MOOTBOXEcon. In Plain English

I wrote this piece a short while back for Farafina Magazine, since this blog has been receiving no attention lately. I have decided to share it  with you. I hope you like it.

I do not get sport and to me sport is borderline uncool. Somehow TV got stuck on MSNBC and I am watching the coverage of the Beijing Olympics. The Nigerian Female Soccer team is playing Brazil. I missed the first 33 minutes of this soccer match. However right now Nigeria is leading Brazil, one goal to nil. No wonder my remote control is still stuck on this TV station, the score line is stroking my patriotic ego.  A few minutes from this point on the match up quickly made an about turn. First it was a blunder by Nigeria’s right defender, the Brazilian striker managed to send a text book cross which was met with an equally text-bookey header from the Brazilian ace striker. This was the equalizer. First goal. Less than two minutes later the same ace striker tucked in one more goal  with a rather impressive ’shagalo’, for the uninitiated that is a bicycle kick, and just like that Brazil was one goal ahead. I picked up my laptop to make this entry and before I could say Google Chrome the third goal was in.  The match went into the half time break 3-1 advantage Brazil.

Surprisingly the American commentators would not stop talking about how good the Nigerian team had been. The female commenter then went on to comment that; “These girls (Nigerian) are so talented, if only they could pay more attention to the details, with a little structure throughout the year these girls will easily become world champions”. She said it with so much conviction too.

Isn’t this the microcosm of our country? So much talent and potential, if and only if some structure could be imposed, everything would be just fine. So much manufacturing potential and abundant labor, if only the infrastructure was put in place, we would rank amongst the world’s top producers of consumables.  A heavy concentration of deal makers if only there was an adequate property right framework in place. An incredibly well educated population in the Diaspora if only they had a platform through which they could work with the government back home, Nigeria would experience an enormous transfer of wealth and knowledge. For Nigeria, structure is everything.
The game just ended, scoreless in the second half, the Nigerian girls came out stronger in the second half, giving more credence to the enormous potential. Now I understand why hiring foreign coaches was necessary, not because they were essentially better than their Nigerian counterparts but because they were more likely to infuse the much needed structure that is required to make anything work in Nigeria.