The Verdict By Olusegun Adeniyi. Email, olusegun.adeniyi@thisdaylive.com
On an internet forum where many Nigerians (at home and in the Diaspora) identify themselves more by their ethnic affiliations and where trading abuses, curses and hate-speech has become the usual fare, something dramatic happened last Sunday afternoon. The moment the match between Cote D’Voire and Nigeria ended with the Super Eagles coming out victorious against popular prediction, there was a ‘ceasefire’ with everybody suddenly becoming proud to be Nigerian.
Interestingly, it would not be the first time one would see such unity of purpose, especially when individual Nigerians excel in sports and other fields of human endeavour. What that says about us is that whether we are “yesterday’s men” or “today’s men” or even aspiring to be “tomorrow’s men”, we all love this country. And that accounts for the frustrations of many Nigerians who can see the potentials that are not being realized. But hurling insults at those in authority today, or at one another, will never resolve our problems.
If we go back to the football field, only few people gave the Super Eagles any chance against the star-studded Cote D’Ivoire side last Sunday (a confession: I didn’t) but anybody who watched the match could see that our players were never at any point over awed. Even when they lost their one-goal lead advantage early in the second half, they picked themselves up and played with tenacity and purpose until they scored the second goal which eventually settled the match in their favour. And yesterday, they overran Mali to book their ticket to the final.
The lesson from the African Cup of Nations tournament is that having individual talents is very good but to have a team is even better. The strength of Nigeria is not in the oil buried on our ground but in the knowledge and capacities of our people--our much endowed human resources. The moment we are able to build a credible team from the abundance of talents that populate our nation today, we will take our rightful place on the continent of Africa and in the world.
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