any kind of social contract that ends the pervasive mutual-distrust of the Nigerian citizenry and binds the teeming millions of federal republic to a common developmental purpose would mean an end to the style of leadership that has dominated our land before, during, and after colonialism.
The sad part is our religious leaders are just as guilty of this. They are more scared of losing their respective flocks to other religions than they are of living in a land that does not function in any way reflective of the principles of Islam, Christianity or any modernized version of our Traditional faiths. They could have used their spiritual bully pulpits to galvanize a united public into fighting for positive developmental change; in fact they should have done this decades ago – had they done so, our country could have been so much closer to its true potential today. But no, they have invested their energies in demonizing fellow citizens who happen to worship the same Almighty in a different way. Nigeria is ranked as the world’s most religious country, yet a massive fraud like the 2007 elections can just happen in broad daylight, with no discernible reaction from the alleged moral majority. Healthcare is bad. Education is bad. Electricity is bad. Where is our belief? Our faith? Our moral stance? I forgot, we are using it for communal violence. We have born-again Presidents and pro-Shariah governors who are about as trustworthy as “419” conmen.
It is OUR fault as citizens. We know better. Do not pretend for one second that we do not know better. We do. All of us do, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
We take the easy route and point fingers of blame at entire ethno-cultural and religious communities, rather than face the difficult task of dealing with the core issues underlying our shared insecurity. Dangerously we are prone to reprisals, in thought (firmly held hatreds) or in deed (revenge attacks), directed at anyone who shares a language or religion with perpetrators of violence – a mode of response that creates previously non-existent bonds of mutual-defence between the statistically negligible guilty few, and the tens of millions of innocent people who had nothing to do with the planning and execution of violence.
We the people know this rigmarole is crap. We know the cycle of mutual-fear, mutual-distrust, and incessant communal violence is killing the potential dividends of federal republic.
None of us are safe. None of us are getting the public goods we deserve from our institutions of state. None of us are safe or secure. Frustration about today and uncertainty about tomorrow are unnecessarily high across the land.
These acts of violence are not signs of strength. They are signs of weakness and fear, acts of men who have little or nothing, and are scared that someone else will take what little they do have. It is why “indigenes”, whose only asset in this world is their ancestral land, strike at “settlers” they think are taking the land. It is why herdsmen (cattle is all they have) and farmers (their crops are all they have) clash. It is why religious leaders keep their followers aggressively primed against perceived encroachment by other faiths.
It is not necessary. It is simply not necessary. We can change it, but not until we the people get over our mutual distrust, and mutual fear.
Believe it or not, we are in this together. We will rise together or we will continue to languish together. The choice is ours.
On Healthcare in Nigeria
I am saddened by the death of Mrs. Amuda Ajoke Bello (RIP). I pray her sweet soul rests with Him.
It is the fate of humanity to be born, to live and to die. People die in hospitals all over the world, every day, and no country has a perfect health system.
Still, World Health Organization statistics (pages 30 to 34) put Nigeria’s Maternal Mortality Rate at 1,100 per 100,000 live births in 2005. This rate translated to 59,000 maternal deaths in 2005, the second highest behind India’s 117,000 (from a lower MMR of 450).
It is valid to argue about the accuracy of ANY statistics from Nigeria, and apparently our first lady has disputed the MMR statistics for Nigeria that were reported by UNICEF. Then again, the fact that we still do not generate trustworthy statistics is itself indicative of the issues I am raising in this post.
So forget statistics for a moment. Let me talk about an issue I discovered a few years ago, the problem of obstetric fistula, an ailment you would not with on your worst enemy. The things you need to do to maximize the prevention of fistula are fairly easy and straightforward, and if it happens nonetheless, the surgery to correct it has a better than 90% success rate. The so-called “developed” countries essentially eliminated fistula by the end of the 19th century, over a hundred years ago, equipped with nothing more than 19th century medical knowledge and technology.
Apparently fistula (like meningitis and polio) has been a problem for a long time in some of our northern states – apparently thousands of women have been affected. I discovered the issue years ago when I stumbled on an article about a foreign doctor volunteering his services to treat our women for free. I monitored the news for signs of some effort, any effort at all on our part to deal with this – and was rewarded with news of polio spreading. In 2005, more foreign doctors came to Nigeria as part of a programme (the “Fistula Fortnight”) to offer free fistula surgery as well as free training to Nigerian doctors so they could do the surgeries too.
I am ashamed. Why does it have to take foreigners to tell us we are supposed to take care of our women? We could have trained doctors to do fistula surgery decades ago, or better yet, pushed for preventive measures so they don’t have to deal with the problem in the first place. But the fact is we don’t even talk about practical and important stuff like this, much less take action. Good God, we waste our time arguing about states’ creation, “marginalization” of “geo-political zones”, “resource control”, “power shift” and all sorts of meaningless rubbish, while, a simple health issue other countries wiped out in the 19th century is still a Nigerian scourge in the 21st century.
Our doctors and nurses are as good as any in the world; when they work abroad in the same enabling environment as their foreign peers, they excel too. Our secondary and tertiary science students, all of them potential doctors, are of equal intelligence as any students anywhere in the world; as I said, we could very easily have educated doctors to deal with fistulas or anything else, and given them a work environment where their training could change our mediocre W.H.O. statistics.
Unfortunately healthcare in Nigeria, though it attracts a lot of lip service, is good only for the opportunity to award contracts of dubious substantive benefit. Year after year our governors commission new hospitals and clinics they’ve built, but these same governors nevertheless fly abroad when they have any medical issue to address. Somewhere in this fact there is an unspoken truth about Nigeria, a truth about power stations that produce no electricity, refineries that produce no fuel, and police that enforce no laws. Government in Nigeria consists of little more than being hailed for awarding contracts for major projects, with nobody bothering to look beneath the surface to ask whether anything substantive has been accomplished even if the project is completed.
Ultimately, Nigerians, not just doctors, but industrialists, teachers, everyone has to work that much harder than their peers elsewhere in the world to achieve results of any kind, because the basic things we need to ease the path to success are still absent.
Only God knows how many wealthy and powerful Nigerians fly abroad for medical care – we only hear about it when something terrible happens. I do not begrudge any Nigerian doing the best they can for their family. If my father were to have any medical complaint, I would think about flying him abroad for medical care too. But I can’t. I don’t have the money for that. It scares me.
The wealthy and powerful, those who can actually influence government decisions and actions, have no pressing need to fix our healthcare system because they can access quality healthcare abroad. What are the rest of us supposed to do? What are our doctors and nurses supposed to do?
The family of the late Mrs Bello did not have the option of flying her abroad for medical treatment once they discovered she was carrying sextuplets (and that is assuming, or rather hoping, that ultra-sounds were done well before time, allowing her doctors to know she was carrying six beautiful babies). And it isn’t just a financial issue; one of my all-time favourite Nigerian football managers, Musa Abdullahi, was denied a visa to go to the United States for treatment . Coach Abdullahi did manage to go to Egypt and is back in Nigeria as I type this, but would life not be simpler for him, for me, for my father, for all of us if he and we could get the same quality of care in our own country? Even Nwankwo Kanu’s Heart Foundation has to go to extraordinary lengths to connect beneficiaries with care. This is not right.
We citizens are not given the proper opportunity to use our votes to set government spending priorities through elections. The late Mrs Bello was a mother and was one of millions of Nigerians who are neither rich nor middle-class. Maybe her vote, along with the votes of other women and mothers, some 50% of our population, would have punished “leaders” who under-fund healthcare and rewarded those who provided the care our families need.
Worse, even if we had substantive democracy, we are so distracted and divided by geographic, ethnic and religious fear and distrust, it would be a miracle if Moslem women, Christian women, Traditionalist women, Kanuri women, Kalabari women, Borgu women, all Nigerian women rallied as one to force and compel better healthcare.
And this is the key issue. I did not write this post to criticize our leaders. It is not about them, it is about we the people. It is up to us to create effective healthcare in Nigeria, not our leaders. If the 140 million people of Nigeria demanded healthcare reform, and refused to tolerate anything less, we could move mountains. Sadly it is easier to rally us for ethno-religious strife than it is to rally us to fight for healthcare. We have the power to create the change we want, but choose not to use it. We pull ourselves down rather than help each other up.
At the end of the day, our leaders have access to the healthcare they need.
We the people do not.
It will be this way until we decide to do something about it.
It is the fate of humanity to be born, to live and to die. People die in hospitals all over the world, every day, and no country has a perfect health system.
Still, World Health Organization statistics (pages 30 to 34) put Nigeria’s Maternal Mortality Rate at 1,100 per 100,000 live births in 2005. This rate translated to 59,000 maternal deaths in 2005, the second highest behind India’s 117,000 (from a lower MMR of 450).
It is valid to argue about the accuracy of ANY statistics from Nigeria, and apparently our first lady has disputed the MMR statistics for Nigeria that were reported by UNICEF. Then again, the fact that we still do not generate trustworthy statistics is itself indicative of the issues I am raising in this post.
So forget statistics for a moment. Let me talk about an issue I discovered a few years ago, the problem of obstetric fistula, an ailment you would not with on your worst enemy. The things you need to do to maximize the prevention of fistula are fairly easy and straightforward, and if it happens nonetheless, the surgery to correct it has a better than 90% success rate. The so-called “developed” countries essentially eliminated fistula by the end of the 19th century, over a hundred years ago, equipped with nothing more than 19th century medical knowledge and technology.
Apparently fistula (like meningitis and polio) has been a problem for a long time in some of our northern states – apparently thousands of women have been affected. I discovered the issue years ago when I stumbled on an article about a foreign doctor volunteering his services to treat our women for free. I monitored the news for signs of some effort, any effort at all on our part to deal with this – and was rewarded with news of polio spreading. In 2005, more foreign doctors came to Nigeria as part of a programme (the “Fistula Fortnight”) to offer free fistula surgery as well as free training to Nigerian doctors so they could do the surgeries too.
I am ashamed. Why does it have to take foreigners to tell us we are supposed to take care of our women? We could have trained doctors to do fistula surgery decades ago, or better yet, pushed for preventive measures so they don’t have to deal with the problem in the first place. But the fact is we don’t even talk about practical and important stuff like this, much less take action. Good God, we waste our time arguing about states’ creation, “marginalization” of “geo-political zones”, “resource control”, “power shift” and all sorts of meaningless rubbish, while, a simple health issue other countries wiped out in the 19th century is still a Nigerian scourge in the 21st century.
Our doctors and nurses are as good as any in the world; when they work abroad in the same enabling environment as their foreign peers, they excel too. Our secondary and tertiary science students, all of them potential doctors, are of equal intelligence as any students anywhere in the world; as I said, we could very easily have educated doctors to deal with fistulas or anything else, and given them a work environment where their training could change our mediocre W.H.O. statistics.
Unfortunately healthcare in Nigeria, though it attracts a lot of lip service, is good only for the opportunity to award contracts of dubious substantive benefit. Year after year our governors commission new hospitals and clinics they’ve built, but these same governors nevertheless fly abroad when they have any medical issue to address. Somewhere in this fact there is an unspoken truth about Nigeria, a truth about power stations that produce no electricity, refineries that produce no fuel, and police that enforce no laws. Government in Nigeria consists of little more than being hailed for awarding contracts for major projects, with nobody bothering to look beneath the surface to ask whether anything substantive has been accomplished even if the project is completed.
Ultimately, Nigerians, not just doctors, but industrialists, teachers, everyone has to work that much harder than their peers elsewhere in the world to achieve results of any kind, because the basic things we need to ease the path to success are still absent.
Only God knows how many wealthy and powerful Nigerians fly abroad for medical care – we only hear about it when something terrible happens. I do not begrudge any Nigerian doing the best they can for their family. If my father were to have any medical complaint, I would think about flying him abroad for medical care too. But I can’t. I don’t have the money for that. It scares me.
The wealthy and powerful, those who can actually influence government decisions and actions, have no pressing need to fix our healthcare system because they can access quality healthcare abroad. What are the rest of us supposed to do? What are our doctors and nurses supposed to do?
The family of the late Mrs Bello did not have the option of flying her abroad for medical treatment once they discovered she was carrying sextuplets (and that is assuming, or rather hoping, that ultra-sounds were done well before time, allowing her doctors to know she was carrying six beautiful babies). And it isn’t just a financial issue; one of my all-time favourite Nigerian football managers, Musa Abdullahi, was denied a visa to go to the United States for treatment . Coach Abdullahi did manage to go to Egypt and is back in Nigeria as I type this, but would life not be simpler for him, for me, for my father, for all of us if he and we could get the same quality of care in our own country? Even Nwankwo Kanu’s Heart Foundation has to go to extraordinary lengths to connect beneficiaries with care. This is not right.
We citizens are not given the proper opportunity to use our votes to set government spending priorities through elections. The late Mrs Bello was a mother and was one of millions of Nigerians who are neither rich nor middle-class. Maybe her vote, along with the votes of other women and mothers, some 50% of our population, would have punished “leaders” who under-fund healthcare and rewarded those who provided the care our families need.
Worse, even if we had substantive democracy, we are so distracted and divided by geographic, ethnic and religious fear and distrust, it would be a miracle if Moslem women, Christian women, Traditionalist women, Kanuri women, Kalabari women, Borgu women, all Nigerian women rallied as one to force and compel better healthcare.
And this is the key issue. I did not write this post to criticize our leaders. It is not about them, it is about we the people. It is up to us to create effective healthcare in Nigeria, not our leaders. If the 140 million people of Nigeria demanded healthcare reform, and refused to tolerate anything less, we could move mountains. Sadly it is easier to rally us for ethno-religious strife than it is to rally us to fight for healthcare. We have the power to create the change we want, but choose not to use it. We pull ourselves down rather than help each other up.
At the end of the day, our leaders have access to the healthcare they need.
We the people do not.
It will be this way until we decide to do something about it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)