I do not wish to start this second installment by assuming  any of the answers I am setting out to demonstrate. The purpose, the use, and the value that this exercise may offer ought to be discovered when I am done with this investigation, so to speak. Meanwhile, I re-produce a little substantially from the two earlier pieces already cited in the endeavour to steady our focus to anchor-point. First, we direct attention to excerpts from “Learning to Lose,” of Monday, June, 28, 2010: “The act of deleting, so to say, Shuaibu  Amodu’s name from the record book as the coach of the Super Eagles was a most awkward and unthinkable thing to do. Coach Amodu should have been allowed to swim and sink with the Super Eagles he qualified for the world cup. But our unimaginative and avaricious soccer administrators whose competence and style lack aesthetics, were too, too greedy for overnight success. They overreacted to the coach’s perceived deficiencies and decided to import an oyibo coach in his place. The  Lars Lagerback they hired from Sweden in his stead has turned out to be even no better. And Shuaibu  Amodu laughs last  at Lars and Lars’s backers and Amodu’s sackers….

“Coach Amodu, even if he would have failed in South Africa, would have cherished the failure and savoured it positively to the advantage of Nigeria. His failure and loss would have enriched his experience for tomorrow’s success….

“We must learn to lose in order to ready ourselves for tomorrow’s beautiful moment….

“Meanwhile, coach Shuaibu  Amodu’s disgracers should give him an open apology without reservation and without qualms. Thereafter they should re-instate him as coach of the Super Eagles and lighten his emotional and psychological burden with commensurate financial compensation, again without qualms. And then we will start to re-build a-new after the self-induced and self-inflicted loss in South Africa.

“We must learn to acknowledge our errors and lessons and re-plan and re-strategise for a blooming tomorrow. As it is in our politics so it is in our sports. And there is  huge politics in our sports as in all our bearings. Hell!”

In the follow-up piece, rightly a sequel to the one I have just quoted from, I was more open in terms of my address, what correctly could be termed an apostrophe to the spiritually enlightened and spiritually literate ones among members of the NFF (Nigerian Football Federation) , and among the audience of In and Out. Let’s peruse extracts from “A Coach for Super Eagles” whose appearance date, I re-state, was Monday, August 30, 2010: “…We did not  in the first place need the Swede and Scandinavian to supplant coach Shuaibu   Amodu who qualified Nigeria for the world cup… One reason why the Super Eagles lost colour, bloom, glow, plume and bliss in South Africa could be attributed to that bad mistake. Indeed, it was a hugely, costly error to replace Amodu at that time that the powers that were did. The un-edifying change and deletion of Amodu from his own team could not but have some spiritually negative and negatively spiritual overtones and consequences. Or didn’t they know that, that was the world cup of the gods? Let them ask Octopus Paul. No humour and joke here, please. And  you still wonder and are astonished that we kissed the grass the way we did in South Africa? Join me to demand that Amodu be given a public apology…. Until and  unless Amodu is properly apologized to and he on his part properly accepts the apology from his disgracers, our  Super Eagles are not likely to soar and shine in and at times of great expectations.”

Furthermore, I said as follows:…”I advise and insist, when he eventually agrees on un-belittling terms with the NFF, that Siasia must find a way to have the NFF reconcile with Shuaibu   Amodu in the manner I have suggested at the beginning of this piece and in my earlier one (“Learning to Lose”)… If this is not done, Siasia or any coach hired to coach and manage the Super Eagles will not succeed in the endeavour to build a-new after the self-induced and self-inflicted retribution that will continually trail our soccer at crucial moments. What I have said I have said… Truth is truth, especially poetic or spiritual truth.

“And I say, finally: to fall in love with Nigerian soccer again, especially at the level of the Super Eagles, we must make peace with the badly treated erstwhile Nigerian coach of the Super Eagles. But may I be proved wrong. May I be proved  wrong. Yet take this as a parting shot aimed at goal. I have sight and instincts which escape many a seer – although I am none in the sight of a seer not better than me.”

I said all these words over a year ago. That they are manifesting now is how they have been programmed and ordained to manifest. That the Super Eagles have blundered the way they have blundered is not at all accidental. And that they are not going to Gabon and Equatorial Guinea is a mighty blessing. It could have been disastrously disastrous and devastatingly devastating if they had diddled , daddled or dawdled away to the next African Cup of Nations. Also, that our respective soccer teams tumbled out of contention in the various competitions they have partaken in so far is not accidental. No one, nobody, no association, no matter how mighty, can escape the justice of whatever committed spiritual folly, error or wrong, in the open or in secrecy. The law of spiritual justice is the law of spiritual justice. It may not walk or leap to the transgressor urgently or immediately, but it never omits or fails to keep the appointed time. It is there always for the Christian, the Moslem, the believer of whatever he or she believes in, and for us all.

One argument that may be tendered here to counter our averment is that the present NFF members are new and could not be held liable for the wrong of their predecessors. We reject that by asking: what earnestly have they done to right the well wrought wrong against Amodu? Are they not the inheritors of the wealth and liability of their predecessors? How honest and transparent have they been since they came into our soccer house as administrators?

There are other things to be said here but I am advising my good self to say no to their revelation, at least for now. Yet I MUST speak thus: O dear, dear readers, keep this piece as a memento, as I utter here that Nigeria shall not proceed to the next world cup unless the antidote to our  diseased football, our diseased administration and our diseased

conduct is discovered. Of course I have  tendered here that we begin with an appeasement of the brutally and spiritually wronged Shuaibu   Amodu. The NFF chorographers will be too headstrong, too haughty,  too spiritually blind , and too mystically dull to do so. And Samson Siasia must be walked away now with the kind of speed that befits his narcissistic inclination and intensity that is detrimental to the spiritual grace of our Super Eagles.

I would like to end this installment by way of conjuring up here the following words from “The Story Told by the Tailor” in THE ARABIAN NIGHTS: “A man  scarcely ever succeeds in any enterprise if he has not recourse to the opinions of enlightened persons. No man becomes clever, says the proverb, unless he consults a clever man.” May we all have the presence of mind, and humility to learn from one who knows and possesses what is beyond us. But only the deep can converse with the deep. Or…?

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