When the news that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of Nigeria would be at the AFCON final drew toward me in the midnight of my meditation relating to the destiny of our country with respect to its current destitute, I was peculiarly and particularly happy.
The thought of our Super Eagles prevailed. The theme of the gentlemen’s victory in the final match, the significantly significant match, became dominantly dominant in my artistic and mystic imagination and its destiny of Being. Everything before me had its intimations and signs of our great expectations residing in our intuitive intuitions of mystic sensibilities.
And President Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope” light brightened my revolutionary verve and rebellious inspiration. If the Nigerian people’s Super Eagles overcame the Elephants of Ivory Coast a second time in less than a fortnight or more, how the victory of our victorious victors would rightly, but against many people’s wish, help and aid President Tinubu to consolidate and re-compose his “Renewed Hope” agenda that he would earnestly devote to the hard and bitter lives of the ordinary men and women of our country! But I was making a fetish out of the convenience of my rebellious inspiration’s window of joy in this Yeyenatu of a country’s destitute time.
Before I knew it, they whispered to me from above: the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit. Inevitably, our president bewilderingly turned our hopeful hope, glorious victory and sparkling joy into aberration and fantasy. How? What happened? We don’t need to go far to fathom our answer and answer. But I must still keep you in abeyance.
The Super Eagles who met the Elephants of Ivory Coast in the 2023 AFCON final at the Alassane Outtara Stadium, Abidjan were not the Super Eagles that Victor Osimhen, the never-say-die athlete and genius of a super star, ably and perfectly led to soar above other competing players in other teams against ours in earlier matches. There was no player like Osimhen, the Atlas of the Super Eagles, throughout the competition in terms of his overall output. No two or more matches are exactly the same. But the sluggishness of Victor Osimhen and his companions in all directions against the Ivorians had something beyond the unluckily lucky about it.
Our handsomely handsome and soaring Super Eagles in their first meeting with the heavily heavy Elephants became the untypically untypical opposite of themselves in the final. What was responsible for their flightless-ness was not the failure of the tactic of Jose Peseiro, their head guide and head coach.
What was mainly responsible was the failure of African football metaphysics on the part of the Nigerian team, including the Supporters’ Club. What I am saying can only be understood in the context, yes, in the context of the realm of particular and peculiar beings – which I alluded-to last Friday.
It is apposite to say it loud and clear here that players like Ola Aina and Alex Iwobi, for instance, should not have been dressed at all for that match. Each one’s aura was metaphysically un-good for the team that day especially.
One of the two goals, the equaliser, I think, of the Ivorians was gifted them by Aina whose silly error caused the corner kick that brought about the goal (which I will blame – and I am blaming – on biased officiating because Aina actually did not cause any infringement that the referee wrongly attributed to him – although our man, as I have said, was silly not to have ballooned the ball from his area at the material time).
As a matter of fact, Aina’s metaphysical bad luck was a carry-over from the semi-final against the Bafana Bafana of South Africa. His uselessly useless penalty kick foreshadowed what was to come. Yet no Nigerian official had the gift of the godhead of the divine to discern what I discerned and which is what I am now un-concealing, what I hereby call the un-concealed-ness of the un-concealed.
As for Alex Iwobi, he was too uncreative as mid-fielder to know the true worth of his role in the team. Right from the first match till the last one he was basically a waste-pipe and a destroyer of dreams. In the last match in particular, his role as a mid-fielder was un-glaringly clear to him – because he never really has the talent to play the role effectively and impressively.
We cannot endure him and others of his kind in the Super Eagles any longer. Any head coach who is influenced to include him in our team will have himself to blame very badly in future – near or un-near.
Others whose relevance in the team we must call to question include Ahmed Musa, Zaidu Sanusi, Kenneth Omeruo, and company. They are now destitute players whose football time will remain destitute. They are football mortals who are hardly aware of their football mortality. Musa’s aura in particular is no more that of the once artistically elastic winger who is no more the owner of his once inspiring nature. It is time for him to question the ownership of his own nature in the team he captains as a non-playing skipper who enjoys the juice of politics in the Super Eagles.
We must do the questioning for him and his backers if they pretend not to know what we are talking and advising them about. The time shall yet come when we shall sing the song (and keep on sounding) the lyre of these players’ and their backers’ destitute time if they don’t heed us now and throw in their patriotic towels individually and collectively.
Let me return to our Victor Osimhen. He will remain our Victor Osimhen whose song we shall sing and sing with concord and concord for a pretty long time. He was the player of the tournament despite everything they did to him by all who did what they did to him. Those who barely know the nature of metaphysics and are not schooled, established and experienced travellers in the land or realm of the saying of Being are not going to appreciate what we are saying. But it does not matter. In any case, as time goes on they shall not be unprepared for the interpretation of the lyres and compositions of football metaphysics. We shall dwell on the subject vigorously as the Super Eagles are preparing to soar in the new competitions awaiting them and which they are awaiting as well.
Now let me venture President Tinubu and grant him no special cover with respect to his absence at the AFCON final that actually cost the Super Eagles victory despite my venture above. Our Super Eagles without the protection of the centre referee who was drafted unexpectedly from the blues to replace the better qualified Moroccan referee originally penciled for the task did our able soaring super men football injustice.
Thus the expectedly great match proved un-great because of the Mauritanian referee’s un-concealed bias against Nigeria. The referee seemingly connived with vested interests against President Tinubu’s Nigeria, Africa’s greatest country, to surrender Super Eagles to annihilation. Throughout the match our Super Eagles (and their clawful claws) were in danger they were not shielded from.
Our president pushed for it wittingly or unwittingly. On the eve of the AFCON final the CAF President, the South African Dr. Patrice Motsepe, requested President Tinubu on behalf of Nigeria (and Africa) to bid for the hosting of 2034 (?) FIFA World Cup. That request was an open sesame of Nigeria’s victory against Cote d’Ivore in the final.
If President Tinubu had accepted the request and followed the acceptance up with his physical presence in Abidjan for the final which the FIFA President Infantino watched live, there was no way all the detractors of the president and his presidency and the disparagers of Nigeria – at home or abroad – would have prevailed against our daring and dangerous Super Eagles in the final that would have been played fairly. All the prayers, charms and metaphysics of the Ivorians and others would have come to naught.
Believe me, yours sincerely. In fact, President Tinubu’s own charms and sensibility would have neutralised the Natura, the being of beings of the enemy of every enemy. Unfortunately, President Tinubu refused to venture to Abidjan; he refused to hazard himself to Alassane Outtara Stadium where what he was to venture was to wipe away all the snares of the enemies and flaws of our players who would have been well protected by the protectedness of the venture of the venture to bring home the trophy. Deliberately, I am not slacking/loosening fully my lips and tongue – in line with the dictates of the Supreme Spiritual Masters of Merit.
Yet this must be ventured: President Tinubu’s metaphysical controllers who draw and mediate his centre of things and beings were unkind to him and Nigeria in compelling his absence at the AFCON final. There shall be consequences and further consequences. All the collaborators wherever they are and whoever they are shall not escape.
I wish to end with a quotation by Professor Sonny Awhefeada who graciously responded to the first part of the essay as follows: “The African sensibility and desperation to win… if only it can be converted to the zeal to make our countries and continent better…” Interpret this how you will/may. But the Daily Independent Friday columnist and Professor of English has the verbal power –like Professors Olu Obafemi, Igho Natufe, Ademola Da Sylva, Ibrahim Bello Kano and Mabel Evwierhoma – that lends a weight, a gravity to the ventured beings.
Need I say more? Not at all – at least for now? But sometime in the very near future I shall say it loud and clear why the President gifted the players with what he has gifted them with abundantly.
Concluded.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
