Ekene, at the Verge of Football Stardom

Ekene Edwin Jr.

Following our success with Super Eagles and Leicester City star, Ahmed Musa back in 2007, the city of Jos has continued to look up to us to bring the spotlight on to a player that finds form. The most recent is Ekene Edwin Jr. 

Ekene is with The Way Forward Academy, a team that trains at the Polo Field, in the city of Jos. The sixteen-year-old, who has been sensationally dubbed the new John Mikel, boasts of high speed, an enduring stamina, and a workable combination of both legs that enables him to play at both wings. He also has the ability to play as an attacking and central defense. 

Ekene says he is ready for any club that comes his way, at home or abroad.

We Have Many More David Abwos

Whether Christiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Ahmed Musa or Mikel Obi, all football superstars come from grass root clubs. There are hundreds of thousands of grass root clubs around the world. Many of them, however, remain unheard of as long as they have not been able to produce a star.

Weyi (left) and Kwa (right). Picture source: Yiro Abari

In the mid-seventies, a club by the name of Volcano Babes emerged from the town of Miango in Plateau State, Nigeria. It was named after the volcanic hills that greet one arriving the town. Later, younger members of the club pulled out and formed another club by the name of Forest. The name, Forest, came from the forest just after the volcanic hills. Since the formation of Forest in the 1980s it was unable to produce a star beyond the boundaries of the town until David Solomon Abwo emerged from it in 1999. To become fully known, David went through JC Raiders of Jos, Niger Tornadoes of Minna, and Enyimba of Aba. Currently, he plays for Giresunspor of Turkey. While at Niger Tornadoes he was invited to the Nigerian Under-20 squad. The team went to as far as the runners-up in the FIFA Under-20 football tournament, Holland 2005.

It is the rise of Abwo that called the attention of Forest handlers to the reality that the club, as indistinct as it is, has the capacity to produce a star of Abwo’s caliber. Knowing this, the club started keeping an eye on its players with the hope of producing others like Abwo.  Right now, the coaches at Forest feel that they now have not just a player but two that can rise to the height to which Abwo has risen. John Weyi and Rozhi Kwa are two players the coaches strongly feel have the quality.

“Isn’t it possible that a good player would always find a club?” I asked coach Sunday Witeh, who also mentored Abwo.

“In a place like Nigeria, the prospect may not always there,” Witeh told me.

Witeh went on to tell me that even Abwo needed some kind of bridge to walk to where he now finds himself. This he found in the former member of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Lumumba Dah Adeh. Adeh on becoming a member of the National Assembly founded JC Raiders with the primary aim of helping boys from Miango town where he also hails.  JC Raiders played at a lower rung of the Nigerian Football League but was able to bring Abwo to the noticed of Nigerian football administrators, finding his way to Niger Tornadoes. 

Right now, with JC Raiders defunct, Witeh strongly feels that all that his two boys need is another ladder on which to climb to the sky. At the moment, he says, he is looking up to Abwo himself. He has been trying to reach him but it is just that when one rises to that height there are always a lot of issues in his mind. For now, he is the only hope they have, and pray he would find time to look in their direction, while they also seek help from anywhere they can find.

Buhari and the Sacred Cows

Since the regime of President Muhammadu Buhari took over Aso Rock people have watched keenly the anticorruption fight. There are Nigerians who feel that the fight is biased and targets certain individuals, mostly from the opposition, and the fight is bogus as a result. 

Buhari’s critics feel that somebody like Rotimi Amaechi, the former Governor of Rivers State and Ahmed Bola Tinubu, former Governor of Lagos, are persons deemed to have been highly corrupt during their stints as governors, but whose issues the Buhari administration have chosen not to look into, for the mare fact that they helped his journey to the Presidency.  Generally, former governors who are major agents of corruption in Nigeria, are seen not remain untouched by the administration. 

Buhari did say, during his electoral campaign, that he will draw a line, and will not look into cases of corruption behind that line. Instead he will look only ahead of the line. This is because the filth behind is so overwhelming that taking time to clean all of it would end up consuming his time such that he will have little or no time for the other activities of nation building. But it could be true that President Buhari is been selective and overlooking glaring cases that should attract his attention. However, it said that governance is a process and not an event. This means that Nigerians succeeding Buhari as the President can always look into cases he failed to look into, either by omission of commission. The administration could also investigate the President, if it is deemed that his own administration was equally corrupt.

This column is personally of the view that the fight is a good start. Corruption is not a piece of furniture that one could just pick and toss away, especially in Nigeria where corruption has grown deep tap roots. If we consider corruption to be a hill that has to be pulled down, and someone comes around and takes off 60% of it, then we are making progress. This is because another person would come, and as long as he is committed to getting rid of that hill, he could bring his contribution towards its totally removal.

Nigeria, a Heavy Burden for One Man, II

As said in part one of this write up the Nigerian rot has become deeply entrenched due many years of its being and has become a culture. In order words, illegalities have gone unchecked for so long that they have lost their semblance of illegality. There are so many persons reaping bountifully from the filthy practice and have constituted themselves into cabals to ensure they fight anything that tries to stop them from enjoying what has made them first class citizens over the decades; what has helped them to ensure their children are born in Western hospitals thereby guaranteeing citizenship of those nations for the newborns, what has helped them to raise those kids in those nations so that when they return there is really nothing Nigerians about them. This, to me, is the highest point of treason.

The first visible cabal is the Nigerian Senate. Today, the Senate has proved that whatever is spent so sustain it actually goes down the drain. It has failed in its role of checking the excesses of the Executive. As a matter of fact they go hand-in-hand with the most notorious executive and sabotage the aims of a popular executive.

The cabal (in Nigeria) are people who have defrauded the nation so  much or have so much political power that they have become nations in themselves, deploying such wealth or powers to fight anybody who tries to take what they have acquired or what they wish to acquire. 

The Senate, as everyone knows, has the constitutional responsibility of legislating for the purpose of ensuring the prosperity of the nation. The Buhari administration came at a time when oil revenues (the backbone of the Nigerian economy) are the worst in so many decades. There is the need to embark on austerity measures but the Senators of the Federal Republic insisted on the purchase of 108 official SUV Toyota vehicles at the rate of about N 36 million each. To add insult to injury, this price is actually two times the actual price.

The governors of the 36 states are also among the powers in the country that have chosen to abuse political power against people who stood in the full glare of the sun to vote them. Currently, it is said that 26 of the 36 governors owe unpaid salaries, the least of which is four months. This is despite the bailout given the states by the Buhari administration to settle inherited salary arrears.  Some governors claim the crashing oil revenues are responsible for the accumulation. In the last four years of the Jonathan administration there weren’t enough issues bordering on poor oil revenues as to warrant the accumulation of the salaries. This lends credence to the general truth that this habit of holding back salaries is a tradition of the Nigeria governors which often the result of fraudulently managed reserves. 

While the governors point fingers at dwindling revenues as the cause of their inability to pay salaries, the Governor of Edo State, Comrade Adams Oshiomole, a former labor leader, on 2016 Workers’ Day, announced a increase of the minimum wage in his state by 39%. This is despite the fact that Edo State is one of the poorest in the Niger Delta. What about wealthier states like Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Delta, etc? 

States in Nigeria are places where corruption is conceived and bred at an alarming rate. A larger number of the governors come from the All Progressive Party, APC, which is a coalition of political parties that brought Mr. President to power. It is expected that they should have a common ideology and, hence, should be seen replicating the ideology of Mr. President. Sadly, there is hardly any meaningful anticorruption at the state tiers of the government. Could it be that corruption is nonexistent at the states? I don’t think so, and a lot of Nigerians will agree with me. 

It was obvious to politicians with the intention of becoming governors that the bus conveying Mr. President seemed strong, with the promise of taking the presidential aspirant to his political destination, beyond all doubts. They took advantage of the opportunity, despite knowing that their intending for the country and that of the presidential aspirant are divergent. The governors are expected to share the burden of the nation with Mr. President as he alone would not be able to carry it most favorably.