There is this premonition that when things go wrongly in Nigeria, that it is as result of something called Nigerian factor. This is the believed by the Nigerian people that nothing can be done properly in our country. People do not keep to time (African time), lack of continuity, who knows who (na my brother dey there), inadequate planning, etc. Over the years, it was argued that long rule of military dictators must have resulted to these things, but our return to civil rule is over ten years and nothing seems to have changed. George Santayana said that, “those who cannot learn from history is doomed to repeat it”. The question is: What has this got to do with our football?
It is very clear, that of lack of proper planning and lack of continuity of officials to manage the super eagles has taken its toll in the performance of the team over there years. Clement Westerhorf was in charge of the team from 1989-1994, which accounts for 5 years in the helm of affairs of the team and we all knew the successes achieved by the team during that period. The coach was able to bring in the likes of Daniel Amokachi, Finidi George, Sunday Oliseh and some others from the local league into the team and nurtured them. It did not stop at that, over time because of their performance, they were able to get good contracts in top flight football clubs in Europe. Then, you could watch our top players in clubs like, Ajax, Eintract Frackfurt, AC Milan, Vitoria Setubal, Juventus etc.
What is the order of the day now? Nigerian factor! Where coaches are fired after 6 months and proper interviews are not conducted to hire the right person. Due to lack of planning resulting to poor outing of the team, you cannot get our players getting contracts with clubs competing at high levels. In fact, most of players are now in obscure clubs or clubs struggling to survive in their various leagues. The situation has so degenerated that Nigerians were celebrating 1 goal defeat of the team to Argentina in the last world cup, while some years back we were ruing such defeat. Nigeria that was ranked 4th after 1994 world cup now ranked 30th after 2010 world cup. While some of our players had improved contracts in their various clubs and some moved to a bigger clubs after 1994 world cup, we have our players becoming surplus to requirement in their clubs and some moving to obscure European clubs after 2010 world cup. Imagine Osaze in West Brom, it is a shame. This “Nigerian factor” must stop.
