Like the famous classic novel by Late Professor, Chinua Achebe, ‘Things Fall Apart’, where the centre can no longer hold, the fabrics of Nigeria football is capitulating with each passing day, while we regrettably watch, doing absolutely nothing to salvage the fulcrums of our once flourishing industry.
Sports particularly football remains the most veritable uniting force in Nigeria and rightly so because tribal, ethnic, religious or whatever lines that divide us as a people succumbs to the power of football once Nigeria is playing a match against another country.
The unity is unimaginable. The passion, love, energy with which the average Nigerian follows the national team is phenomenal. In fact, football in Nigeria is almost like a religion.
Nigerians easily forget all their prevalent economic, political, financial worries when the nation is playing. Issues of bad political leadership, insecurity, poverty, poor infrastructure, hunger, inflation are secondary and stay suspended till after the game.
But unfortunately, poor management and administrative ineptitude is threatening to destroy the only remaining thing that give Nigerians joy in the midst of gloom and fast bloating hope.
The Super Eagles are at the brink of missing a second consecutive FIFA world cup after failing to qualify for the last edition of the tournament hosted by oil rich Qatar in 2022.
Newly appointed substantive coach of the team, George Finidi and his boys has only manage to garner 3 points from a possible 12 points after 4 rounds of matches.
To be fair to him, Finidi is only responsible for two of the matches, a 1-1 draw against Bafana Bafana of South Africa in Uyo and a 1-2 loss to The Cheetahs of Benin Republic, while former manager, Jose Peseiro drew 1-1 against Lesotho in Uyo and another 1-1 against Zimbabwe away.
This leaves hope of qualifying for the next world cup in 2026 in USA, Canada and Mexico hanging in the balance as the Super Eagles are rooted in a distant 5th position in a 6 -nation group C that has South Africa, Rwanda, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Benin Republic.
If this happens, which is most likely, it will be the first time Nigeria has failed to qualify for the world cup back to back since after they made their debut in 1994.
At the U -17 level, the country has failed to make it to the last three editions in a tournament they are the best in the world with 5 titles won in 1895, 1993, 2007, 2013 and 2015.
The Olympic team, Dream team has failed to make it to the competition consecutively now, missing South Korea/Japan edition in 2020 and the fourth coming Paris 2004 edition.
Nigeria boasts of a gold at the Atlanta Olympics, silver at Beijing China in 1998 and a bronze medal at the Rio 2016 edition in Brazil.
The men’s U-20 team will also be absent at the coming edition of the tournament after failing to qualify this year with coach Ladan Bosso yet in charge.
Once beaten they say twice shy but Nigeria in this case has been beaten multiple times.
Should we fold our hands and watch these undertakers of our football bury what is finally left? God forbid!.
The time to act is now, as failure to plan is planning to fail, therefore we must have to take some drastic measures to reset things before it’s too late.
There must be genuine and conscious plans to develop the sport from the bottom (grassroots) to the top. Investments must be made in these critical areas with the FIFA goal project funds while also ensuring that all forms of nepotism, corruption and favouritism are shunned when appointing coaches for the various national teams.
But like the late music icon, Sunny Okosun, I put the question again: which way for Nigeria football?.