Corruption is the single reason Nigeria has remained underdeveloped. Corruption has eaten so deep into the fabric of the nation, so much so that it has become a threat to the very existence of the nation. Talking about corruption is almost like wasting precious time on an issue that has come to stay and not in any hurry to leave. Everywhere you turn, the story is the same.
Sometime in May 2016, the Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, described Nigeria and Afghanistan as “fantastically corrupt” in a conversation with the Queen.
Cameron had said, “We’ve got some leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain… Nigeria and Afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.”
Perhaps, in a bid to attenuate the embarrassment of President Muhammadu Buhari, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby intervened to say: “But this particular president is not corrupt… he’s trying very hard.”
In a later response, Buhari said his government was deeply “shocked and embarrassed” by the PM’s comments. He suggested that Mr Cameron must be referring to Nigeria’s past notoriety for corruption before his coming to power in 2015.
That was in 2016, but fast forward to 2021, what has really changed? Corruption is still very prevalent that the common refrain now is that no matter the nature of your offence, once you belong to the right cabal or come from certain parts of the country, or are a member of the ruling families or have the right connections in the corridors of power then you are above the law and can practically get away with murder.
In political circles, every politician knows the surest way of keeping anti-graft agencies from one’s trail is to belong to the All Progressives Congress and pronto, you are born again.
Sadly, the ruling APC came to power promising to fight corruption, pretending that corruption and all corrupt practices belong only to the past. But everything now suggests the very opposite.
In sports, corruption takes various forms and is responsible for the reason the nation has not been able to achieve its potential. We have raw talents scattered all around the world but we have never been able to fix the riddle. Coaches, officials and athletes are selected through all other considerations except merit and ability. We have never presented the best talents available because coaches and team officials as well as athletes are selected based on primordial and pecuniary considerations.
There have been several accusations of coaches collecting bribes to field athletes. Many of such claims have been denied by coaches and team officials.
For Nigerian youths it is double jeopardy as the rate of unemployment continues to rise, sports for many youths would have been an escape route from poverty but that too is still treated as mere recreation rather than the billion dollars money spinner that it is. Politicians with little or no knowledge of sports are made ministers of sports. For them it is just another political appointment, meant only for the boys. As a result, itinerant sports administrators continue to lead sports into the abyss. For these politicians sports begin and end at taking athletes to international tournaments. Many years ago, our stadia would be filled to capacity during local league matches but today, the few footballers who are yet to jet abroad play in front of sparsely populated stadia.
The sports associations only exist to prepare over-bloated delegations to international sports events to earn scarce foreign exchange. Sports activities in Nigeria are practically dead. What we have today is a shadow of what obtained in the 1980s when our football clubs attracted some of the best football players from the sub-region. Today, Nigerian players go to strange countries including tiny neigbouring nations seeking the Golden Fleece.
Nigeria returned from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics recently with silver and a bronze and several tons of embarrassments and scandals. Team Nigeria was placed 74th at the end of the 2020 Tokyo Games. Ese Brume won the bronze medal from the women’s long jump event; Blessing Oborududu won the silver medal from the wrestling event’s women’s freestyle 68kg.
Recently, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) shamefully reinstated disgraced former assistant coach of the national team, Salisu Yusuf, to his post with effect from today, Monday, November 1, 2021.
The Kaduna-born former Kano Pillars Football Club, Enyimba International Football Club and Rangers International Football Club coach was caught on camera in August 2018 by Ghanaian investigative journalists posing as agents to several players to select two players for his Morocco 2018 African Nations Championship (CHAN) squad.
During the sting operation, which was widely publicised in national and international media, Yusuf was seen collecting cash in US dollars from the supposed agents who had asked him to field certain players in the then upcoming CHAN.
He was further promised 15 percent of the players’ contract after their selection into the team. As against the figure quoted by the investigators who caught Yusuf, he eventually agreed to receive 750 US dollars as a “gift of trivial and symbolic value and not as an inducement to play the two players represented by the two agents.”
The NFF Ethics Committee found him guilty of collecting the sum of 1,000 US dollars in bribes and banned him from any football activities for one year with payment of a fine of 5,000 US dollars.
The NFF had earlier reinstated the coach in 2019. Announcing Salisu’s return in 2019, NFF had noted that the Chief Coach of the Super Eagles, Salisu Yusuf, has now fully served the one-year suspension clamped on him in 2018.
Yusuf’s reinstatement is total disgrace and unacceptable in any sane society; it is recompense for a shameful act. He should by now have been prosecuted for bringing so much shame to the nation.
What the NFF has unwittingly done is sending the wrong message to the rest of the world that Nigerians are a bunch of unserious people. Where else but in Nigeria can this kind of disgrace happen? If the NFF wants to give him a second chance having shown enough remorse, the least they could have done was to grant him pardon and allow him back into the football community, but certainly not return him to the national team he brought so much shame and disgrace upon. Do you still doubt PM Cameron?
Yusuf’s reinstatement simply brings to the fore the nation’s questionable and shameful fight against corruption. The only explanation that can be given to this is that Yusuf is a Muslim and from the North. No Christian from the south can be this lucky, especially under this unabashed APC government where every caution, ethics and code of conduct has been tossed to the dogs just to service clannish, religious and tribal interests. In sports there is no place for such mundane considerations; only merits count.
Yusuf brought shame to this country, he ought not to be rewarded for his indiscretion, the least we can do if we cannot get him to have his day in court is to keep him away from representing the nation to further attract questions and doubt as to our sense of decorum. Is Yusuf the best coach this nation can produce? Enough disgrace from a government that seems to observe all known protocols, norms and due processes in the breach.
What a shame!
