Great nations are built on great dreams

By Tunde Fagbenle

Segun Odegbami

All great success stories began one day with a vision. This vision is located at the very top of our value system, like something that seems unattainable in the eyes of others but that for us exemplifies our most desired wishes. The world belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams - Mouratoglou. Individual and collective dreams are the prerequisites, the starting blocks, of which great nations are made. I write this column from France where I have accompanied my little son, Totonitolu, to a one-week invitational tennis training camp under the auspices of the Mouratoglou Tennis Academy. And coming here (just as in very many instances of one’s experiences in the developed world) has stirred in one that doleful feeling of wonder and loss: what are we doing in Nigeria, what are our privileged folks doing with their money?

The Mouratoglou Tennis Academy is reputed to be the most famous Academy in Europe. But it is founded and owned by just one individual; the product of his dream, not only for the sport he loves but also for his country. Patrick Mouratoglou was born in Paris in 1970 and wanted to pursue a professional tennis career. But his father, a successful industrialist, truncated the desire despite a potential that ranked Patrick among the best French junior players at the age of 15, insisting instead that he completed a business degree program as heir to his empire. In spite of that Patrick reunites with his passion, boldly creating his own tennis academy in 1996. If he could not himself become a tennis champion, he now made it his duty to train them.

And his method is atypical of the norm: he proposes a personalized training regime to a chosen few rather than what obtains in other training centres or academies that group a large number of players and allow the law of natural selection to prevail! It is amazing what goes on here. 30 miles from Paris, by a little village called Grinon, the Academy is sited in a picturesque valley far removed from the outside world. But here, everything the serious player needs is provided. There are 17 tennis courts, mostly clay courts in the tradition of Roland Garos, basketball court, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, musculation room, cardio-training room, and some 30 chalets to house the players and some key staff.

Resident in the academy is a group of a maximum of 20 players tagged Rising Players who benefit from optimal training, education and all, at Patrick’s expense. These are players with perceived exceptional talent and character observed during such one-week exposure as the one my son is undergoing. Totonitolu is one of only three 6-year olds ever invited of which only one so far, the American Jan Silva, is a member of the Rising Players – a squad ranging in age from (well, with Jan) 6 to 15. I have seen Jan Silva on the court. He is truly phenomenal and has a playing-age of 12.

Due to their small number and the large staff team they work with, members of the Rising Players are able to profit from a made-to-measure training and workout. Among the world’s top players produced by the academy so far is Marcos Baghdatis and in the ladies’ Vakulenko is truly rising. Patrick Mouratoglou estimates a training expense of some $150,000 per year on each member of the Rising Players. He runs a sports marketing company alongside that handles the future marketing of these talents when, and if, they ripen, and thereby recoup some of the outlay in a revolving system. And the academy also doubles as a “Country Club” for private membership of the affluent public so the facilities could be reasonably utilised.

Now back to my country, Nigeria.
What do our vainglorious billionaires have to show for their stupendous wealth? What dreams have they for their country, what legacy to leave beyond that of scattered mansions and numberless women and children? There sure is a place for those who have created by their wealth employment for hundreds or thousands of people, provided such job creation goes beyond that of mere servant hands to maintain the monstrous vanity they have in place. There is a place for veritable industries, there is a place for educational institutions that are of increasing fancy amongst the rich, even if these structures stem primarily and focus entirely on non-altruistic motives.

But a country must go beyond these.
There must be those who can dream dreams that are not of a selfish kind, dreams that put dignity into human lives, dreams that aim to put a community, a state, nay, the country, as the cynosure of all eyes. Perhaps, a great medical research centre that would draw experts from all over the world; perhaps a great sports academy specialising in a particular sport, equipped with latest technology and best trainers, aimed at tapping our immense quantity of talents and developing them into world-beaters; perhaps a great cultural centre that would draw the best literary and creative minds in an annual cultural jamboree of international significance; perhaps, perhaps...

Rather than give a little back to the country from which they have made so much out of, our mad moneybags cart away their wealth to boost the economy of foreign lands. There is insecurity to life and property (especially of the stolen kind) in Nigeria, we are told, and so we are to understand if one owns a golf course in a place as Ireland as we understand one of our ‘leaders’ does – no names please. We are to understand if some other owns half the houses on a London or New York street. And so on.

But Nigeria has not been without some great minds and great dreamers, even if the country has continued to smother many a dream. The country had the likes of Lord Rumens (the late Chief Alabi) who spent a good part of his hard-earned fortune trying to put Nigeria on the international tennis circuit, to name but one. Unfortunately, his altruistic vision withered after a few years and hundreds of thousands of dollars after, and the poor rich man died perhaps in rue of it all.

Yet we must not stop dreaming.
Whilst one Nigerian was busy siphoning his own money abroad to own a golf course in Europe, the dream of another man, Chief Tunde Ponle, to have a golf course in his home village, has, beyond all expectations, put Ada on the national map as a town of golfing pilgrimage and turned the erstwhile sleepy village into an urbanised community and pride of Osun State. Besides the golf course is a 4-star hotel and other facilities that have increased the tourism potential of Ada. But my brother Ponle would need to go beyond the increasing elitism of his legacy to encourage and create room for controlled but free excursions and exposure of school children to the game of golf. Who knows, he may yet help to give Nigeria her own Tiger Woods.

And I cannot end this column without also recognising the dream of yet another great Nigerian, one of her rarest patriots, Chief Segun Odegbami. Segun should need no introduction. Tagged the Mathematical in his soccer playing days for Nigeria, Segun has remained in national sporting limelight either as a media practitioner or a sports administrator at state or national levels, resisting all invitations (known to me) to hive off abroad as an expert on African football. But that is not Segun’s dream I here have the privilege of bringing to the notice of my readers, and, possibly, that of the country at large, so that perhaps thereby yet another glorious dream worth actualising may not die.

Mathematical Odegbami’s passion for soccer and for Nigeria has brought him the dream to found a Football Academy – an institution, American style, to provide full boarding facility for a select number of talented children and give them optimal sporting training, hand-in-hand with their secondary education, and help produce for the country soccer stars of the future.

Armed with this unquenchable vision, Odegbami launched at its realisation. Like Chief Ponle, my friend Odegbami also has the support of his family in the little railway village of Wasimi on the Lagos/Abeokuta road to turn hectares upon hectares of family land into land for the dream Academy. That was a couple of years ago. Odegbami has not looked back rather he has tilled the ground, turned all stones and traversed the globe in search of support to make the dream come true. A college here and there in the States have pledged collaboration once the Academy takes off; some corporate entities in Nigeria have provided some token aid – Julius Berger has helped clear the large expanse of land and carved out some access road, Mike Adenuga’s Globacom conglomerate has chipped in some support, etc – and now the Academy has a football field in place (one of several planned) and some of the building structures have risen to window level. Even the Academy’s prospectus and stationery are already printed.

The sad part is, that was like ages ago, the funds have dried up and nature is threatening to send back its flora and fauna with a vengeance. It is painful to watch Odegbami’s dream in this state of asphyxiation, desiring a badly needed oxygen of life – money, something many in Nigeria have in such abundance they would not know what to do with it in many lifetimes!

Nigeria: This Is My country, Damn It!

Should Mrs. Etteh go?

For sometime to come, the country would continue to both suffer and enjoy the pains and glory of Obasanjo’s deeds as president of this country from 1999 to 2007. And nothing bears this out more immediately and aptly than the cases of Yar’Adua, Etteh and Soludo.

Say, isn’t it the same Obasanjo that single-handedly thrust all three, and many more such persons of contrasting values, upon us? The Yoruba have a descriptive adjectival phrase for someone capable of Olusegun Obasanjo deeds and misdeeds: ase’re-se’bi, the dooer of good and bad.

Only someone of such disturbing complexity as an Obasanjo could on one hand figure giving the country sober and sound personages as Umaru Yar’Adua and Charles Soludo to run the country and the CBN respectively, and yet on the other hand inflict a Mrs Patricia Olubunmi Etteh, someone totally malapropos, as Speaker of the House of Representative.

For, make no mistake about it, the departing General Olusegun Obasanjo determined who and who was to be what and what as he led his rampaging PDP party in their merciless onslaught against all democratic norms and values, rigging themselves to power and determining who held what offices in the National Assembly and elsewhere.

Yet it is almost inconceivable that anyone in government would within weeks of assumption of office, and in total spite of the ongoing war against corruption and indiscipline, embark on acts of stupefying vulgarity as this Olubunmi woman has done.

In one breath Mrs Olubunmi Etteh, the Speaker of the lower house of the country’s highest lawmaking assembly spent figures in the hundreds of million – figures have ranged from N230 to N620 – on renovating her official residence and that of her deputy, then flown out, with a coterie of well-wishers, to the United States for some self-fancying birthday bash. How much such fancy trip could have cost the government or her person is anybody’s guess. Conservatively, it would also come to some hundred or so million naira.

It is brazen, it is insensitive, it is foolish. I have reason to be angry. I hear she is originally from my Osun State before being married off to an Etteh of elsewhere. After the inglorious episode of Tafa Balogun I had prayed that such infamy would not be visited on my state any more. Now this. But I have reason to cheer: Olubunmi may have come from Osun but she has not come from the proud Fagbenle family of Igbajo. Had she, she would by now have had some ticking-off her ears. Should Mrs. Patricia Olubunmi Etteh get kicked out of office? Yes and now, not a day longer ojare.

Should Yar’Adua’s electoral reform group go?

I am one naturally given to the sentiment expressed by our Papa Enahoro that setting up an electoral reform panel at this point rather than embarking on an holistic constitutional reform, is another instance of putting the cart before the horse or that of leaving the key disease of leprosy while busying ourselves with treating an irritant eczema. The country’s constitution is badly flawed and the country itself is structurally defective. It is tempting to conclude that no good can come out of any singling-out institution structuring or restructuring before the encasing vehicle is made wholesome.

Yet, I am urged by the calibre and integrity of people President Yar’Adua has assembled unto the panel to believe in the president’s sincerity of purpose and, more, in the probable positive outcome of the panel’s exercise. At the risk of being partial to certain persons, I’m glad at the inclusion of Justice Uwais, Professor Attahiru Jega, General Oladapo Popoola, my egbon Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, my friend Olisa Agbakoba, and my sister Mrs Toyin Olakunri, to mention but a few.

Nay, we do not have here, as would be the case in the past, an admixture of persons of integrity with others of empty or clownish tendencies. Moreover, the terms of reference given the panel are clear and all embracing, leaving no grey areas for suspicion of some hidden agenda. And Yar’Adua himself has been the first to own up to the impropriety that characterised the elections that brought him to power.

We may be leaving our leprosy unattended at this point, sadly yes, but at least we can rejoice that we’ll have a cure for our eczema and, perchance, in the process stumble on some cure for our most real problem.