A reader of this column sent in this piece and I therefore donate this space to him this week -Afejuku
Dear Prof Tony Afejuku

YOUR article: “Learning to lose” published in your column in the Nigerian Tribune of 28th June, 2010 was indeed a transcendent and sublime commentary on our collective inability to think deeply, forgive our errors (whether deliberate or avoidable) and move on in life, especially in the game of sports and in the tumultuous game of politics.

The piece reminded us once again of the lingering crisis in the sport sector and the trauma our feeble footballers inflicted on us all through their short and uneventful stay in South Africa for the World cup. I am very much in doubt that any form of redemption is on the way as the mafia of football administration in Nigeria are still in the full grip of the frontline activities in the sector. The current reprieve offered to NFF by FIFA may once again frustrate every effort of the presidency to reform the sector. We shall continue to watch and see how the drama of football administration unfolds.

My rejoinder to your piece, however, is intended to lend a voice to some of the salient issues you addressed on the miserable performance of the Super Eagles in the World Cup and also evaluate your outright condemnation of their performance, which contradicts your well-liked disposition of caution and mercy in matters of such degree.

I agree with you that our intolerant, vindictive and callous sports administrators, like many Nigerians, have endlessly learnt nothing from our loads of losses and it appears that we are inevitably condemned to failure. The same mistake we made when we failed to forgive Eguavon’s errors by replacing him with Berti Vogts was again repeated when we replaced Shuabu Amodu, even after qualifying us for the World Cup and giving us a Bronze at the African Nation’s Cup, with Lars Lagerback. The ultimate result has become a repeated cycle of disappointments at the highest levels of sports in Nigeria.

Football is first and foremost a game – you either win or you lose. When you win, you may choose to celebrate ad infinitum, but when you lose, you moan in the exasperating pain of the loser, and after a while you reconnoiter the forces of failure and resolve not to fail next time. A good sportsman sees stumbling blocks as stepping stones. Failure is just a lesson on another way not to do a thing. But rather than learn the bitter lessons of failure, our sports administrators could be compared to a madman who does the same thing, same way, and expects a different result.

When we learn to lose, it opens up wider vistas of opportunities for success. This is an unimpeachable truth you captured in your article thus: ‘We must learn to lose in order to ready ourselves for tomorrow’s beautiful moment. And unless we learn to lose we cannot learn to build classically in pleasure and in harmony.’

The lessons you have brought to bear in scrutinizing our attitude to sports is exceedingly relevant to our political and civic lives. It reminds me of the principles of forgiveness you echoed in your piece on the deposed Deji of Akure, when in spite of the massive outcry that the Deji should be crucified, you called for caution and for collective forgiveness. Learning to lose is like learning to forgive yourself or others about the wrongs of the past. It is a psychological rebirth that provokes the much desired catharses of courage that ultimately fires us to seek the best solution to our inadequacies. This is a compulsory purification exercise that enables us all to see hope in the future even in times of repeated failures.

Your prophetic genius as a conscientious writer and poet is vigourously apparent in ‘Learning to lose’ and it is undeniably an accurate message of optimism at this trying time in our turbulent sport and political lives.

I was slightly nervous, however, to discover that at the point you expressed your anger and disgust on the Flying Eagles, your endemic human instinct overpowered your esteemed divine intuition. In a seemingly livid state of anger and disappointment, you stated: ‘The current Super Eagles, minus Vincent [Enyeama], are the very worst assemblage of Nigerian footballers ever put together to represent Nigeria in any tournament … the worst advertisement ever of Nigerian football.’ This definitely did not sound like the voice of the benevolent sage who inspired us to forgive the Deji of Akure who desecrated his royal heritage with a malevolent act of bestiality, even at the peril of his crown. It was certainly the acerbic tone of an unyielding statesman who tacitly condemns in unrepentant terms an entire crop of professional footballers for making a costly mistake that is not all their fault. If we juxtapose the angst in the voice and the sullenness in the language, it was glaring that our sage could not bear to lose.

I feel your pain, but don’t you think the coaches, the Presidential committee and the NFF contributed to the mournful performance of the Eagles? I saw fire in the eyes of our players, but the fire wasn’t vibrant enough to consume their opponents. They may be partly responsible for our misery during the World Cup, but they are definitely not the worst of players. What we have today is the worst assemblage of football administrators. They deserved more of your vitriolic censure.

The woeful performance of the French team, for instance, does not make it the very worst assemblage of French footballers; the miserable results achieved by the Italian team does not make it the worst assemblage of Italian footballers; the collective disappointment we received as Africans from other participating African countries (Cameroon, Algeria, Cote d’Voire) and even South Africa, who started their build-up and preparation three years ago with a Brazilian coach, does not make them the very worst assemblage of African footballers. We are innocently suspicious, giving your caustic reaction, that you are also a victim of the contagious virus of our collective inability to learn to lose.

You have in your lacerating comment and emotional outburst revealed that, like every fallible creature, we are bound to be afflicted, sometimes for a short while, with the infectious bug of not learning to lose. Perhaps, we are rudely shocked by the  irreproachable reality that the lessons you have taught endearingly in ‘Learning to lose’ cannot be mastered instantaneously - it requires quite a great deal of time. We hope fifty-years is enough for Nigeria!

In all, your article lends credence to your continuous call for us all to adopt the virtue of caution in all aspects of our social, corporate and political lives. It is a great piece and I enjoyed every bit of it.

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