By
Ikeogu Oke
 |
|
Stephen
Keshi with the 2013 African Nations Cup
|
Coach
Stephen Keshi and the Super Eagles deserve our warm congratulations for winning
the 2013 Orange Africa Cup of Nations hosted by South Africa. I would describe
Keshi as an inspirational revolutionary, thanks to his emphasis on using
home-based players, who dominated his victorious team.
That
must have been inspirational, for the rare exposure it gave the home-based
players; and revolutionary, since the trend is for the coaches of the Super
Eagles to rely heavily on professional players based abroad who tend to promise
high performance while requiring little or no grooming from the coaches.
Home-based
players, as Keshi has proved, can be compared to diamonds in the rough.
Discovering such gems requires perceptive genius, and polishing them enough to
shine and dazzle the world as they did in South Africa requires “lapidary”
skill, patience and hard work.
And
one must specially commend Keshi’s confidence in the critical choices he made,
in himself and his team, which have resulted in their bringing home the coveted
trophy, which had eluded us for 19 years, since 1994. Nor should one fail to
applaud his blend of idealism and pragmatism, two dispositions without which
anyone hardly accomplishes great things.
His
belief that he could face and conquer our continent, the world in fact, with a
team dominated by rather young and untried players sure to be pitched in battle
with many international and foreign-based heavyweights from other countries
bespeaks the kind of idealism exhibited by the eponymous hero of Miguel de
Cervantes’s timeless classic, Don Quixote, a sort of idealism that borders on
quixotism.
But
Keshi was also pragmatic in implementing that belief, which must have been
informed by his understanding as a good psychologist, which a good coach must
be, that such rather young and untried home-based players would have an
uncommon hunger for victory unlike their foreign-based counterparts who could
be excused for feeling that they have seen much of the world and may have
nothing to prove as professional footballers.
Such
hunger – I am sure Keshi knew this – could prove to be a more valuable resource
for a result-oriented coach and team than a long trail of overconfident
foreign-based players who have become so used to playing for “big” clubs and in
“big” competitions that they can afford to take their playing in some
competitions for granted, and not bother to give their best when they take
part.
For
them, there is so much to fall back on, unlike their home-based counterparts,
with their deep hunger for big laurels, or any laurel for that matter. Little
wonder that it was one of the latter type of players, Sunday Mbah, who plays
football for Warri Wolves, that scored the winning goal in the final fixture
with Burkina Faso, in an effort so desperate that he could be compared to a
hungry man snatching meat from the jaws of a lion.
There
are times when determination trumps experience as a factor for success. Keshi
and his boys proved this with their AFCON exploits. What is more, it was clear
that, in selecting his team, Keshi, fondly called “Big Boss” – though I would
rather call him “the leader” or “the inspiration” – showed consideration for
nothing other than merit, which Chinua Achebe once remarked “is quite often a
dirty word” in our country.
But
preference for merit, as Keshi has shown through his team selection, can make
the difference between success and failure in most of our ventures as a nation.
Now,
some lessons stand out from the AFCON success of Keshi and the Super Eagles
which I believe could be useful for those eager to ensure Nigeria’s
renaissance.
One,
that the resources they may be looking for in Sokoto, to adapt a popular
Nigerian saying, may be rattling in their sokoto as rough gems awaiting their
recognition, polishing and deployment.
Two,
that homegrown talent are not necessarily inferior to those sourced from
abroad; and this is true regardless of whether the talent sourced overseas are
our nationals or citizens of other countries. Incidentally, Chinua Achebe, in
Home and Exile, portrays a certain foreign “expert” – an unremarkable,
struggling artisan who could have come to Nigeria and gained employment and
recognition as an “engineer” – as a charlatan who benefits unfairly from our
distorted view of reality.
And
Keshi had reportedly decried a situation where “carpenters” are sourced from
abroad at great expense to coach our national team even though there is a
surfeit of local talent who can do better! Three, that good, determined,
visionary and self-assured leadership is critical to their success.
Keshi
exhibited these qualities by not allowing himself and his boys to be
discouraged by the criticisms that trailed their “unimpressive” start in the
tournament, as if mindful of the Igbo saying that “anagh eji ututu ama njo
agha”, which roughly translates as “one cannot predict bad market from poor
sales in the morning”.
Four,
Nigerians need to be more patient with their leaders. A less confident and
determined coach than Keshi could have been discouraged by the barrage of
impatient criticisms of the “poor” early performance by him and his boys
thereby robbing them, and Nigeria, of the ultimate victory in the tournament.
Four, Nigerian leaders need to be resolute in implementing their plans once they
are sure of themselves and the workability of such plans and that they are in
the overriding public interest. To succeed, they cannot afford to turn like
wind vanes in the storm of public opinion, some of which may be uninformed or
unwarranted as those critical of Keshi and his boys have proved to be.
Five,
Nigerian leaders must have respect for merit above any other criterion in their
choice of people to work with. Keshi, as I have stated above, did just that
throughout the AFCON tournament; the rest is a historic feat. Six, Nigerian
leaders must learn to put high premium on the qualitative human resources
Providence has put at their disposal.
Keshi’s
bosses in the Nigerian Football Federation reportedly wrote him off even
without giving him adequate tools to prove himself, which they would gladly
give a foreign coach. Reports have it that they flaunted in his face their plan
to hire a foreign coach after what they thought would be a dismal outing for
him and his boys. How right the final result proved them and their cynicism!
Unfortunately,
Nigeria’s renaissance, and development generally, still suffer serious setbacks
owing to the attitude of such leaders who do not seem to know that there is no
dictionary in which the synonym of foreign is good, let alone better, or best;
but that foreign products are excellent because someone has worked hard to make
them so, and are of course local products in their countries of origin.
•Ikeogu,
a poet, wrote in from Garki, Abuja, via ikeogu.oke@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment